In this day and age, we're all looking for ways to save money and one intrepid Vancouverite took it upon themselves to help everyone in the process.
Konrad Kowalski was recently laid off from his job which meant he had to cut back on his spending, including ditching his gym membership.
"I still wanted to go to the gym but couldn’t really justify signing up for a long-term commitment while I am unemployed," Kowalski tells V.I.A.
Kowalski started compiling a list of gyms in Vancouver that offered free or discount trials that he could take advantage of without breaking the bank or committing to a membership.
"I had a few friends tell me it seemed like something that would be useful to a lot of people. And so, with my abundance of free time, I decided to make it something anyone in Vancouver could access," he says.
Earlier this week Kowalski posted a link to his detailed, colour-coded, categorized list, which he named Dollar Save Club, to Reddit and people immediately loved it.
'It's not the sexiest website' but it's 'practical and pretty simple to use'
"To my surprise, it got a lot of positive reactions. It felt nice to know that people actually found it useful," he recalls. "It got way more traction than I expected and close to a thousand visits in the first few days."
Kowalski made the list by combing through Google Maps for all the gyms in Metro Vancouver by neighbourhood.
"I went street by street and found gyms I didn’t even know existed. It took me about five days to search, collate the information and find a way to put it online," he says. "It’s not the sexiest website but, I think it’s practical and pretty simple to use."
Indeed, people can organize the list by neighbourhood, trial type, and workout (martial arts, pilates, yoga, crossfit, etc.). The list includes the duration of the trial, a deal overview and then a link to sign up for each.
"I am really passionate about helping people make their money go further so," says Kowalski. "I have always found personal finance to be a really interesting subject that impacts us day-to-day, whether we think about it or not."
He agrees that it's a challenging time to live in a city as expensive as Vancouver and thinks that too much of the personal finance advice is focused on telling people to cut back on drinking, going out, and doing fun things.
"I want to find ways to have both and I hope to keep sharing it with people who are interested," he says. "I have already started compiling all the Happy Hours across Vancouver neighbourhoods. So stay tuned."
