We got a deal and pay $9.99 a month for Washington Sports club in Silver Spring. Gym is just ok, but price is great. We added our Au Pair to our plan.

Apparently a lot of Au Pairs work out at LA Fitness in Silver Spring and like that for the social side!

We got a deal and pay $9.99 a month for Washington Sports club in Silver Spring. Gym is just ok, but price is great. We added our Au Pair to our plan.

Apparently a lot of Au Pairs work out at LA Fitness in Silver Spring and like that for the social side!

Anonymous wrote:We've always just given our APs $90/mo to work with and anything over that they have to pay the difference. Two of them picked lifetime and that fell within the $90 and one of them picked a very expensive crossfit gym and he had to make up a nearly $100 difference in price. I just figured, there are so many gyms in the area (OTF, SoulCycle, PureBarr, ect) that they can just decide what they want to do given our contribution and go from there.

Yup, we do something similar. So many options were we live, many just a jog or walk away, I just let them pick within the budget. Our current AP goes to Orange Theory.

Anonymous wrote:We've always just given our APs $90/mo to work with and anything over that they have to pay the difference. Two of them picked lifetime and that fell within the $90 and one of them picked a very expensive crossfit gym and he had to make up a nearly $100 difference in price. I just figured, there are so many gyms in the area (OTF, SoulCycle, PureBarr, ect) that they can just decide what they want to do given our contribution and go from there.

Wow $90 a month is a lot for a gym membership, that is very nice of you to do that. All of our au pairs have used Planet Fitness, it is just $10 a month with no contract.

We've always just given our APs $90/mo to work with and anything over that they have to pay the difference. Two of them picked lifetime and that fell within the $90 and one of them picked a very expensive crossfit gym and he had to make up a nearly $100 difference in price. I just figured, there are so many gyms in the area (OTF, SoulCycle, PureBarr, ect) that they can just decide what they want to do given our contribution and go from there.

Crunch, Planet Fitness and XSport all have lower cost Month to Month.

I can add on or remove another person to my family membership easily without much added cost, but my gym is pretty basic.

Planet fitness by Silver Spring Metro and other locations. 10$/month. My AP found it and I am actually going there myself now. She paid it herself.

I don't know where you are located, but our au pairs have all used Crunch Gym - it seems very popular with au pairs and pretty inexpensive.

fwiw, we have never paid for this, but I do think it's a nice thing to offer.

Anonymous wrote:Can they get a student rate? They don’t need a student ID card?

If you explain that they’re a foreign visitor here for a year and will be taking classes soon, they’ll often accommodate with something like a student discount. If they play weird hardball, insisting it’s hundreds a month, you move on to the next gym. But this is also why I want AP to take the initiative and find out from other APs too.

Can they get a student rate? They don’t need a student ID card?

Nope. We refuse to buy a membership and have AP not actually go. We have workplace gyms, so it’s not someplace AP can come too, so they need a separate membership somewhere.

How we handle/plan: we tell AP that here’s a list of gyms in the area. If you like going with a buddy, figure out which gym is the “AP gym” for the cluster. If you go on your own, it should be a low cost $19 or less per month because you can get a student rate (no need for lifetime memberships). If we do actually get an AP who says they go to the gym frequently AND follows through with getting a membership AND goes 2-3-4 times a week, we will gift the cost to them. But this is not something we mention or promise up front.

New au pair is coming and says she works out 3-4 times per week. Was thinking of getting a cheaper gym membership. We let’s ours go to cut costs, but we premium packages. Is this something other people in DC offer? If so, affordable ideas?