Worth the weights? Why your New Year's gym membership may be harder to quit than you know (and what to do about it)

Was 1 of your New Year’s Resolutions to get successful shape? Join the club.

According to a ForbesHealth/OnePoll survey, 48% of radical acceptable fittingness goals for the twelvemonth up (1).

If you’ve joined the wellness nine already, you whitethorn announcement it’s packed successful January, past quiets down successful February. By summer, galore members person stopped hitting the gym, but the fees are inactive hitting their slope account.

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Unfortunately, cancelling your gym rank isn’t that easy. Generally, gyms enforce inconvenient cancellation policies.

In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rolled retired a ‘click-to-cancel’ regularisation to marque it easier to cancel each sorts of memberships — including streaming services and gym memberships — online.

But it was struck down by national tribunal successful July 2025 (3). Without that ‘click-to-cancel’ rule, gyms are escaped to marque their cancellation policies inconvenient.

That’s wherefore it’s important to work the good people earlier signing a gym rank contract. If you don’t, you could extremity up sinking hundreds of dollars connected a work you don’t use.

In fact, Americans walk a corporate $397 cardinal connected unused gym memberships each year, according to a caller survey from Finder (4).

Every January, much Americans motion up with a gym. In fact, gyms motion up 12% of their caller members during the ‘New Year, caller me’ push, offering specials to get caller gym-goers successful the doorway (5).

While 43% of those with an progressive gym rank walk little than $30 per month, astir 30% walk $91 oregon much (6).

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But wrong six months of joining, astir 50% of caller members effort to discontinue their gym.

That’s erstwhile the going gets tough. Cancelling a gym rank is often easier said than done. Most gyms marque it highly hard to get retired of your contract.

Some whitethorn necessitate you to cancel successful person, via the mail, during circumstantial windows, oregon wage hefty fees to get retired of the contract.

If you simply halt paying, the gym mightiness take to instrumentality you to tiny claims tribunal (7).

Of course, galore user groups are pushing for the Trump medication to motorboat different ‘click-to-cancel’ regularisation (8). So far, determination has been nary guardant progress.