I have the tendency to sometimes not think out purchases and end up spending too much money on something that I might only end up using marginally, or worse stop using after an initial “honeymoon” with the product. This has happened a few times and it annoys me that I keep falling into the same mind trap, and making the same mistake twice.

A case in point is about 9 years ago my wife and I decided to try to lose some weight, and we were doing a really good job, with diet and exercise. I decided at that point that since I liked the exercise bike at the gym I was using, we should get one at home. This decision was not a bad idea, having an exercise bike more handy might have caused me to keep up the exercise.

Where that decision fell down was that I got up sold by a young man at Fitness Depot, who convinced me that I should buy a good exercise bike to make sure that I got a quality work out at home. At the end of it, I believe we paid upwards of $700 for the bike (possibly more), and when we got it home, it did get used a fair amount, however, eventually my exercise regimen declined and the bike then started to languish in our basement.

Occasionally I would try to restart an exercise program, but the bike started having technical difficulties, which is not surprising given it had printed circuit boards in it, and a very fancy display. The problems were intermittent so sometimes it would remedy itself and sometimes it wouldn’t. This all happened long after the warranty had expired, and to repair it would cost upwards of $200, so that was out of the question.

At the start of this year, my knees started giving me problems, and after a fair amount of physiotherapy it was suggested I get back into biking to lose some weight and strengthen my joints as well. I went back downstairs to find that my fancy exercise bike was now most definitely Up On The Roof and it was not going to work at all.

I started catching myself looking at brand new exercise bikes on line and thinking,It’s a worthwhile investment, which it might be, however, my nagging side kept pointing out how much was spent on the previous bike and our experience with this.

Used Bikes?

I decided to try to see if there were other folks who had exercise bikes in their basement doing nothing, and see if they wanted to sell them. Tried the bulletin boards at work, and got one response, but nothing much came of that.

Finally went on to Kajiji (the home of cheap folks) and found 2 different exercise bikes that fit my needs, and ended up getting one for $100, that is older, but I like a great deal. We had to make a fairly long trip to go and pick it up, however, for the past week I have been enjoying using this bike, and I no longer have a nagging sensation that I might have spent too much money for this useful tool.

Is this used bike going to last forever? I think it will eventually wear out, or we may need to repair it, but for now it is helping me with my renewed regimen. Am I going to keep using it in the future? I hope so, but even if I eventually give up on exercising, I will not look at the bike and think of it as a money pit.

Any other stories like this out there?