The Bicycle Millionaire

Read time: 4 minutes

I should’ve worn gloves.

The thought crosses my mind as I switch hands on the handlebars of my bike and stuff the other one into my coat pocket.

It’s 37 degrees, and I’d left in such a rush I hadn’t grabbed anything to protect my hands, and I was paying for it.

I take a left, straight into the wind. The cold makes my fingers ache as I pull up to a tree in front of my destination.

Yet as my clumsy hands work to lock up my bike, I’m smiling.

Partly because I’m about to be warm.

Party because I enjoyed seeing the subtle signs of spring on the trees as I rode.

And party because somewhere off in the world of digital bank accounts, this two-wheeled hunk of steel, gears, and rubber is making me buckets of money.

How? I’ll explain.

In today’s issue:

• The insane cost of “comfort”

• How bikes make everything in your life better

• Why the only unreasonable thing is to do nothing

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“Before you get started, Zach. I want you to know you’re crazy. I would NEVER ride my bike in the cold when I could drive a car instead.”

I can understand why you might feel that way. Sure, riding a bike through the winter looks a little crazy.

But before you judge me, you need to face the facts.

Your car is making you poor, miserable, and fat.

Not to mention heating up the planet, polluting our air, and leading to thousands of tragic deaths every year.

Don’t believe me?

A study out of Minneapolis found that of all commuters, bikers were by far the happiest.

“Isn’t Minneapolis like negative 3000 degrees in the winter?”

As someone who grew up there, I can tell you, yes, yes it is.

Yet even in that frozen city, car commuters were 3 times more likely to be unhappy with their commute.

“But I like my time driving in traffic. It calms me.”

That’s hard to believe, but I’ll play along. There’s more than just happiness you get.

The average person biking at a casual pace for 30 minutes will burn about 350 calories. Do that twice a day as a commute to work and you’ll burn a pound of fat every week.

“Eh, I don’t really care about looking fitter.”

I can respect that. Love your body.

But consider this -

The slight physical exertion will also get your heart pumping, which improves your circulation, lowers your blood pressure, and cuts down on your blood fat levels. (Blood fat levels? That just sounds gross.)

Biking is so powerful for your health, this 5-year study showed that bike commuters drop their total chance of death by 41%.

“Live longer and extend my life on this miserable planet? No thank you!”

Okay fine. Forget the health benefits.

The endorphins your brain floods your body with after biking make you more focused and happy, so you show up to work like a superhero version of yourself.

While other people are still trying to get themselves going by drowning themselves in coffee, you’ve already knocked out several important projects.

“I don’t want a promotion. That would just mean spending more time at work.”

Hard to please, huh? 

Okay, ever find it hard to have time to work out?

Start bike commuting and you’ve just turned your commute into your workout for the day. 

That’s an hour of extra time I just created for you from thin air.

 I’m like some kind of time magician. Shazam.

“That’s fine Zach, but I don’t follow you for life advice. Show me the mo-neyyy!”

Sheesh. You are determined to not like this, aren’t you?

Lucky for me, this is easy.

Your car currently costs you about 67 cents per mile to drive.

Crazy, right? 

It’s not just gas you have to pay for. Insurance, oil changes, new tires, car washes, registration, and eventually paying for a replacement car all add up over time.

So if you took a simple 4 mile commute (this is what mine used to be), and switched to biking, you’d save $5.36 per day.

Over a full year, that’s $1400.

If you start to replace ALL of your short-distance trips with biking instead of driving (52% of all trips are under 3 miles), we can bump that up to $5,000 per year.

A brand new, low maintenance, easy-to-ride bike will only cost you about $400.

That means that you could buy a brand new bike every month and STILL save money.

And that’s before we calculate the money you saved from lower medical costs, money you earned from your higher productivity at work, and even the radical amount of money you could save by going without a car altogether.

But even if we pretend that those savings don’t exist - if you invested that $5,000 you saved over the course of your working life, you’d retire with over $1.5 million.

Not so crazy now, is it?

“But that won’t work because of my age/climate/city/health/family.”

Oh yeah? Tell that to the Dutch, where 43% of people bike daily. Or the old ladies in China, where the cities are more congested than ours. Or the Norwegians, whose country is LITERALLY A PART OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.

If you want to find an excuse not to do something, you will. 

But whatever you decide to blame is the thing that has power over you. 

Maybe instead of saying “I can’t”, try saying “how could I?”

The world is there for the taking for those willing to push their boundaries.

Keep growing,

P.S. If you got value from this, could you do me a huge favor and share it with someone you know? It’s free and it means the world to me.

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