Originally Posted by
Bike Jedi
It's $66/ a month to someone on a very fixed income for the insurance, with no room to spare for buffer on anything else. Let's say you have $5k of stuff and electronics. That's $5,000 / $66 (a month of insurance) = 75 months of savings before you are self covered. 75 months / 12 months a year = 6 years before you have enough to recover everything at cost.
What does someone do in those six years if something does go wrong, they are not even close to saving the total amount, and don't have the funds now to shell out another $5k if something does go wrong?
It is their choice, but I'd consider it a poor one to tie up that much in gear if they didn't have a few $k in reserve.
What if they are doing it on a loan, and need to insure that loan?
Are you seriously suggesting someone might take out a loan to tour full time? Or are we talking about insuring for a single trip? They are two entirely different things.
I don't really want to get into lectures, ethics, or morals about "living withing your means" stuff. That's not logical in most settings and contexts in the regular world. It's a dog eat dog world. We clearly all don't have the same choices, blessings, benefits, or outcomes.
True, but it is also about what we do with what we have. Being frugal isn't a trait limited to either end of the income scale. Rich and poor people can both be frugal and either can be a spendthrift.
I am lucky enough to be retired and financially pretty comfortable now. I am thankful for that. Yes I am lucky. Most of the luck is that I was raised by parents who spent their younger married lives during the depression. They were also of an ethnic heritage that is noted, probably rightfully so, for being frugal and hard working. So frugality and work ethic was beat into my head for my whole young life and while I may he resisted and rebelled as a kid, it has served me well. When you live like you are poorer than you actually are it pays off two ways. First you put away more and second when it comes time to live off of what you put away you are used to living on much less. Or to look at the flip side when you spend all that you have or worse yet live in debt, you not only save nothing, but you are used to an unmaintainable lifestyle.
BTW, that same frugality comes in really handy on tour. It is nice to be able to live on next to nothing, even if you don't need to.
Let's face it...people talk about how you can get great bikes for less than $1k or at $1,200, but I wouldn't want to live on those bikes all the time with what is available, and more importantly, I don't think they will last day in and day out without key points being upgraded to quality stuff.
I think there is a very good reason folks say that. I know that my last coast to coast ride was on a bike in that category that had somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 miles on it and the components were pretty much all original other than a very few that were swapped to allow for different gearing and a rim that was replaced. It probably has closer to 100,000 miles on it but I don't have accurate records for quite a few years of it's use. Suffice it to say it has seen a lot of use in a variety of situations including a number of years of daily commuting, a number of years of training rides where it logged 10,000 per year, and some touring including a coast to coast ride (San Diego to Pensacola). Any way I don't see any reason why it wouldn't still serve pretty well for more long miles. That particular bike is a race oriented bike so it isn't for heavier loads (I toured with ultralight backpacking gear), but a similarly priced touring bike would serve equally well IMO.
I did some heavy touring on a $600 touring bike (probably equivalent to a $1000 bike today) the first tour was 4200+ miles (Trans America), then I did another three 1000+ mile tours, there were quite a few miles of local riding around town, and then at some point my daughter took over the bike and rode it daily as a ride to work commuter and weekend rider. After getting a nagging rear wheel problem sorted out the bike has been through two chains, several tires front and back, numerous bar tape changes, numerous brake pad changes, a couple cable replacements, routine cleaning and lubrication and not much else. The rear wheel problem was a freak issue with the rear cluster that could have happened with a more expensive bike. There was another bike just like it in the family that saw similar service with similar results, but no rear wheels problems.
I honestly don't think you get much more reliability by spending more with only one exception. Splurging a little on the wheels might be a good idea. Not an absolute necessity, but maybe a good investment. Sinking a lot of money into the frames and all the other components is much more of a luxury than a necessity. I'd even question if you actually get more reliability by spending more on most components like brakes, shifters, derailleurs, and so on once you get to what you find on a $1000 to $1200 bike. The difference is often more about finish or sometimes weight. In some cases something like cheap steel cogs or rings may last much longer.
If you want an extreme example of a cheap choice working out okay... I met a guy from Japan on the Pacific Coast. He was doing the whole 1800+ miles of the US portion of the coast. He was using walmart quality bike and gear and managing fine. He seemed to be having the time of his life. It may not have been my first choice, but then again the whole deal probably cost less than shipping his stuff to and from Japan would have. He planned to just give it all away at the end of the trip. Anything that failed could easily be replaced at any point, but he had at that point had no major gear failures. I don't recall exactly where I met him but I think he was about 1/3 of the way down the coast.
Most of the full time tourists I have met, were actually better described homeless guys or gals and their gear was closer to my Japanese friend's gear than what most bike tourists use. I met a lot of those folks on the same Pacific Coast trip. They tended to move around the same area just kind of bouncing around. IME full time bike tourists other than these homeless folks are pretty rare or just don't travel on the same roads that I have toured. I have met some that full time toured for some limited and planned duration like say one year or more, but I think of that as being a really long tour rather than as a full time lifestyle. I met a number of folks doing stuff like riding the length of the Americas Alaska to the tip of Argentina (several years), but again I am inclined to think of that as a single really long tour. I guess it depends on how you look at it, but given that it has a somewhat planned route and endpoint I still think of it as a trip.
I agree with absolutely everything you said. But life just doesn't quite work that way for everyone else. And some people can't live in the same boxes, filters, or realities of others.
Does the things you said apply to those on the run in South America right now? How about those in prison camps in North Korea? And you think it applies to a black or brown kid in the hood, at 12, with not a single resource, option, person who really gives a crap, and the weight of the world on their shoulders, trying to figure out how to survive with no guidance or really anything for that matter?
Some of what I said is universal and applies no matter the situation. It may become kind of moot when you have nothing, because living within your means may be a forced necessity. They are living within their means and have no choice. The thing is we were talking about going touring full time, $3000 bicycles, buying insurance... all things those folks won't be thinking about. Thinking about those things implies that you have lots of options that they don't have.
I made some suggestions about what I thought were good choices. I think that you could save yourself some money and be better off by following them. Taking care to protect your gear the risk would be low and the money saved would mitigate any eventual losses if they did occur. You are obviously free to disagree. The choices are yours to make.
BTW, if you do get coverage please do your homework. Not only check the actual policy, but check on what kind of feed back they get from customers who filed claims. I know that when I was sailing a lot of other sailors had problems with their coverage especially when traveling to other parts of the world. Be careful about whether any plan you buy covers everywhere you plan to travel. Check on how they are about paying claims. Do they pay quickly, how badly do they depreciate the value of your stuff, or do they otherwise figure out reasons to stiff you? Will they jack up your premiums after a claim? Cancel your policy?
Insurance IMO is for things you can't afford to handle on your own or that would financially break you. Health issues are way more likely to do that, so I'd suggest you worry more about health coverage than bike and gear coverage. Also if you will be traveling internationally be sure what they offer wrt transporting you to a major city hospital and eventually home in the event of serious injury. This could be a huge deal if you will be way off the grid in some undeveloped country. Costs and logistics of getting transported and treated could be a real problem, especially if you are broke and have no coverage. It could be financial death or even actual death.