Originally Posted by vinnyvincent

So, my "first adult bike" was a 300 dollar BikesDirect road bike. It's served me well and I've put quite a few thousand miles on it and will continue to do so.
I've also since gotten a MTB from them, and I enjoy doing my own maintenance.
I've gotten a nice wheel set for the road bike, with an extra rear wheel to use in case I want to ride when I break a spoke and it's in the shop. I've changed out cassettes, retrofitted brakes from an old bike to my friends new fixie, and several other easy jobs in addition to doing all the maintenance(except wheel truing) on my bikes and friends bikes..

Lately I've been thinking about getting a more modern, light weight road bike to use for faster group rides.
I'm trying to decide if I want to go with a complete bike from the shop, or buying components and slowly building the bike myself.
I'm worried I might be underestimating what it takes to build a bike and that it may end up being more than I can handle.
Based on my experience, what do you think?

Is it any cheaper to build it yourself, or is it just more of a hobbyist thing? Seems like a lot of bikes come with crappy wheels, so maybe by the time I put decent wheels and tires on a new bike I would come out ahead building it myself?