Looking to join a gym and get life insurance to halve the cost. Anyone using offers like this? What’s the catch?

Looks like insurance starts at a tenner. Is there a minimum amount you need to insure for or something?

I get Vitality through work but haven’t needed to use it. Wife is going to move her Virgin Active membership to it though – it’s half price flexible membership.

Also get 50% off (rrp) a Garmin (Edge Touring Plus, 520, 810) and if you buy a bike from Evans you get £250 cashback as long as it’s over £500 – that goes up if you get higher status from collecting their points.

Wow! Almost like it pays for itself (using manlogic).

I’m going to have to get it privately seeing as I’ve not got life cover. I was hoping to kill 2 birds with one stone.

How well does the point collecting work? I’ve had a look at their site and it vaguely says “use your Garmin”. Do you just upload your GPX files post-activity to it, or do they do something smart with your Garmin Connect profile?

I’ve actually never bothered 😕 When I joined a couple of years ago it was all too much faff, they lots of new ways to get them now.

Measuring calories burned (selected Garmin devices only) Activity Tracking
All adults can earn 5 points for completing 30 minutes of physical activity and burning 150 kcals at a rate of at least 300 kcal per hour, 10 points for burning 300 kcals at a rate of at least 600 kcal per hour, or 10 points for completing 60 minutes of physical activity and burning 300 kcals at a rate of at least 300kcal per hour.

No obvious way to upload, I suspect it needs to be linked to your Garmin Connect account.

You just link your Garmin Connect account and it recognises your activities. You need to use a HRM to get the points for shorter activities.

You can also get discounted National Trust membership with it

Is the life (death) insurance the same as the health insurance simon_g has? These are two very different things. I have the same Vitality health cover with partner benefits. This is a private health scheme rather than life cover.

Some benefits you have to clock up ‘health’ points for – ie 9 points a week to get free cinema tickets. I’ve got an app on my phone which tracks activity (walking/cycling/running). Its not the most accurate, but easy and syncs with Vitality to record my points. Parkruns also sync.

To get the big points and better rewards (like the Evans discount) you have to have regular health checks and prove that you are losing weight / getting fitter.

Its all part of their plan to reduce the risk of you making a claim on the health cover.

I’ve never logged anything and have “bronze” status which got me the £250 Evans discount (off a sale bike too). You just submit the receipt and get it via bank transfer quarterly.

It goes up to £500 cashback off a £1000+ bike if you’re keen enough to get to platinum.

You need to add something called “Vitality Optimiser” to qualify for the partner benefits. The health checks put me off a bit if weight is the only measure they’re using to determine health. At my height and weight there’s nothing to lose really!

The main motivator was the half price gym membership. They’re not that much more than alternative providers. Also, I commute to work a few days a week, work out 4 days a week (home gym) and do a few Parkruns a year too. Seems ideal to get the discounts, but I’m not sure how they track all that info without it becoming a massive chore for me.

Does it take them long to assign you a “status”? You could just bang out the activities for x length of time and then get the discount surely?

Does it take them long to assign you a “status”?

You complete a questionnaire, takes about 10 mins. The detail stuff about blood pressure, sugar levels etc you can answer ‘dont know’. They ask about height, weight, exercise levels, stress, and whether you are happy as you are. Then give you a bronze rating to start and some targets. All very simple really.

Then download the Moves app onto your phone, sync with Vitality and its all done for you. I find the app quite handy just tracking how embarrassingly few steps I do each day, its definitely made me think and I get out walking most lunchtimes and evenings now at least to just move a bit.

Edit – most of the discounts you get staright away, but you can get extra/bigger discounts on some things with silver/gold etc.

I have the wjole family covered, the free cinema tickets for all of us each week is quite handy, especially over the winter!

Ah, the points are cumulative over the year! So even if I hit 40 points a week for 52 weeks (yeah, sure) then I’d only get 2080 points which just about gets me into Silver. There’s no way to get to “Gold” points without going to Weight Watchers (which is frankly pointless if you’re not someone who struggles with their weight in the traditional sense).

I’ve been paying a bit more attention to it and linked with my Garmin Connect now.

You can get another 1000 points a year if you get health screenings/assessments done and are a non-smoker. I think if you have a spouse on the same policy you share the points total too because mine reckons there’s 4160 available for activities.