I just picked up my first bike last night. It's a Retrospec Mantra 7 V2. 7-speed road bike with flat bars. To be completely honest, I am not entirely sure much else about it. But to be even more honest, I'm OK with that because I just want to commute with it and not really get into "cycling" as a hobby.
In the mail I've got a trailer to haul my kid around in (Nashbar), a headlight/taillight set up (Cygolite Metro 400), and a lock (Cocoweb). I think that's good for now, and in a few weeks I plan to add a bell, a small mirror, a pump and tools (I guess?), pepper spray, and potentially a rear rack, reflective tape, and fenders (but we'll see).
My goal is just to reduce my car usage down from 300 miles a week to 100 miles a week for now. Then eventually under 100. I have to commute to 2 separate suburbs each weekend, one due to shared custody of a kiddo and the other to assist my grandparents, so those are the only 2 trips I want to use my car for (ideally). That'd put me right at 80 miles a week, and I'm OK with that.
I live roughly 5 miles from work, so I think that's extremely doable. In fact, I plan to try it out this coming Friday when my light arrives. I've applied at 2 positions that are 1.5 miles away from home, so that'd be even better. Waiting to hear back on those.
The only other places I go are to the grocery store 1x a week (2 miles, will put that trailer to use I guess?), Muay Thai class (2 miles away), and occasionally a brewery or a friend's house (but not often).
If I use MMM's $1 per mile, this would really save me some money over the long term (Roughly over $225k over 10 years, using the weekly factor of 752). I recently read "Just Ride" by Grant Petersen. It's a very Mustachian book and I highly recommend it to all bike riders out there, especially new ones.