Hey /r/frugal,
One of my favorite ways to get cardio exercise is to cycle, but my will to adhere to the hobby goes away in the winter: the cold and the danger of cycling in the winter darkness after/before work is enough to, personally, dissuade me.
I'm considering whether to purchase an indoor trainer, which is a machine that attaches to the rear axle of the bike to cycle in-place. The nicer, fluid-as-opposed-to-magnet designed trainers are around 300$ (the cheaper designed trainers are around 50-100$), which in my situation is a big, but affordable, purchase. While I believe that anything that can get a person to exercise well and routinely is worth it (and I do believe that I will use the more expensive machine like so), I can't shake the cognitive dissonance that exercise can and, in a frugal-minded mindset, should be free. And yet, I can't get myself to use my free options, such as body-weight calisthenics, running/cycling outdoors, etc.
Buying second-hand is a reasonable suggestion, and I have looked, but no one is selling (cycling isn't popular where I live, and everyone's probably making good use of their machines around this time of year).
What would you do? Should I suck it up and brave the outdoors, or make that purchase, expensively or inexpensively, or do something else?
January 15, 2017 at 08:51AM
