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So I moved recently and now I live like a 2 hour drive away from work. As part of my goal to level up my life.. I would like to start taking the train. How does this level up my life? Well actually it does this in 3 ways. *Saves money *Instead of spending 3-4 hours driving each day, I spend 3 on a train where I can read *The train station is 3 miles from work. Which means I am forced to do physical activity even when I don't want to Walking takes a long time due to stoplights and a lot of traffic so I am hoping I won't be doing it for long, between my work hours and the commute it doesn't leave much time to live. I started a funding campaign to try and buy a bike. Hoping to have one soon! http://www.gofundme.com/hgajm0

This is a little long and full of numbers...hopefully enough nerds will see this that this will not be a deterrent I've been considering buying a bike for about a year (since I got my house) but know a decent one is a pretty serious investment up front and for maintenance. I like biking but know that I won't do it much other than to ride to the train station so I'm wondering if it's worth it. I'm only considering financially though I fully acknowledge there are environmental, physical fitness and other benefits to biking vs. driving. Here's my situation: There are 3 train stations near my house. Station #1: 2.5miles from house and has bike racks Station #2: 3.8miles from house and has $4 parking Station #3: 6.2miles from house and has free parking I really never go to station #2 because it's so expensive to park. Assuming 6.2miles to station #3 each way, 27mpg and $3.80/gallon for gas, it costs me $1.75 a day to go to station #3. Because of the distance difference, I would leave the house about the same time whether I bike to station 1 or drive to station 3. Assuming I ride an average of 4x a week, 26 weeks out of the year due to weather, I could save approx $7 per week or $181 per year. So...is it worth it? I'm out of the loop on how much a decent bike costs since my last one was from Target after a bad experience buying a used bike (pedal came flying off). So factoring in up front cost, yearly maintenance and how long a bike is expected to last, are the savings worth the cost? Bike brands and suggested "look for this" or "watch out for this" are welcome. I'm not a fan of street bikes because we have a lot of pot holes and I have a tendency to drop off curbs...plus a mountain bike means I can ride the trails if I decide to. I don't need anything super fancy, just something solid. I'll be checking out a few local shops but have no idea walking in if they're overpriced or not and which features are useful/useless to me. Any help is much appreciated