Hey MMM crowd:
It's the end of summer in my corner of the Rockies which means fancy mountain bikes are steeply discounted. I could potentially get a 2014 Santa Cruz 5010, full carbon, in the "medium" build for $2300. The bike sells for $4600 to $4800 new (note: not retail--that's actually a little discounted since "retail" in outdoors gear doesn't really exist. Probably $5K plus is the "retail" price, which would have been marked down to $4600). The bike is in awesome shape, maybe 30 days of riding, and would be tuned including anything that the fork needed.
Having watched my local market carefully, I think that bike would sell used for around $3000 next spring and maybe $2300 for the next 2 to 3 years. Arguably, buying the bike doesn't deplete my net worth since it's resale value is more than I paid for it. The bike has a reputation as a premium, best in class bike.
Potentially I could buy the expensive bike and ride it for 2-3 years and sell it for what I paid for it. I would get a "free ride" which sounds mustachian. Of course, it would bring me such joy that I would probably not sell it at all.
I'm trying to rationalize this as a mustachian deal...it's a struggle. The bike is so damn expensive. It's probably (a) not mustachian and (b) still worth it??