Around one in ten of those surveyed in the United States as part of the Statista Global Consumer Survey said they had paid for a gym membership in the 12 months prior to the survey. How many have actually used the service regularly within the last year is another question, of course.
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French people are even less enthusiastic about the gym, though, where only four percent of survey participants say they have invested in a gym membership. By comparison, Indians appear to be real fitness freaks.
Among all respondents in the South Asian country, 24 percent said they had paid for a fitness subscription in the 12 months prior to the survey. In South Africa (21 percent) and China (20 percent), too, around one-fifth of respondents are members of one of the many studios.
The fact that the proportion of fitness subscribers is low in some countries is certainly also an effect of Covid-19 and related restrictions. Worldwide, the fitness industry has suffered greatly from the effects of the pandemic.
This article originally appeared on Statista.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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These 2 Western cities are the most financially fit in the US
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Financial fitness has little or nothing to do with how much you spend on gym memberships each month. But there are plenty of ways to measure financial fitness, from monitoring personal bill-paying activity to tracking cost of living regionally.
LendingTree researchers devised financial fitness scores for the 100 largest U.S. metros, taking into account five individual factors (such as the percentage of income that goes toward owning or renting a home and the percentage of people with at least one maxed-out credit card) and four community factors (such as unemployment rates and real personal income).
Two Utah metros come out at the top, while the two largest metros in the U.S. come out at the bottom. Here’s what else researchers learned.
AaronAmat / istockphoto
- Utah steals the show when it comes to financial fitness, with Ogden and Provo taking the first and second spots with final scores of 81.4 and 77.5, respectively. Salt Lake City makes a respectable showing at No. 8 with a final score of 70.2.
- Madison, Wisconsin rounds out the top three, with a final score of 76.5. Madison has one of the lowest unemployment rates — 3.5% — across the 100 metros examined.
- The two largest metros in the U.S. — New York and Los Angeles — finish at the bottom, with financial fitness scores of 32.5 and 34.6, respectively.
- McAllen, Texas, comes in third to last with a final score of 36.3. Despite being the cheapest place to live, this Texas metro has the lowest real personal income and the highest unemployment rate, so it’s no surprise that personal struggles with bills and debt follow.
Deposit Photos
LendingTree analysts scored the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across two categories — community score and individual score — to determine the overall financial fitness of those MSAs.
These two scores were averaged to create a final score, upon which the MSAs were ranked from highest to lowest. The highest possible scores for each category and the final score was 100, and the lowest was zero.
Each metric was first scored according to its relation to the best value (100 points) and the worst value (0 points) among the metros. These metrics were then averaged according to the weights below to create the category score. The final score was equally weighted between the community and individual scores.
In addition to publicly available sources, researchers reviewed more than 300,000 anonymized credit reports of LendingTree app users. The composite metrics represent the latest data available.
nortonrsx/ istockphoto
- Final Score: 59
- Community Score: 56.6
- Individual Score: 61.4
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 59
- Community Score: 55.9
- Individual Score: 62
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 59.2
- Community Score: 51.6
- Individual Score: 66.8
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 59.7
- Community Score: 58.3
- Individual Score: 61.1
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 59.7
- Community Score: 59.6
- Individual Score: 59.8
Arrangements-Photography/istockphoto
- Final Score: 60.7
- Community Score: 61.4
- Individual Score: 60
Kruck20 / istockphoto
- Final Score: 60.8
- Community Score: 51
- Individual Score: 70.6
tonda / istockphoto
- Final Score: 60.9
- Community Score: 49.5
- Individual Score: 72.2
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 60.9
- Community Score: 50.2
- Individual Score: 71.6
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 61
- Community Score: 52.6
- Individual Score: 69.3
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 61.2
- Community Score: 57
- Individual Score: 65.4
felixmizioznikov /istockphoto
- Final Score: 61.9
- Community Score: 56.2
- Individual Score: 67.6
BSPollard/istockphoto
- Final Score: 62.6
- Community Score: 53
- Individual Score: 72.2
aiisha5 / istockphoto
- Final Score: 62.7
- Community Score: 61.7
- Individual Score: 63.6
Johnny Warrior / istockphoto
- Final Score: 62.9
- Community Score: 59.3
- Individual Score: 66.5
istockphoto
- Final Score: 63.3
- Community Score: 62.3
- Individual Score: 64.3
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 63.3
- Community Score: 60
- Individual Score: 66.5
RoschetzkyIstockPhoto / istockphoto
- Final Score: 63.4
- Community Score: 64.8
- Individual Score: 61.9
istockphoto/Vito Palmisano
- Final Score: 63.4
- Community Score: 55.8
- Individual Score: 70.9
Kruck20 / istockphoto
- Final Score: 63.7
- Community Score: 57.3
- Individual Score: 70.1
Jacob Boomsma / istockphoto
- Final Score: 64.1
- Community Score: 63.3
- Individual Score: 64.8
©TripAdvisor
- Final Score: 64.3
- Community Score: 55.3
- Individual Score: 73.2
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 64.4
- Community Score: 56.6
- Individual Score: 72.2
Deposit Photos
- Final Score: 64.5
- Community Score: 61
- Individual Score: 68
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 64.7
- Community Score: 56.8
- Individual Score: 72.5
Sean Pavone / istockphoto
- Final Score: 64.8
- Community Score: 62.2
- Individual Score: 67.3
istockphoto/alexeys
- Final Score: 65.2
- Community Score: 60.9
- Individual Score: 69.4
Nicholas Smith / istockphoto
- Final Score: 65.5
- Community Score: 55
- Individual Score: 75.9
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 65.8
- Community Score: 61.7
- Individual Score: 69.8
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 66
- Community Score: 61.1
- Individual Score: 70.8
Deposit Photos
- Final Score: 66.1
- Community Score: 57.1
- Individual Score: 75
benkrut / istockphoto
- Final Score: 66.9
- Community Score: 60.7
- Individual Score: 73
SeanPavonePhoto / istockphoto
- Final Score: 67
- Community Score: 62.1
- Individual Score: 71.8
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 67.6
- Community Score: 58.4
- Individual Score: 76.7
KarolinaBorkowski/istockphoto
- Final Score: 67.7
- Community Score: 54.4
- Individual Score: 81
istockphoto/StellaMc
- Final Score: 68.1
- Community Score: 61.4
- Individual Score: 74.8
istockphoto
- Final Score: 68.2
- Community Score: 64
- Individual Score: 72.3
Davel5957/istockphoto
- Final Score: 69.1
- Community Score: 63
- Individual Score: 75.2
f11photo / istockphoto
- Final Score: 69.2
- Community Score: 59.8
- Individual Score: 78.5
Sean Pavone / istockphoto
- Final Score: 69.4
- Community Score: 63.5
- Individual Score: 75.3
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 69.9
- Community Score: 64.4
- Individual Score: 75.4
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 69.9
- Community Score: 61.9
- Individual Score: 77.9
aceshot / istockphoto
- Final Score: 70.2
- Community Score: 72.3
- Individual Score: 68
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 70.8
- Community Score: 69.8
- Individual Score: 71.7
dangarneau / istockphoto
- Final Score: 71.6
- Community Score: 72.5
- Individual Score: 70.6
Deposit Photos
- Final Score: 72
- Community Score: 65.1
- Individual Score: 78.8
traveler1116/istockphoto
- Final Score: 73.2
- Community Score: 64.7
- Individual Score: 81.6
Sean Pavone/istockphoto
- Final Score: 76.5
- Community Score: 73.1
- Individual Score: 79.8
DepositPhotos.com
- Final Score: 77.5
- Community Score: 75.6
- Individual Score: 79.3
DenisTangneyJr/istockphoto
- Final Score: 81.4
- Community Score: 81.8
- Individual Score: 80.9
Scott Catron from Sandy, Utah, USA
Location can certainly help you maintain financial fitness, but your personal habits will follow wherever you go, so make sure yours are helping you meet your financial goals.
Rawpixel / istockphoto
Achieving overall financial fitness often means addressing several different problem areas. Maybe you don’t have credit card debt but you struggle to keep a solid emergency savings.
“Knowing what you want most from your money is the vital first step,” LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz said. “You have to know where you want to go before you can figure out how to get there.”
Cn0ra / istockphoto
Once you’ve identified your goals, you’ll want to lay out a plan of how to achieve them.
“If you don’t know exactly how much money is coming in and going out of your household each month, it’s really tough to make a meaningful plan for your financial future,” he said.
Lyndon Stratford / istockphoto
Life can often impede on your budget, whether that means a sudden loss of income or another major unexpected expense. Financial fitness won’t stop those things from happening, but it can help mitigate the effects if you’re consistently working to improve your situation.
“Financial fitness is about good habits done over a long stretch of time,” Schulz said. “It is absolutely a marathon rather than a sprint.”
Pexels.com
You might not think taking out a personal loan can help you get out of debt, but Schulz said debt consolidation loans can work for people juggling multiple payments.
“Not only can it knock down your interest rate, it can streamline your payments,” he said. “Instead of dealing with three or four different creditors, you can consolidate them into one loan, make one single payment and simplify your financial life tremendously.”
This article
originally appeared on LendingTree.comand was
syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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Featured Image Credit: nd3000/istockphoto.
