How can I save money on a gym / fitness membership? New Year's Resolution is to get in shape - but on the cheap!
Shop around for Gym January is a great time to look because that's when most people join and the gyms are competing for your business.  Also, look beyond the monthly dues.  Many gyms will give free personal training sessions when you sign up - a necessity if you are serious about getting in shape! My gym offered a one time fee for 3 years.  It cost around $600 which comes out to under $17 a month. Not bad for a new modern state of the art gym. If you're determined to save money, find ways to integrate exercise into your daily routine and don't join a gym at all. This makes it more likely you'll keep it up if it is a natural part of your day. You could set aside half the money you would spend on the gym towards some of the options below. I know it's not always practical, especially in the winter, but here are a few things you could do.  One of the other answers makes a good point. Gym membership can be cost effective if you go regularly, but don't kid yourself that you'll suddenly go 5 times a week every week if you've not done much regular exercise.  If you are determined to join a gym, here are a few other things to consider. Try a gym for a month before you sign up on any contracts.  This will also give you time to figure out if you are the type who can stick with a schedule to workout on regular basis.  Community centres are cost effective and offer pretty good facilities.  They have monthly plans as well so no long term committments. Find a physical activity or programme that interests you.  Memberships only have real value if you use them.  Consider learning a martial art like karate, aikido, kung fu, tai kwan do, judo, tai chi chuan. :-)   Even yoga is a good form of exercise. Many of these are offered at local community centres if you just want to try it out without worrying about the cost initially.  Use this to gauge your interest before considering more advanced clubs.  One advantage later on if you stay with it long enough - some places will compensate you for being a junior or even associate instructor. Regardless of whether this is your interest or if the gym membership is more to your liking real value is achieved if you have a good routine and interest in your physical fitness activity.  It also helps to have a workout buddy or partner.  They will help motivate you to try even when you don't feel like working out. The gym I used to use was around £35-40 a month, its quite a big whack but if you think about it; its pretty good value for money. That includes gym use, swimming pool use, and most classes Paying for a gym session is around £6 a go, so if you do that 3 times a week, then make use of the other facilities like swimming at the weekends, maybe a few classes on the nights your not at the gym it does work out ok As for deals, my one used to do family membership deals, and I think things like referring a friend gives you money off etc. They will probably also put on some deals in January since lots of people want to give it a go being new year and all Look for discounts from a health insurance provider, price club, professional memberships or credit cards. That goes for a lot of things besides health memberships.  My wife is in a professional woman's association for networking at work.  A side benefit is an affiliate network they offer for discounts of lots of things, including gym memberships. I came across an article posted at Squawkfox last week.  It's particularly relevant to answering this question.  See 10 Ways to Cut Your Fitness Membership Costs.  Here's an excerpt: [...]   If you’re in the market for a   shiny new gym membership, it may be   wise to read the fine print and know   your rights before agreeing to a   fitness club contract. No one wants to   be stuck paying for a membership they   can no longer use, for whatever   reason.   But if you’re revved and ready to burn   a few calories, here are ten ways to   get fitter while saving some cash on a   fitness club or gym membership. Yay,   fitness tips!    [...] Check it out!
Saving for retirement is important. So is living within one's means. Also--wear your sunscreen every day, rain or shine, never stop going to the gym, stay the same weight you were in high school, and eat your vegetables if you want to pass for 30 when you are 50. It depends on you. If you're not an aggressive shopper and travel , you'll recoup your membership fee in hotel savings with one or two stays. Hilton brands, for example, give you a 10% discount. AARP discounts can sometimes be combined with other offers as well. From an insurance point of view, you should always shop around, but sometimes group plans like AARP's have underwriting standards that work to your advantage. "Okay. Savings-in-a-nutshell. So, take at least year's worth of rent - $30k or so, maybe more for additional expenses. That's your core emergency fund for when you lose your job or total a few cars or something. Keep it in a good savings account, maybe a CD ladder - but the point is it's liquid, and you can get it when you need it in case of emergency. Replenish it immediately after using it. You may lose a little cash to inflation, but you need liquidity to protect you from risk. It is worth it. The rest is long-term savings, probably for retirement, or possibly for a down payment on a home. A blended set of stocks and bonds is appropriate, with stocks storing most of it. If saving for retirement, you may want to put the stocks in a tax-deferred account (if only for the reduced paperwork! egads, stocks generate so much!). Having some money (especially bonds) in something like a Roth IRA or a non-tax-advantaged account is also useful as a backup emergency fund, because you can withdraw it without penalties. Take the money out of stocks gradually when you are approaching the time when you use the money. If it's closer than five years, don't use stocks; your money should be mostly-bonds when you're about to use it. (And not 30-year bonds or anything like that either. Those are sensitive to interest rates in the short term. You should have bonds that mature approximately the same time you're going to use them. Keep an eye on that if you're using bond funds, which continually roll over.) That's basically how any savings goal should work. Retirement is a little special because it's sort of like 20 years' worth of savings goals (so you don't want all your savings in bonds at the beginning), and because you can get fancy tax-deferred accounts, but otherwise it's about the same thing. College savings? Likewise. There are tools available to help you with this. An asset allocation calculator can be found from a variety of sources, including most investment firms. You can use a target-date fund for something this if you'd like automation. There are also a couple things like, say, ""Vanguard LifeStrategy funds"" (from Vanguard) which target other savings goals. You may be able to understand the way these sorts of instruments function more easily than you could other investments. You could do a decent job for yourself by just opening up an account at Vanguard, using their online tool, and pouring your money into the stuff they recommend." Track your expenses. Find out where your money is going, and target areas where you can reduce expenses. Some examples: I was spending a lot on food, buying too much packaged food, and eating out too much. So I started cooking from scratch more and eating out less. Now, even though I buy expensive organic produce, imported cheese, and grass-fed beef, I'm spending half of what I used to spend on food. It could be better. I could cut back on meat and eat out even less. I'm working on it. I was buying a ton of books and random impulsive crap off of Amazon. So I no longer let myself buy things right away. I put stuff on my wish list if I want it, and every couple of months I go on there and buy myself a couple of things off my wishlist. I usually end up realizing that some of the stuff on there isn't something I want that badly after all, so I just delete it from my wishlist. I replaced my 11-year-old Jeep SUV with an 11-year-old Saturn sedan that gets twice the gas mileage. That saves me almost $200/month in gasoline costs alone. I had cable internet through Comcast, even though I don't have a TV. So I went from a $70/month cable bill to a $35/month DSL bill, which cut my internet costs in half. I have an iPhone and my bill for that is $85/month. That's insane, with how little I talk on the phone and send text messages. Once it goes out of contract, I plan to replace it with a cheap phone, possibly a pre-paid. That should cut my phone expenses in half, or even less. I'll keep my iPhone, and just use it when wifi is available (which is almost everywhere these days). Agree wholeheartedly with the first point - keep track! It's like losing weight, the first step is to be aware of what you are doing.  It also helps to have a goal (e.g. pay for a trip to Australia, have X in my savings account), and then with each purchase ask 'what will I do with this when I go to Australia' or 'how does this help towards goal x?' Thrift stores and the like require some time searching but can be good value. If you think you need something, watch for sales too. I make it a habit at the end of every day to think about how much money I spent in total that day, being mindful of what was essential and wasn't. I know that I might have spent $20 on a haircut (essential), $40 on groceries (essential) and $30 on eating out (not essential). Then I realize that I could have just spent $60 instead of $90. This habit, combined with the general attitude that it's better to have not spent some mone than to have spent some money, has been pretty effective for me to bring down my monthly spending. I guess this requires more motivation than the other more-involved techniques given here. You have to really want to reduce your spending. I found motivation easy to come by because I was spending a lot and I'm still looking for a job, so I have no sources of income. But it's worked really well so far. The best way to save on clothes is up to you.  I have friends who save all year for two yearly shopping trips to update anything that may need updating at the time.  By allowing themselves only two trips, they control the money spent.  Bring it in cash and stop buying when you run out. On the other hand in my family we shop sales.  When we determine that we need something we wait until we find a sale.  When we see an exceptionally good sale on something we know we will need (basic work dress shoes, for example), we'll purchase it and save it until the existing item it is replacing has worn out.  Our strategy is to know what we need and buy it when the price is right.  We tend to wait on anything that isn't on sale until we can find the right item at a price we like, which sometimes means stretching the existing piece of clothing it is replacing until well after its prime. If you've got a list you're shopping from, you know what you need.  The question becomes: how will you control your spending best?  Carefully shopping sales and using coupons, or budgeting for a spree within limits? "The way I approach ""afford to lose"", is that you need to sit down and figure out the amount of money you need at different stages of your life. I can look at my current expenses and figure out what I will always roughly be paying - bills, groceries, rent/mortgage.  I can figure out when I want to retire and how much I want to live on - I generally group 401k and other retirement separately to what I want to invest. With these numbers I can figure out how much I need to save to achieve this goal. Maybe you want to purchase a house in 5 years - figure out the rough down payment and include that in your savings plan. Continue for all capital purchases that you can think you would aim for. Subtract your income from this and you have the amount of money you have greater discretion over. Subtracting current liabilities (4th of July holiday... christmas presents) and you have the amount you could ""afford to lose"". As to the asset allocation you should look at, as others have mentioned that the younger you the greater your opportunity is to recoup losses. Personally I would disagree - you should have some plan for the investment and use that goal to drive your diversification." Interesting, that makes some sense.  With Planet Fitness, my understanding is that their cost structure is slanted towards fixed costs. Whether their members come to the gym or not doesn't matter; they still have to pay rent, labor, utilities, buy equipment, etc. Those costs don't change much if people subscribe and don't show up vs. subscribe and do show up.  Moviepass seems to be almost entirely variable; their costs are buying movie tickets when people order. They would love it if people signed up and never used it, but unlike PF if people DID use it they'd be completely screwed.  It's a risky plan, but it just might work as long as people don't figure out a way to game the system (or, you know, turn out to be movie buffs). "A trick that works for some folks: ""Pay yourself first."" Have part of your paycheck put directly into an account that you promise yourself you won't touch except for some specific purpose (eg retirement). If that money is gone before it gets to your pocket, it's much less likely to be spent. US-specific: Note that if your employer offers a 401k program with matching funds, and you aren't taking advantage of that, you are leaving free money on the table. That does put an additional barrier between you and the money until you retire, too. (In other countries, look for other possible matching fundsand/or tax-advantaged savings programs; for that matter there are some other possibilities in the US, from education savings plans to discounted stock purchase that you could sell immediately for a profit. I probably should be signed up for that last...)" I've often encountered the practices you describe in the Netherlands too. This is how I deal with it. Avoid gyms with aggressive sales tactics My solution is to only sign up for a gym that does not seem to have one-on-one sales personnel and aggressive sales tactics, and even then to read the terms and conditions thoroughly. I prefer to pay them in monthly terms that I myself initiate, instead of allowing them to charge my account when they please. [1]  Avoid gyms that lack respect for their members Maybe you've struggled with the choice for a gym, because one of those 'evil' gyms is very close to home and has really excellent facilities. You may be tempted to ask for a one-off contract without the shady wording, but I advise against this.  Think about it this way: Even though regular T&C would not apply, the spirit with which they were drawn up lives on among gym personnel/management. They're simply not inclined to act in your best interest, so it's still possible to run into problems when ending your membership. In my opinion, it's better to completely avoid such places because they are not worthy of your trust. Of course this advice goes beyond gym memberships and is applicable to life in general. Hope this helps. [1] Credit Cards aren't very popular in the Netherlands, but we have a charging mechanism called 'automatic collection' which allows for arbitrary merchant-initiated charges. "There's plenty of advice out there about how to set up a budget or track your expenses or ""pay yourself first"". This is all great advice but sometimes the hardest part is just getting in the right frugal mindset. Here's a couple tricks on how I did it.  Put yourself through a ""budget fire drill"" If you've never set a budget for yourself, you don't necessarily need to do that here... just live as though you had lost your job and savings through some imaginary catastrophe and live on the bare minimum for at least a month. Treat every dollar as though you only had a few left. Clip coupons, stop dining out, eat rice and beans, bike or car pool to work... whatever means possible to cut costs. If you're really into it, you can cancel your cable/Netflix/wine of the month bills and see how much you really miss them. This exercise will get you used to resisting impulse buys and train you to live through an actual financial disaster. There's also a bit of a game element here in that you can shoot for a ""high score""... the difference between the monthly expenditures for your fire drill and the previous month.   Understand the power of compound interest. Sit down with Excel and run some numbers for how your net worth will change long term if you saved more and paid down debt sooner. It will give you some realistic sense of the power of compound interest in terms that relate to your specific situation. Start simple... pick your top 10 recent non-essential purchases and calculate how much that would be worth if you had invested that money in the stock market earning 8% over the next thirty years. Then visualize your present self sneaking up to your future self and stealing that much money right out of your own wallet.  When I did that, it really resonated with me and made me think about how every dollar I spent on something non-essential was a kick to the crotch of poor old future me." Congrats on your first real job! Save as much as your can while keeping yourself (relatively) comfortable.  As to where to put your hard earned money, first establish why you want to save the money in the first place. Money is a mean to acquire the things we want or need in your life or the lives of others. Once your goals are set, then follow this order: You're asking for a LOT. I mean, entire lives and volumes upon volumes of information is out there.  I'd recommend Benjamin Graham for finance concepts (might be a little bit dry...), *A Random Walk Down Wall Street,* by Burton Malkiel and *A Concise Guide to Macro Economics* by David Moss. Banks make money by charging fees on products and charging interest on loans. If you keep close to a $0 average balance in your account, and they aren't charging you any fees, then yes, your account is not profitable for them. That's ok. It's not costing them much to keep you as a customer, and some day you may start keeping a balance with them or apply for a loan. The bank is taking a chance that you will continue to be a loyal customer and will one day become profitable for them. Just be on the lookout for a change in their fee structure. Sometimes banks drop customers or start charging fees in cases like yours.