Paying for a gym membership and not going? Why the fee won't move you
, 3 min read
Every month you see the gym payment on your bank statement and think this month will be different. You haven't been for three. You're paying for a gym membership and not going, and on top of that you feel a bit silly about it.
You're not the only one. On Forocoches, a Spanish forum, there's a whole thread titled "Pago el gimnasio todos los meses y no voy desde hace 3" ("I pay for the gym every month and haven't been in 3"). One reply gets straight to the point: "Do you like throwing money away?"
The fee doesn't motivate you because it's already paid. Skipping today doesn't cost you a cent more. For money to move you, it has to depend on each session.
Why you pay for the gym and don't go
The fee is charged once a month. The decision to go is made every day, and on that day skipping is free. The money is gone whether you go or not.
There's even a classic study on this. In Paying Not to Go to the Gym, Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier looked at 7,752 members of US gyms over three years. Those paying more than $70 a month went 4.3 times a month on average. They were paying over $17 per visit, when a 10-visit pass would have cost them $10 a visit. On average, they missed out on saving around $600 over their membership.
The authors put it down to overconfidence: when we sign up, we think we'll go far more often than we actually do.
Work out what each visit costs
In Spain the average fee was €56.80 a month in 2025, according to 2Playbook's fitness pricing report (El mapa del pricing del fitness 2025). At that fee, each visit costs you:
| Visits a month | Price per visit |
|---|---|
| 12 (three a week) | €4.73 |
| 4 (one a week) | €14.20 |
| 1 | €56.80 |
| 0 | €56.80 for nothing |
Do the same sum with your own fee and the days you went last month. It usually hurts more than looking at the payment.
What to do if you pay for the gym and don't go
Pay for what you use. If you go once a month, check whether your gym has a multi-visit pass or day passes. It may work out cheaper while you get the habit back.
Move to a cheaper plan. In the same report, the cheapest base fee among the chains analysed was €15 a month. Paying less won't make you go more, but you'll lose less in the meantime.
Put money on each session. This is the one that changes the decision on the day. You lose the fee whether you go or not. A €5 guarantee per session is only lost if you're not at the gym on Tuesday at 19:00.
How we do it at Ultimatum
That's what Ultimatum, the app we're building, does. You choose which days and what time you'll go, leave a small guarantee for each session and prove it with a photo taken there and then at the gym. If you go, you get your money back, and if the photo check has doubts, a person on the team reviews it and nothing is charged automatically.
It isn't out yet. If you want your gym fee to stop being a donation, join the beta.