There is a beautiful shiny new mega-gym just down the street from where we live. Let me tell you, this place is just a palace. They have multiple pools, an immense weight room, and the best climbing wall setup that I have ever seen. The best part (for me) is that they have ridiculously flexible hours, open daily from 4am – midnight, and I often have difficult finding time to fit in my workouts, so this would be a huge perk.
Of course, we don’t currently have a gym membership to this chateau de sweat. While Michelle and I do both strive to lead an active, healthy lifestyle, up to this point we had opted to find ways to work out on a budget. Of course, thanks to a sweet friend pass hookup, that didn’t stop us from swinging by the gym a few weeks ago to check out everything they had to offer.
Upon arrival, we received the standard gym tour where they take you by all of the fun stuff first; the climbing wall, the pools, the gym, and all of the kids’ activities. They showed us the weight & cardio rooms and then finished up with a bang in their amazing locker rooms, which were huge and immaculate. I can’t be sure, but I think that the lockers themselves might have been made of mahogany. The best of all is that the members aren’t required to walk through the showers and past the naked old guys in order to get to the pool, which made this place far more comfortable than the local YMCA.
By the time we got back to the sales manager’s office, I was confident that this place was easily twice as nice as any gym that I had ever been to. Naturally, the price ended up being more than twice as high as any gym that I had ever been to. Of course, there was a ‘can’t miss’ special going on if we signed up right now (hint: there always is), but we smartly declined and instead took them up on their offer to try the gym out for a week to see how we liked it.
For the next few days, my wife and I went about our normal lives, looking for opportunities to sneak off to the gym. We drove the kids to Taekwondo and Cub Scouts, and helped them with their homework. On the weekends, we spent most of our limited free time cleaning around the house, and finishing up some of our ongoing DIY projects.
We planned to visit the gym on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon, but both days, other things came up. We talked about going on Monday evening, but it had been raining the few days prior and this was the only chance that I had to cut the grass. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had kids’ activities and Thursday I ended up working late. I considered going to the gym on the way into work in the mornings, but one of my co-workers went on vacation and I was drafted into taking the daily 8:00 a.m. status call. Besides, I hadn’t been sleeping well of late, and waking up any earlier than necessary felt like it would possibly cause more health problems than a morning workout would combat.
Before we knew it, the entire week-long trial period had expired, and we had not made it to the gym A SINGLE TIME. Actually, Michelle went to a class once with her friend…but still.
Looking back, this is exactly why taking advantage of “try before you buy” offers is a such a smart idea. We learned a valuable lesson from this experience. A gym membership just doesn’t fit into our lives right now, and it would be positively foolish to pay for one. Perhaps it will make more sense at a later date, especially when it once again gets cold outside, but for now– we won’t be purchasing anything.
As part of our financial education that we have undertaken the past few years, we have taken this “try before you buy” philosophy to purchases of all kinds. For example, we have purchased pieces of furniture, only to find out that we weren’t crazy about them after getting them into our home. We took them back to the store the next day. Another time, I purchased a piece of software that I thought would help us meet our goals for our online businesses. After trying the software out, I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to work for me and I emailed the manufacturer for a refund. I believe that it is ALWAYS worth your while to make sure that you only shop at places that have a good return policy, so that you can “try before you buy” with as many of your purchases as possible. In our experience, it has always worked out for the best.
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That was pretty smart! Life does get in the way, and we often don’t anticipate how. My boyfriend got a gym membership that was month-to-month so he could cancel whenever, and he started off strong, and then he stopped going (as I had predicted =)). Thankfully we have a tiny gym in our apartment complex that he can now use. Stores with great return policies are the best.
i would never sign into a long-term contract with a gym. it is just to much money, and you never know how long a given motivational kick will last.
the problem is that many month-to-month plans have a large sign-up fee up front.
The downside of trying something that nice is you might get hooked and feel depressed if you have to pass on it. 🙂 But yeah as you could see, that kind of thing just wouldn’t fit into your life. I know people who belong to equinox which is between 110 and 134 per month, who haven’t gone in months. It would be like throwing that money in the trash. I don’t get why they just don’t quit. Crazy!
I have heard that this very scenario is how most gyms make money; people that never actually use the facilities.
If everyone who paid for gym membership actually showed up, they wouldn’t even have close to the required amount of equipment.
I’m not sure what brand of gym it was that you went to – perhaps it wasn’t a chain – but it sounds nicer than even the “nice” gyms in the Twin Cities that I know about. It sounds like a place my wife and I would spend a considerable amount of time at. We go to Planet fitness and pay only $20/month, each, and they have all the equipment we’d want. The locker room is a bit on the small size considering how many use it, but it works for the price.
I’ve often wondered how people with kids find time to work out. I have enough trouble as it is, and I’m only married at this point (not even a dog!). I’m glad you passed up on the membership. I’m sure a lot of people sign up and never go.
It is a “Lifetime Fitness”.. I believe it is a national chain.
I agree. You should try before you buy because regrets always came at last.
It’s nice if you can avoid that whole regret cycle altogether!
We had been going to a really inexpensive gym called Work out World (WOW) that was $20 a month – it’s much like the planet fitness that DC goes to in the Twin Cities (did you know we only live like an hour apart??). Last Summer we got a summer membership to the “expensive” gym in town. It’s really nice, but quite frankly there’s nothing that I do at that gym that I couldn’t do at the $20 a month gym. yes, there’s basketball, a pool (which is what the rest of my family uses it for in the summer), racquetball, and all kinds of other amenities….of which I use none of. I agreed to the expensive gym as motivation for the rest of my family to go. If they aren’t going regularly by the time our membership is up this fall, it’s back to the cheap gym. Of course, with the time I spend at the gym it’s probably still worth the price….I don’t miss many days. 🙂
No doubt you are doing better than me in our little challenge from earlier this year 🙁
I agree with you Travis. If working out is the only concern, you can get everthing you need at the cheaper options. I believe the thought is that you will be more MOTIVATED to go, if you have a membership at the nicer place.
We’ve had a gym membership before and we were terrible about getting there. Having kids makes it so hard! I hate how they want a one-year contract too. If I were ever to join a gym again, I would choose one of the cheap month-to-month ones!
Yeah.. Our schedule makes it quite difficult, indeed.
We may look at signing up somewhere (perhaps not the Palace mentioned in this article) when the weather gets cold and crappy.
I had a week trial pass to my crunch and I went once. It doesn’t matter how fancy the gym is, it’s how much you use it that will make it worthwhile.
Indeed..
I hope they don’t keep get records so that we can go and get another free pass later this year when the kids activities have died down a bit.
I love taking advantage of the try-before-you buy trials at gyms. Not only is it a great way to try out a new gym, but it also helps you figure out if you can really fit this type of membership into your real life.
You just got me thinking, Lisa.
Perhaps we could just rotate through all of the gyms in town, using a free membership at all of them! 🙂
That’s totally doable!
You did the right thing by getting the one week free trial and seeing how it really doesn’t fit into your life at the moment. I used to be a member at the local gym in Montreal and I did go 3-4x/week but when I moved to NYC I decided to hold off until I got settled and then decide if my home work-outs can do the trick. So far, so good!
Im with you there… In the summer, we generally are able to stay fairly active. Between the pool, walks around the neighborhood, to going to the park and other places.. We can stay pretty busy.
How I wish we have a try before you buy that offers in the gyms in our place. Most of the gyms have a one year contract and whether you like it or not you need to complete it, or else your money will just get wasted.
Wow.. Yeah, that is pretty nutty. I bet if you asked them that they would let you have a “trial period” to decide.
I’m completely on board with this post. Recently an LA Fitness invaded our town (swimming pool, sauna, etc) you’d better believe everyone and their mom was there during the first month. Yet I’ve never even been inside the place I know better than to fall for the new gym game. Lately, when I pass the location (at any hour) there are less than 10 cars in the parking lot seems as if the newness has worn off. Too bad for all the member they are now stuck with 8 more months of paying a non refundable $100/month for a membership they probably aren’t even using! To me gym memberships are like cable television… why pay top dollar for something that for 8hrs of the day you aren’t even using?