The release of Wii Fit this week got me thinking about products and services that can meet our needs at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives. For those of you who haven’t heard of Wii Fit, it’s a peripheral for the Nintendo Wii that you stand on as you do exercises led by the accompanying game. By monitoring your weight and balance, it allows you to control your character in a wide range of activities, including Yoga, Hula-Hooping, Ski-Jumping and many more. The game gets you moving and looks to be so much fun that you don’t even realize that you’re exercising.

Certainly Wii Fit is not a replacement for a full exercise regiment, but for people who don’t exercise at all or who have a hard time getting motivated, it may be a great alternative. From a financial perspective, I thought I’d consider the cost of a Wii Fit to my gym membership. At first, I was thinking about it from the $89.99 MSRP for the Wii Fit versus my $50 per month gym membership. Such a comparison is somewhat misleading. Obviously someone who uses the gym many times a week for many different activities gets a lot more out of it than someone like me. I go to the gym a few times a month to use the pool, track, and play basketball. All of those activities are things that I can do for free in nicer weather.

So a better comparison might be the cost per hour of exercise. The gym costs me $50 per month and I spend about 10 hours per month exercising there, but mostly just in the colder months. So it basically costs me $600 ($50/month for 12 months) to get about 60 hours of exercise (10 hours/month for at most 6 “cold” months per year). So the Gym costs me $10 per hour of exercise. Assuming I buy a Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit, the total cost would be about $340 ($249.99 + $89.99) . At that cost, I would only need to play the game for 34 hours before it would be more cost efficient than my gym membership. If I already had a Wii, it would only take 9 hours before the Wii Fit was more cost effective than a Gym membership. After that, I would essentially be getting all future exercise for free. Cutting $50 a month from my budget would quickly add up.

Of course, not having either cost and doing other free exercise (walking, bike riding, swimming in the neighborhood pool) would be the most cost effective of all. I’m just trying to compare two different paid exercise costs. As I said, mainly my paid exercise costs are incurred when it’s too cold to do the free activities I enjoy. Sure I could do yoga and aerobics in front of my tv for even less, but without the motivation of the game, I probably wouldn’t be as inclined to do it regularly.

Again, diehards who get a lot more out of their Gym membership than I do may not see the value of a Wii Fit. But for many people like me, this analysis is just another reason why dumping your gym membership may be an easy decision.

Buy a Wii Fit on Amazon