Episode four ninety four, Commuting with an e bike in any Weather with Kevin ha.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and I am so, so so excited for this conversation because you know, we always talk about the three biggest expenses you have every month are housing, transportation, and food. And when we talk about transportation, it's always, you know, don't get an auto alone, get a cheap car, save on auto insurance. And the most radical idea could for anyone is usually go down to a one car family.
But there is a radical middle in transportation, and I I truly believe that it's e bikes, but there are so many barriers to entry on it, and our friend Kevin smashing them all. So if you want to save money on transportation and you're looking for that radical middle, this is it.
This was I just said to you, Jen, a conversation that I just loved being in.
I honestly forgot we were recording.
I just wanted to know all of the things who knew we could talk for forty five minutes about e biking, but we did, And I really think it's going to at least challenge us on the way that we approach transportation. Even if it doesn't mean you're immediately going and getting an e bike, there are still other things we can
think about related to this topic. Yeah, but first, this is brought to you by getting there, because sometimes it is about the destination, whether you rode your bike, walked, ran, scootered, drove, rode the bus, arriving actually getting there feels great. And speaking of getting there, we want to help you experience more freedom and confidence with your money by teaching the skills of values based spending and budgeting through a five
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Getting there. Okay. So Kevin is the creator of financialpanther dot com. I met him in twenty sixteen. We were both baby bloggers at fin Con and he's written about personal finance and financial independence. But what I have found most fascinating about Kevin is he is a like primary transportation mode is e bike. He has two young children, He lives in Minnesota, where it is obviously cold and snowy in the winter, and still primary form of transportation
is e bike year round, even with his children. And so I wanted to talk to him because we often think in things like this that it is a total all or nothing and maybe I, you know, I don't get a car and I get bike instead, and that's a really hard and not always feasible transition. So where
do we find the radical middle on transportation? You are most likely not going to be all in like Kevin, but we want him to inspire you to find your radical middle and just kind of expand what you think is possible when it comes to saving on transportation.
M let's get into it. Ask you from Kevin.
Kevin, welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. I am so excited to have you here.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
This is such a fun topic.
We say that one of our biggest categories of expenses is transportation, and yet we've never really done an episode on alternative forms of transportation. We've done alternative housing solutions, and of course a ton of episodes on how to save on food. So this one I get into the nitty gritty on transportation. I am here for it. Yeah.
Okay, So Kevin, take us on the journey. How did you find yourself getting into e bikes and using that as a primary form of transportation.
Yeah. So I have always been a bike commuter and I used like a regular bike for most of my life, mainly using like bike share bikes, those big heavy ones. And that's how I got to work and back like all year round, even in the winter in Minnesota. And in twenty nineteen I went on like a trip to Dallas and they had these like bike share like e bike bike shares, like these free floating ones, and I use that and I was like, oh my gosh, I
can never go back to a regular bike now. And I remember me and my wife were just like biking around all of the city on these like bike share e bikes, and you know, twenty nineteen was still kind of like new for like e bikes, and so I students, I got back home, I was like, I'm definitely getting
a bike, an e bike. So I buy an e bike for fifteen hundred bucks, like a rad power bike, which I still have, And that was like my primary mode of transport for a long long time, just using that bike to get around, and the fifteen hundred bucks I spent on it definitely saved me. I definitely made my money back for sure, because not only was I using that to transport myself get around, but I also used it to do like food deliveries with door Dash and Uber Eats and stuff, which is kind of like
my thing I do. And so I easily paid for the bike just like doing deliveries and biking around.
Oh man, so so many questions, but I'm going to start here.
Did you ever own a vehicle?
Do you still also have a vehicle or are you all in on the e bike?
Yeah, so our household is a one car household. We have an electric car that we use as the primary car, but I myself drive that car like once a year maybe, Like I very rarely drive. My wife uses the car to get herself to work because she works pretty far out in the suburbs. Although in the summer she will bike to work too. It's like an eighteen mile bike ride and she'll do it on an e bike in like an hour. Wow, So it is possible even for long rides. But for my yeah so, But for myself,
I mainly get around with the bike. And we also have two kids, four year old and two year old, and that is our primary motive of transport to and from daycare and just getting around everywhere.
There is a there's a mom at our elementary school who also e bikes her two kids to school every morning. She says it's about a thirty minute ride, and there are a lot of parents doing this with kids.
What Okay, that was going to be a question a little bit later on, but since we're here, I am so curious to talk about that.
How are you putting? Where do the kids go?
Yeah?
So let's yeah, let's talk about some of those barriers. Like first, the kids, how do they from infancy all the way to like your four year old. How does that? How do you transport them?
Yeah, so this is a good kind of topic to talk about because you know, when I started in the e bike world, I didn't have kids when I first got my first bike, and so you know, when you're riding just like yourself around, it's very easy, right, you just hop on a bike and go. Once I had my first kid, then I had to like figure out
what I was going to do. And so when I had one kid, I just had a It was just like a regular e bike, and it had a on the back that I would put a like a seat, like a bike seat on it, and my son would just go on the back there. We started taking him around on that when he was about one year old because at that time we lived really close to our daycare, so I could just walk him there. But then we moved and then I had to start biking him on the back of the bike. So one kid, very easy,
stick him on the back of the bike. Once you had two kids, it adds another challenge for that one. I ended up getting this cargo bike, and we can talk about cargo bikes because these are like the big game changers. But I got one cargo bike that's called an urban arrow. It's like a front loading bike. It's kind of like a big buck in the front, and both my kids just go in that.
Now.
My youngest kids started going in that bike when he was about five months old because it has like an adapter that you could put like a car seat into it, so attach it in, and so it was like great having that, and now that they're both a little older, I also got a long tail cargo bike, which is like it's basically just a bike, but it's like twice as long, and two kids can fit on the back
of it really easily. And that one kind of is good to ride around in because it rides more like a regular bike, whereas like the front loader bike kind of takes a little bit of a learning curve to ride. It's a little bit different of a look of a bike. But both bikes, once you're like start riding them, it's really you like pick it up real quick.
And probably so fun for the kids.
Talk about a much better way of commuting to and from a school or take care. But so speaking of barriers with that, one of the things that comes to mind for me and I haven't done any research on this, but I've always been curious about safety laws around this. I mean, I know that this is not unusual for many other countries to you know, pile a bunch of people on a bike or a scooter or a motorcycle.
It's just not super common in the States. And also I think we've got a little bit more regulations, especially around carting kids around.
What have you run into with that?
Yeah, as far as I know, I don't know of any like rules about how you ride your kids around. Like, you know, I do have like general safety things I do with the kids, like they put helmets on, and I am very careful when I'm riding. And I'm fortunate that I live in a city that has pretty good bike infrastructure for an American city. But you know, in general, it's just like, you know, riding a bike, you're not
like going like crazy fast or anything. And as long as you're just like kind of an aware rider and you kind of are comfortable, you will it's like not anymore dangerous. I don't think then drive around a car where you know you can get a crash also.
Right, well, that's been one of my biggest barriers. My husband and I we have a car. We are also a one vehicle household, although it's just the two of us. We don't have any kids. But we also have two scooters, like two Metro Honda Metropolitan scooters, so somewhat similar to the e bike, but there are you know, of course, some differences as far as like where we can park it, but that's been even on the scooter. One of my
barriers is just like the safety of the roads. There are certain roads around us that to get from where we live to downtown, you've got like one option and it is a pretty dangerous stretch for about a mile or two. But yeah, I'm curious for you, like what you found. I'm sure of that not every road feels super safe. How you've navigated kind of that safety aspect.
Right, and you know, this is something that kind of makes a little bit of experience to like understand the safest routes to take because you're you're absolutely right, And that is a barrier is people are nervous riding a bike, especially riding bike with their kids, and a lot of it has to do with our cities being kind of, you know, poorly designed so that they force you to drive around, and you know, that is a failure of a city when they make it so that you can't
get around safely on a bike or walking or whatever. I do think that most cities, even like even really car centric cities, do have ways to get around. You just have to kind of look and figure out the
best routing for you. I use a lot of Google Maps if I'm like doing a route I'm unfamiliar with, and you know, I would like look at the satellite view and try to see like, is there something, you know, some sort of separate path or something here that's makes it as a little safer because you're right, I'm not going on like a huge street with my kids. I don't like to go on a huge street by myself even, And so it does take a look practice to figure out your routes that you want to take.
Yeah, it is. It's a barrier to getting into biking or e biking, but it's it's a barrier. I think we build up bigger in our heads because I'm thinking, I'm like, yeah, like I feel unsafe. I'm personally I don't have great balance on anything. I even I got on Travis's e bike and he was like, yeah, I put it on three for you, or I put it down to three for you, and I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, And I put it like down to one cause I
just don't have great balance. But I'm like, we have a trail, we have a bike trail, and an e bike is a bike, so you could just go on the trail and there are no cars on that. So like, I think, it's just we're in the car mindset, so you don't have to pay attention to less direct routes
or biking lanes and trails. But when you put yourself in the biking mindset, it's like that seat when you see a red jeep once and then now everybody has a red geep, you know, when you see when you ride the bike, Now every road you know opens up to the bike.
Every road can be ridden.
Yeah, well no, you know, And you're right about that because I whenever I'm even like going anywhere, I look for the bike infrastructure, right I look and see like and so I'll be like in the Burbs and driving somewhere and I'll be like, hey, look there's like a multi use path right there, you know, it's like something you wouldn't notice if you're not really paying attention of what's around you.
So true, other like barriers are weather. And I know you live in Minnesota and you bike year round, so what do you do?
How you how do you do?
How do you do that?
Yeah, and this is the weather is a fair thing. So obviously spring, summerfall, I think Emily can ride. Rain is the worst weather to ride in in my opinion, because it's just really hard to keep yourself dry no matter what you wear. So if I had to pick any weather, I think rain is worse than like super cold for really cold weather here in Minnesota. You know, right now this morning it was minus fifteen, so yeah, that's really cold.
The wheels don't even turn, they're just frozen.
You just glide along the ice.
So yeah, wellso in really cold weather, it's all about like the clothing you wear, and especially it's not so much keeping your like body warm as it is keeping like your hands and your neck and your face warm. And so the things that I have, like I have these things called bar mits, they're called pogies also that you put on the handlebars of your bike and then your hands kind of just just go in them basically, so it kind of like makes like a like a yeah,
it makes like a glove around the handlebars. And I don't understand how. Yeah, these are like a total game changer because I used to just wear like gloves, and you know, when you're wearing gloves, it's like hard to maneuver, and even your hands will still get cold. But with the pogies or the bar mits, your hands are like just totally warm. I don't really understand how, but I can ride in zero degree weather with no gloves, just my hands in there, and I'm totally fine. So that yeah,
And so that's a huge game changer. And you'll see a lot of people who ride in the cold have those and then having like like buff it's called or like a baklab clava or something. It's like a face.
Yeah, but that is.
A big one too, because it covers like your face and your ears and everything, and your neck. And if you cover like your hands and your neck and ears, you are not as cold as you like you would think you would be, because like your body itself, you know, can stay warm and obviously, you know you put on layers and that kind of stuff. You know, snow pants and stuff like that, but you know, that's how I
do it. And I mean, you know, the way I look at it, like my kids are riding also in ten degree weather and Minnesota winter and they're doing fine, And so I think these little kids can do it. I think a lot of people can probably ride in the winter even if it's really cold.
Yeah, that's crazy. Any like advice for riding in the rain, because maybe you are riding and it's not raining, but you get somewhere and it starts raining and you have to ride back, Like what do you do?
Yeah, So riding in the rain if it's if I'm going somewhere, I have to bring a change of clothes. It's just just because I put on the raincoat and everything. And there's like these ponchos. I don't have one, but maybe I'll get one, but there are these like ponchos you can wear too. But right now my thing is I put on a rain jacket and I still get wet, and I just have a change of clothes with me for when I get to wherever I'm going.
For one other barrier, I'm curious your thoughts for someone who'd be like okay, but I'm in the suburbs or even a little bit more of a remote area. Is this even something that I should consider? You know, when everything is ten maybe plus miles away, what would you say to that person?
Yeah, so I think that people in the suburbs under overestimate how far away things are from them, and they underestimate how like how what kind of infrastructure the actually have out there. One of the big advantages with e bikes is you can cover these big distances much faster. Like a mile on an e bike is like five minutes, you know, if you're if you're biking at like regular e bike speed, and so a three mile ride like
fifteen minutes. And if you look at where the things you're going to, like grocery store and whatever, I bet you most of those things are within five miles or you know, five or three miles. And you know, there's like data from like the government that shows like the car trips people take, and like more than half car trips he'll take are three miles or less, and like almost two thirds of them are five miles or less.
And these are all like perfect e bike distances. And in the burbs, like one of the things that always kind of talked about manual biking in the Burbs is that you're kind of riding sometimes on like really boring stretches, you know, like maybe it's like a sidewalk along like a huge street. But with the e bike, you just get through that quickly and so you don't really have to like worry about like being slow moving there. You just fly down the street as fast as you can.
So that's what I would think is that most things are probably closer than you think. And even ten miles, like ten miles is kind of pushing the distances of like how far you wanna e bike, But if you think about it, even ten miles if you're biking like twenty miles per hour and an e bike, ten miles is like a half hour bike ride, which isn't like a crazy time to bike.
Yeah, on an e bike, are you keeping up with traffic or you more so following like bike rules where you're riding on the side people are passing you.
What does that generally look like for you?
Yeah, I always stick to like whatever bike infrastructure can find that's ideally separated, not just like a pain in line. So most of the time I'm just going like on bike infrastructure that's separate from traffic. Very rarely am I going to be like on the street with like fast moving traffic. You know, if it's like a side street, I'll be on the street and then I'm just going with any traffic that's going. But if it's like a fifty mile per hour street, I'm not going to ride
on that street. I'm going to like find a side street, or I'm going to go on the sidewalk or hopefully maybe they have like a path or something.
Yeah, so we've covered then a lot of barriers.
What I'm hearing you say is, yeah, there's an issue or a problem, and there's some sort of solution that we could find if we want to, so out of that now that I I'm a little bit like more convinced to give this a look a little look see, can you talk about some of the savings that you've seen kind of how this impacts finances.
Yeah, I'm sure you've done some math. I'd love yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear that.
Absolutely. So this is one of the things that you know, if you look at like what we spend the most on, it's typically housing, transportation, and food. Right, So transportation for
most household is the second highest expense. And you can guys see why you know, if you have a house to cars, right, and you look at how much the average car costs these days, it's like an average new cars like forty five thousand dollars or something crazy now, right, And if you look at like the data on how much a car costs to operate for like a year, it's typically like ten and twelve thousand dollars a year.
You know, if you put in like insurance, gas, maintenance, depreciation, all that stuff, right, And that's just our cost not like external costs like pollution and all that stuff. So that stuff is you can see there's like a lot of money there to be to be spent on transportation. And I think it's kind of interesting because you know
you mentioned this. We talk about like housing stuff and like food stuff, and people will like do all sorts of crazy things to like reduce those costs, right, And you don't see that much people talking about reducing like transportation costs other than like just driving like old car driving,
you know, a cheaper car something like that. And so like you know, I'll tell people like, oh you should like just try, you know, biking as like your main mode of transportation, and people will be like, that's crazy, right, even at the same time they're like, you know, and I'm like in the financial independence community, so people will be like, these are people who are trying to like retire at like thirty five years old. And I'll tell them, like, hey,
why don't you bike everywhere? They'll be like, that's impossible to.
Drive? Is possible? Live on rice?
Right?
And I don't know why that is, but you know, if you look at just like the general savings right there, right, So if you're looking at ten thousand or twelve thousand hours a year for a car, right, and you have two cars, I mean you're looking at you know, twenty twenty thousand dollars a year, twenty four thousand hours a year, but like if you can replace even one of those cars, right, so you save yourself ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, and that money instead of spending on a car, you
were invested or something. I mean over a course of thirty years, that's like a million dollars. And if you know, if you like invest in, you have like, you know, pretty normal return and you know if you think about how long most people drive. Most of us drive for more than thirty years. We probably drive for fifty years or something. So that could be literally millions of dollars that you can save and invest if you, you know,
put it to work on that. And meanwhile, like a bike, the maintenance cost of a bike is pretty much nothing, like if for an e bike the cost of like the electricity for the battery is like twenty five cents. Like it's like it's like a couple of bucks a year. It's literally like nothing. And you know, the maintenance itself on the bike is not very expensive. It's you know, you know, fixing flat tires, replacing some parts, these kind
of things. It's maybe hundreds of dollars a year, you know for these kind of things.
And much easier to YouTube those solutions than to YouTube the fixes on a car.
Oh yeah, absolutely, Like you know, flat tires and stuff. People you can do it yourself. Like I don't do it myself because I just like am so slow and horrible at doing it, so I always bring it in. But I mean I bring it in, I get flat change. It's like twenty bucks, right, and it takes them half an hour so ita. So that's kind of some big savings there. And then you know, the cost of a e bike obviously is way less than the cost of
a car. I mean, you look at even buying like a like if you buy like a regular e bike for like a thousand bucks or something, or you said you had an e bike that was like only five hundred.
Bucks, Well he got it on Facebook marketplace. It's a it was originally a fifteen hundred dollars e bike that he got for five hundred and I'll see allure of buying it. He got a great deal on it.
And that is a great deal. And think about that. I mean he could literally buy like ten new bikes every year for the cost of a one of what it costs to keep a car going if you.
Wanted to man not to mention like so, as I mentioned, we have scooters and we kind of like hack our transportation in that way. But one of the downsides for us where we live with the scooter is still needing to pay for parking, whereas the benefit of something like an e bike it gets you there faster than even just biking does, but you still get all of the benefit fits of it just being a bike, Like for us,
a scooter doesn't count like that. I can't just park it next to the bikes and there are no scooter or motorcycle parking so it's and you need to pay per scooter, Like you can't park two scooters in one spot and just pay for one spot.
And you have to renew the registration every.
Year, right, Yeah, and it takes gas so there, but again we can run on one tank of gas for over one hundred miles per scooter, so it still is saving us tons on transportation. But this is definitely some strong benefits to the e bike kind of that, like even more radical middle of yeah, saving on transport.
Something else I've been interested in is you do a lot of like Uber eats and like food delivery on your bike. I'd love to hear about that. And do you feel like using the e byte gives you an advantage over cars, like you can get to places that others can't, or be faster or just tell me about all of that.
Yeah, so for sure in a city, like I live in a city, and I think that I'm definitely faster than people who are in a car because I don't have to worry about parking and traffic or anything like that. And then just from like a delivery, just from like a money standpoint, it costs me nothing pretty much to operate my e bike, and so I'm making more when I'm doing the deliveries, and it makes it a little
easier for me to I do something. When I'm doing food deliveries, I like do like multiple deliveries at once. It's called multi apping, so I can, like instead of doing one delivery, I'll do like two or three using like different apps. And it's much easier with the e bike because I don't have to worry about park car traffic, So it's like I can get from place to place
a lot faster. And like from food delivery standpoint, if you think about where like restaurants tend to be, they usually tend to be in like downtown areas where parking is difficult and traffic is heavy, and so the e bike just has a huge advantage in like being able to hang out in like these downtown areas and get a lot of deliveries.
When you're hopping on, hopping off, Do you have to be concerned about theft? Are you locking it up every single time?
Yeah? So I so it depends where I am and how much I trust the place. Most of the time, if I can see it from the from the restaurant, like like through the window, then I won't lock it up because I'm usually just in and out in like a few seconds. But if it's is someplace that like like if I'm in certain places of downtown, for example, I'm not going to leave the bike outside for even
a second, so then I will lock it up. Or a lot of times restaurants, I'll kind of like wheel it into like the little entryway area and just put it in there.
Oh yeah, nice, you.
Know, like kind of the foyer part, and no one ever really cares.
So yeah again, right, well, there's a will, there's a way.
One other potential benefit I'm curious to hear your perspective on is just the way that e biking most places
shifts kind of lifestyle. So I'm thinking about if you're talking going to the grocery store or even taking your kids places that you just don't have the opportunity to carry as much, which there probably are pros and cons to that, but I'm curious about the pros like the money savings or the ways that it shifted grocery shopping for you or simplified your life to whatever we can carry on the bike is what we can bring.
Yeah, so you know, so I do definitely stick to places that are like closer, which is kind of nice. You know. So it's very easy for us to get to the park and stuff like that, you know, on the playground stuff because we can just I don't have to like load them into the car and like buckle him in. I can just like throw them on the bike and we're off and then you know, we just pulled right up to the to the playground and and
that's it. So that kind of it does kind of shrink our world a little bit, which I think is good. I think a lot of us drive too far to places, like you know, like we don't need to be going like to the other side of town for everything. So that's one thing. As as far as like carrying things, I still carry a lot of stuff because we have that cargo bike, and so I do my Costco runs on that cargo bike.
No, of course, you're not doing Costco on the bike.
WHOA, Why, Yeah, I do Costco runs. My Costco is three miles from my house and it's all bike path to get there. The bike parking is right outside the front door, so which is great. I never have to worry about like because you know how parking.
Lot yeah kind of small and dangerous.
Yeah, I never have to worry about that. I just bike right up to the Costco, pull up to the front, lock my bike, and I'm in and I'll buy like three hundred dollars worth of Costco stuff. It's because it's it's mainly because this one bike I have, the cargo box bike, is like I can fit so much stuff in it.
I want to know how many people are waiting for you outside just video recording you loading up your Costco haul on your e bike.
Yeah. People people do it now. I've filmed some like to put on Instagram and stuff so I can share a link or something. You want to see what you do. But yeah, that's how I do it. And then you know, we'll usually if we do like a Costco trip with the kids, we'll take like two bikes and the kids will go on the the other bike on the way back, and then I'll just use the one bike to load it up with stuff.
So last last question, tell us a little bit about the types, like the difference between the e bike and the cargo bike, and the prices and like what to look for, what to avoid.
Yeah, so like a regular e bike, right, you can get them, Like there's a lot of like entry level brands that you can get and they'll be like thousand to fifteen hundred dollars for like the regular entry level E bike. I think those are great for anyone starting out because I don't think you can lose on that. It's you're probably gonna get your thousand bucks worth from if you use it like as transportation and not just as like a toy. So that's kind of that one.
And then when you get to like the cargo bikes, there are like entry level cargo bikes that are like in the two thousand dollars range that are like the long tails, and then it can really start getting up and up. So the bike I have, the box bike, it's called an Urban Arrow. That bike was seven thousand dollars, which is obviously like a lot of money, like for someone you know to hear that, but like when I got that bike, I got it because or I got
that bike instead of getting a second car. And so if you think about that that's actually like a really good price for like a car replacement, because even if I bought like a cheap used car, I would be probably spending double that, you know, fifteen twenty grand. And then right, and so like my my urban Arrow, I can you know, maintain it's a couple hundred bucks a year to maintain it, and I don't have to worry about insurance and gas and anything like that. And I
use it as like my second vehicle. Essentially, it's like my car for myself. Yeah. So, but it it's not cheap, and I understand that, Like it's hard to convey yourself when you here someone say, oh, yeah, this bike is seven grand or whatever. But if you think of it as a transportation vehicle and not as a toy, then it starts to make a lot more sense. It's like it's actually a bargain.
Yeah, and it's not the first bike you got either, Like you got acquainted first, you use your regular bike, then you got your fifteen hundred dollars e bike, and you worked up to where getting a seven thousand dollars cargo bike made sense.
Right, And that's the thing that would have been hard for me to do as my my first bike. I have seen people do that, like they'll just like jump right into that. I think it's better to just get a entry level bike first and like see if if you can do it, like if it makes sense, and then you can kind of work your way up to better bikes because testimony is a different Yeah, there is a difference between like quality of bikes and yeah, like the more expense bikes aren't better.
Well, speaking of something, quality and everyone is the best.
You don't have to work your way up to it.
No barrier.
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That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week.
Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.
Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, Kevin.
Every week we ask our listeners and our guests to share with us their favorite bill for the week, whether it be financial or physical, per person whatever. We're open, we're flexible. We would love to hear yours.
Yeah. Yeah, So it can be like finding a bill right or like find getting me money, anything.
Literally we leave it vague for that reason.
It could be anything.
Yeah great, Well yeah, I did have a funny thing happened this week where there's a dog walking app called Wag and I don't do a lot of dog walking these days with Wag, but the other day I got him thing saying that there was a dog available to walk, and it like showed the address as like literally my house, and I was like what. I was like, it was like it was like it had a circle and I
was like, on my house. I was like, huh what, Like this must be like a neighbor So I was like, I'm just gonna do It's a twenty minute walk for it was paying twelve bucks. I was like, I'll go for a walk with this dog. And it was for a house just like a block over. So I went over there and walk this dog around the neighborhood and made myself twelve bucks.
I love you like your side hustling. How like you were a lawyer and now you like do all these side hustles and love your life and ride your e bike. You are truly living the dream. I believe. I believe that.
So that's awesome, so fun, what a great bill that the twelve dollars. It probably wasn't even just about that, but I'm kind of hearing like I'll get out for a walk too.
Like they's kind of said to me.
And then the dream and I'm helping somebody out and then I'm, you know, getting to buy a burrita later.
I got to peek inside their house too, you know, looks like.
Not be underrated. Yeah, that is.
A big parton that's a nice kidchen.
If you all listening, have a bill that you want to submit, if it's about a side hustle, if it's about making just a little bit of money but getting to peep on your neighbor, or if it's about making a lot of money and maybe no peeps, or your name is Bill and people are peeping on you. Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill cannot wait to hear it.
And now it's time for.
The all right, this is when we will all answer, where's the best place you have ever rode a bike or e bike? Either in or or two? Kevin, you can go first, the best place, Yeah, either you've you've rode around.
Or rode to Yeah, well you know, so there's an event here in Minnesota called Campfi. The guy holds it every or round fall or whatever right to end of the summer. And I have gone twice, and I've spoken there about e bikes too, and I always bike out there. It's like forty miles going out there.
Wow.
Yeah, I bring two batteries just in case I run out. Usually I don't need to switch batteries, but I'll just bring a second one just in case. And this ride is actually really good because even this is like example
of ride bridgs. You wouldn't think it's possible because it's so far, but there's a bike path that goes all the way out there, so I can go from literally my house to this place that's forty miles way way out in the countryside, and I never have to even interact with traffic the whole way.
WHOA, when we went to Campfi, you would not have wanted to. There is no bike path in Gainesville for that for that one.
The highways are the toughest part too with that kind of thing, but uctually there's a way around it.
And I can't believe there are not more people in the financial independence community e biking after that.
I know, I think I convinced some people, but I always am trying to convince as many people as I can.
I hope people are convinced after hearing this episode.
You are helping the convince Ope first.
Yeuh okay for me, I so I have only done maybe twenty yards on an e bike in my life. It was an exhilarating experience. But so I will talk about My favorite bike ride was on the Panel's trail. We did twenty miles, like, oh, well, I don't know if that was my favorite.
Now.
We also did okay, I've changed it mid answer. It was a twenty mile ride through Saint Petersburg again on the Panel's trail, but then we transferred to the Skyway trail midpoint and we went down to like one of the most southern parts of Penelas County, and we got to see we were at the water, We got to see the Skyway Bridge, We got to like eat our lunch on this fishing pier, and we rode with our friends Jess and Joseph, and we got away from Kai
for a day. We didn't have Atlas at that point, but it was just a magical bike ride with friends. I loved that one. That one's my favorite.
I love how when you get away from your children you choose to run or bike.
It's like, you've got childcare, what are you gonna do with it? I'm gonna run half marathon.
I'm gonna ride my bike twenty twenty miles both ways.
Oh yeah. The other story was also we got we got rid of Kai. We got Kai started like daycare, I think, and we Travis had a day off and we did twenty miles from I think dunned into Tarpin Springs, So that was ten miles there and then ten miles back.
Good on you. I don't have kids, but I feel like my answer when I've got childcare would be nap. I am going to take a nap.
Our art. So my mom is watching the kids this weekend, and Travis and I are like, can you actually watch them? Not at our house because we would like to be at our house without the kids. I think we just want to lay down, stuff done. Yeah, Travis wants to play video games and work on his other He bought another I left for a book signing and four hours later he calls. He's like, I bought this vintage, like nineteen eighties Honda motorcycle that's worth like two thousand dollars for five through.
It is really cool, but you need to stop or he needs to stop by two wheeled vehicles.
So he wants to work on his bike and play video games. And I'm like, good on ya, I want that for you.
Okay for me.
Most recent thing that comes to mind, we rented bikes in Portugal and rode from the city to the beach and that was idyllic, just to be able to take in so much more than you would buy car, but be able to get further than we would have on foot.
Biking is the radical middle any bikes.
And we were with friends, very much the radical middle.
It was Eric and I and then two friends and we were just doing our little bells back and forth and stopping along the way to take pictures and just riding to the beach all leisurely.
It was awesome, good memories.
Oh my gosh, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find more from you? If you've convinced them e bikes are the way?
Yeah. You can check out my blog financialpanther dot com and I also have a YouTube channel, financial Panther that I film myself kind of biking around doing food deliveries and stuff. And I'm trying to do more content of biking around with like my family and stuff to show people how it's done. But those are the two places to check me out on.
That's awesome. Got to see you loading up Costco on that bike.
Yes, so we need we need more Costco content.
Oh yeah, my last video I made was me taking my Christmas tree back to my house on a cargo bik.
Okay, checking out YouTube sold now sold Financial Panther on YouTube and Instagram and dot com.
Thanks for being here, Kevin.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, we were definitely asking questions off the cuff here too, because it was so interesting to hear all of these
new things. And I'm just I'm so glad that we got to share Kevin with you and share e bikes with you, because I hope maybe it just inspires you to get an e bike and you commit to writing it in summer, spring and fall and you don't do it in the winter, or maybe you're in Florida like us and you choose to do it fall, winter, spring and not in the summer rainy season, or you just choose to commit to it every day, every day except on days when it's raining, and then you find an
alter alternative, Like getting creative is what's going to save you more money than just trying to like negotiate your your insurance down. Honestly, it's a good tip, it can help you, but like getting creative, it's what's really gonna drastically move the needle if you need that needle moved.
And maybe it's not for forever, but even for a
time if we're working towards certain financial goals. I did the math too, just for us personally, and Kevin is dead on with the amount that owning a vehicle costs year over year, and of course if you factor in a car payment to that, then until the car is paid off, you're looking at an average of, you know, seventeen fifteen to seventeen thousand dollars annually paid to a vehicle in all kind of forms year over year until the car is paid off, and then it's dropping you
to about maybe ten thousand dollars a year. But it's not nothing. I think we approach car ownership like, well, you have a car, and transportation is covered, and that's just not true. Even once you own the car, there's
still a good amount of costs associated with it. So wherever we can think about even just decreasing the amount of cars that we own, driving our cars less Yeah, certainly considering e biking, and maybe even when we're considering where we're buying our next house, how much might we be able to consider how close are we to public transportation or how bikeable is the city? How feasible might it be for me to live closer to my work so that we don't have to have two vehicles? Like
that conversation can come into play. I think sometimes we'll say I'm going to move outside the city so that it's less expensive, but run the numbers on then what you'll pay for transportation and consider, okay, well what is the actual trade off here? Yeah?
What if I lived in the city close to the things I want to be too and opted for an e bike? How much easier is it to then get around in the city? How much more accessible? And I loved what he said about a lot of the times that we are driving too far for things. When we are forced to stay in a closer proximity, then we're forced to get to know people in that proximity, and I think that is something that is highly undervalued. Agreed,
So thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating, review comment on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It really does help. If you have read our book by What you Love without Going Broke and you haven't left a rating or neview for that on Amazon or Goodreads, we would also hope we would ask that you do that, kind of like Bonnie Meadows did. Gave us five stars. They say the best money book ever, especially if you tried all other tactics. I have been
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this book does. This book helps you think about money in a way you have never thought of before, gives you great tools about how to think about money and helps you define how to identify what your money says you love and what you actually say that you love. Then it helps me figure out how to spend money on the things I love and not on the things right in front of my face. If you love the podcast Frugal Friends, you will love the book even more.
WHOA, thank you even more. That's amazing.
Thanks for such a beautiful review, so kind and encouraging and helpful to other people who might be thinking about reading the book. So if you've not picked up the book, please do so. We really do believe in it. Yeah, by what you love book dot com. There's even instructions.
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Yay, thanks for listening everybody.
Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Yeah.
It's making me want to get on my bike more, just even my regular bike. Although I do love scootering around, I.
Have horrible balance. I've stated this, but I can do long bike rides on trails. What makes me nervous is sidewalks and roads with cars. So it encouraged me that Kevin was not like, oh, you'll just get batter and you'll get over it. He's like, no, you when you're in bike mode like mindset instead of car mindset, then you look for the roads and you find the roads more easily that are good for biking.
Yeah.
Yeah, I am curious to like map out different paths to some of the places that we go.
H yeah, it would be interesting. And now that we have an e bike in our home, so if you wanted to try one out, come over.
Yeah.
So it's it's a thrill.
I bet well. I mean I love our scooter.
That's super fun and like we can keep up with the cars in the city, like we kind of more ride it like a motorcycle. Like you can't take the bike paths with the scooter, but I prefer to do that when I'm riding with Eric. I've ridden alone a couple of times, but it does feel it's it is risky. It is like I'm riding a motorcycle around and so I.
Wouldn't like to ride a scooter or motorcycle on the road, but I would ride a bike on a bike path.
Yeah.
Yeah, that feels better to me. And you can ride e bikes on bike paths.
Yeah that is cool.
Yeah, there you go I think it's the radical middle.
Okay, let's do it. Get on our bike.