To Join a Gym or Not To Join a Gym

Brian wants to get in shape. I think it’s a great idea. I’ll support him, but I won’t go to the gym with him. We’ve tried the gym membership before. And it was tough. It was hard for us to juggle a newborn, a 1.5 yr old, school 2 nights a week, and full-time day job. So we quit.

The nice thing back then was that they had ‘free’ daycare for the kids. We could drop them off at the daycare, work out for 45 minutes. I’d pick up our daughter, we’d change and shower and jump in the pool for another hour while Brian played basketball. He’d pick up our son while we changed and off we’d go. But our dinner lacked and was LATE!  I did not like the $75 family price for the membership either- but it had daycare AND a swimming pool.

In the small town we live in Brian found a gym that doesn’t offer much- no daycare for the kids, no swimming pool, no basketball courts. But it does offer a 24 hour membership for $35 a month. A key card will let Brian exercise whenever it is convenient for him, no matter what time of day or night.

Brian signed up for his free 2 week trial membership on Wednesday night. The gym is not staffed all the time so he went Wednesday night to get the paperwork done. He woke up bright and early Thursday and worked out. He had to come back home to shower and get ready for work because the gym doesn’t have showers.

Brian didn’t go to the gym on Friday, or Saturday. Now it is almost 2 on Sunday and he’s playing video games.

I know he has more than a week to go to really put his free trial to work, I’m just wondering if I should start looking at our budget to see if we can squeeze the $35 a month in with our goals and everything else.

I wonder if we could pay our sister-in-law a monthly fee to use her Eliptical. Everyone wins then, right? If it were to be moved to their shop he wouldn’t bother anyone when he thought he needed to run over and get a work out in. AND they live really close so it isn’t like he’d be driving very far.

What do you think? Should he join the gym OR should we see if we could pay a gym fee to my in-laws?