Tip 114: Budget for a new bike

Half your savings?
Twice the monthly extra data costs on your mobile phone plan?
Fifteen times the cost of those totally sweet, ever so now brogues you just bought?
Every cent you've saved by eating two minute noodles that you actually ate only because you are too lazy to cook properly?
Every cent you'll save by not making it to old age, on account of a life-span shortened by trans-fats found in cheap noodles?

BONUS TIP: If you are bold - go large on your budget.
Take a little bit of debt to buy a bike, you'll have to work to pay it back.
Take a truly massive amount and ride around pleased as punch for a while. Then, when France and Germany suggest you should take a few austerity measures to pay it back, ride around throwing molotov cocktails at public buildings.
Complete the sequence by giving up the currency every one else uses, which will mean you never need to save again...

Tip 109: The Farmers' Market Pumpkin Emergency

Low-milage vegetables sing a siren song to the inner-urban 30-plus hipster - much like the bottom shelf of the boxed wine section cajoled their early-20s selves.
Arriving by car is a shameful act of bourgeosieism, even if it is a Subaru with cyclocross stickers / high-credibility carbon fibre product perched on it. Go by two wheels.
Remember this, however: root vegetables are peril.  Load a bunch of local carrots, spuds and a biodynamic pumpkin into your pannier, and when you cross the Elizabeth St tram tracks you're gonna hear a noise that means you've popped a screw out of your rear rack and snapped a swag of spokes.

BONUS TIP: Tweet the following: "Attack of the killer potatoes! locavorism ruined my bike!  :| "
Then hit the net to buy replacement components made in Taiwan, branded in New York, packaged in plastic and shipped by air. You don't need to tweet that.

Tip 105: Fox your bike mechanic

If you're waiting by the phone like some lovelorn 14 year old with a head full of ideas best left in songs by the Cure, and you're breathing deep sighs, and your mechanic never rings and then it's past shop closing hours and the phone rings out and you know there's a reason you couldn't fix that weird noise yourself and you are shaking with worry for your bike - that's when you know what love is.
Try to face the idea that you might lose each other. 
Cry, write some poems and draw a charcoal sketch of the wide open road to remind yourself of the good times you shared.

BONUS TIP: Then spend about six hours online considering a new bike.

Tip 85: Let your significant other dictate how many bikes you own

Once there are bikes in the bedroom and the loungeroom, and the many important differences between a cyclocross bike and a fully rigid mountain bike are something you can no longer successfully explain, you may realize there is a hidden clause: Til death do us part, except if another effing bike shows up in this house.

BONUS TIP: Steal back your independence by letting loose on cycling jerseys.

Tip 68: Disappoint a bike shop employee.

They are like Big Puppy Dogs, and the prospect of you buying a bike is like the prospect of a walk. Browsing round the shop, talking geometry and composite materials is like waving a lead and bouncing a tennis ball.
Before long they're drooling uncontrollably and bounding round, trying to sell you anything, anything - a Trek Madone? this used cruiser? a ladies' cargo recumbent?
When you walk out that door without laying down your MasterCard don't look back, or you'll see the saddest eyes in the universe.
BONUS TIP: Shop guy is no poodle push-over. He is smart like a border collie, and if you try this too often he will poo on your front lawn.