I'm a very avid cyclist. Kinda quietly making fun of folks who show up on (e.g.) $10,000 road bikes and then get dropped 5 miles into the ride is a whole Thing

I'm a very avid cyclist. Kinda quietly making fun of folks who show up on (e.g.) $10,000 road bikes and then get dropped 5 miles into the ride is a whole Thing. True life, I'm not sure there's a good reason for a person spending their own money to buy a new road bike that costs more than $4-5K new. You can absolutely get started for way way less (probably $1500 new retail), but once the hook sets and you decide This Is Something I Like, there are things you'll want. Carbon frames are far more comfortable to ride than aluminum. This extends to handlebars, stem, and seatpost. Lighter-weight wheels -- also carbon -- are an upgrade you can feel IMMEDIATELY. I think it has to do with rotational weight vs. static weight. Nicer wheels have nicer bearings in them, too. Electronic shifting doesn't make you faster in and of itself, but once you've used it you'll fall in love with it. Shifting is effortless, and combined brake-and-shift actions become viable in a way they aren't with mechanical shifting. My Giant was just under $5k, and that's after an upgrade or two (mostly the addition of a power meter). Do I ride with folks on $10-15k bikes? Oh yeah. MOST of them are pretty serious riders, but they're not any faster on that Pinarello than they would be on (e.g.) my bike. It's effectively jewelry at that point. (Now, the exception is if you're shaped in a way that makes off-the-shelf frames difficult. I know a couple folks -- one very well off and very short, the other decidedly middle class and VERY tall -- who got fully custom frames, but for both of them it was really the only way to get a bike that fit. For the middle-class guy, this means his bike is worth more than his car, but it's a forever-bike (titanium frame), and he's an 8-10,000 mile a year guy, so...)