Your Gym Membership Is a Waste of Money

It’s bathing suit season again, and that means gyms are shedding dollars from their membership prices faster than we’re ditching long pants and sleeves. According to Charles Tran, founder of credit card comparison and personal finance site CreditDonkey.com, June is a good month for gym discounts, especially on daily deal sites. “I’ve been seeing discounts of about 35% to 60%,” he says. “In June, you have more negotiating power when everybody else wants to enjoy the outdoors.”

Since most gyms offer memberships to couples at a discounted rate, it might seem like joining with your partner would be the best way to score a good deal.

Weirdly, it isn’t, and you’re probably throwing money away as a result.

A new study finds that when couples sign on to do something together — start a savings account, diet, get fit and so on — their level of commitment defaults to the least-motivated member of the pair. A lot of people probably think the more conscientious partner would set a good example for and inspire their boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse, but it turns out they’re not the one wielding the primary influence in these situations.

“Self-control is essentially a social enterprise,” writes Hristina Dzhogleva, an assistant professor of marketing at Boston College and lead author of the new paper. In a series of experiments with both real couples and lab simulations, the researchers found that the people with higher self-control tend to cave and give into the more indulgent preferences of their partners in order to keep peace in the relationships.

Given that opposites attract, Dzhogleva points out, it’s likely that there are a lot of couples out there with this dynamic of mismatched motivation levels. People with more self-control have that higher level of discipline because they focus on the long-term rather than immediate gratification.

Ironically, this tendency makes them more likely to give in under pressure from their partner. For one thing, they’re thinking about preserving the relationship long-term; they also have the self-control to squelch what would make them happier in order to please their partner.

But the upshot of these good intentions is that otherwise-motivated people wind up blowing off the gym yet again for takeout and a Netflix marathon, Dzhogleva concludes. Unless both people in a couple are both motivated to hit the weights or the treadmill, neither is going to be using that couple’s membership that seemed like such a good deal at the time.

“Higher self-control individuals should be wary of partnering with low self- control individuals,” the paper says. “[It] may negate their innate advantages in pursuing long-term goals.”

Dzhogleva’s findings also hold true for personal finance activities like making a budget or splurging on a vacation, so if your sweetheart is a spendthrift, it could pay to take a close look at how your financial decisions are impacted by that relationship.