1. Membership generally costs several hundred dollars a year (and often more)
2. Sometimes you have to pay a joining fee too
3. Contracts can be notoriously difficult to get out of when you want to leave
4. The atmosphere at some gyms can be intimidating
5. You have the hassle, time and cost of getting there and back

All this means that even after joining you might not use the facilities as much as you plan.

Though people shell out a lot of money to be a member, about 80% of the membership at any gym rarely use it.

Gyms even rely on this when setting the fees. If all the members turned up every week it would be chaos yet if they had to keep membership exclusive enough so that there was space for everyone the costs would be prohibitive.

In any case, there is an alternative for you if a gym membership would stretch your budget or you suspect you might be one of those paying for membership and not using it after the first few weeks.

You can create your own gym at home and get in shape for very little outlay indeed.

It might surprise you to know that for less than $100 you can buy enough equipment to cover all the main aspects of fitness : cardio, strength building and flexibility.

Although the equipment you find at the gym costs thousands of dollars (that's what you're paying for, right?)  you don't have to buy those monster machines for your home (unless you really want to and have the budget and space). 

Instead you can buy a selection of simple equipment such as a jump rope or rebounder, hand weights or fitness bands and get fit right at home with minimum fuss (and no time wasted travelling). You just need to choose a selection of items you will enjoy using and which cover the different aspects of getting in shape.

These days we have a tendency to want to buy solutions and the more money we pay the better solution we think we're getting.

But paying money to join a gym does not get you fit (despite most of us acting as if that were enough to get in shape). You have to actually take action.

And what better way is there to encourage action than to have a small selection of equipment at home you can use at any time?

In fact if you want to join a gym my advice would be to prove to yourself that you have the motivation to keep up a fitness program at home for 3 months and then join a gym after that as a reward (if you still want to).