"Tis the Season to buy Exercise Equipment

For years, I have scoffed at all those people who rush out to buy exercise equipment only to find them at the goodwill store 3 months later. I have successfully become one of those people to buy exercise equipment, but I will not send it to goodwill in 3 months. Even if I never use it, it will remain in my basement slowly gathering dust so that someday when my home is unearthed in an archeology dig, they will see the ancient torture devices used by our "primitive" culture.

I've been looking for a good core builder program. I could have bought Wii fit or Jillian Michaels shred program or some other such program, but I just couldn't part with my hard earned income. I seriously considered Jillian Michaels program, but after the bad experience I had earlier in the year with her program I couldn't do it.  Here were my conditions:

1. It can't be a lifelong commitment-If it's going to work, I expect to see some results soon.
2. It can't require purchasing a meal plan that comes to my door every week and I have to take out a loan to afford.
3. It can't be something I have to go somewhere to attend. I'm not going to the gym. If I'm going to screw myself up, twist myself into a pretzel or totally screw up my back I'm going to do it in the privacy or my own home. I can blackmail the kids into giving me fake sympathy by taking away their wii privileges. My wife won't fall for blackmail, but if I screw up and injure myself when she isn't around at least I could come up with a good story to go with it. 


With those conditions set, I checked out the ultimate gym/fitness source on the internet–ebay. Of course I'm not going to fall for the infomercials and pay 3 monthly payments of $44.95 when I can go on ebay and buy it for half that.

After being outbid on various items, I found a great "buy now" offer. No worrying about being outbid and it also included free shipping–done. After I received my e-mail confirmation, I realized that maybe my great deal wasn't so great a deal...the original e-bay seller was arthur3456 or something like that. The confirmation e-mail was from a Xieng Chi and then the shipping confirmation showed a tracking number with a whole bunch of chinese characters. I'm going to say that my chances of getting it are rather slim.

Plan B: I still refuse to do the three easy payments, so I am going to trusty source number 2....craigslist. I typed in my keyword and pulled up a host of offers. I found one that had a good price, contacted the seller and picked it up the next day. I wonder what connections this guy had because he had a whole case of these programs and at $60 a piece that's a pretty good business.

In the end, I paid only $128 vs the three easy payments of $34.99...I successfully went around the system...yes!