Building a Home Gym on a Budget

While there are budget gym memberships available, they often still cost over $100 a year, and require you having the motivation to leave the house to drive to the gym to workout. If you’re like me, this required extra lift can deter you from making the time and commitment to go. I’m a big fan of DIY and enjoy the convenience of having a home gym, especially since it saves us monthly membership fees. Building a home gym can get expensive fast if you aren’t careful (just look at what treadmills can run), but there are ways to build a home gym without a large space or big financial commitment. Below, we cover tips for building a cheap home gym on a budget.

Tips for building a cheap home gym on a budget

  • Set a budget before you begin and stick with it. It’s easy to get shiny object syndrome when shopping for gym equipment, so plan the max you’re willing to spend on purchases so you can shop intentionally.
  • Define your fitness goals. We talk about setting your financial goals as the first step on our FIRE ladder to financial freedom. The same is true on the microscopic level of finances such as budgeting for and building your home gym. What do you hope to accomplish with a home gym? My husband wanted to build muscle, including upper body strength, since he’s at that wonderful age where your muscles atrophy if you don’t work to keep them fit. I, however, am not trying to win any competitions on the monkey bars, so I don’t really give a rip about being able to do a pull up. I do, however, want to keep pace with him and his daddy-long legs on the trails. With different fitness goals, our ideal home gyms looks very different, so we’ve had to buy separate equipment for each of us.

I’m Mindy and he’s Danny, just in case anyone wasn’t sure

  • Start with one piece of fitness equipment. Pick which piece of equipment you think you’ll use the most based on your fitness goal and start withthat. This allows you to test out the concept of a home gym and make sure you’ll use it before investing in building out an entire gym. For my husband, a power tower was a logical choice to start our home gym. I started cheap and basic with a step aerobics step block. And no, I sadly didn’t buy the 90s spandex jumpsuit or headband/wristbands to complete the look. One piece, remember! A treadmill would have been another great option, and it’s what I chose as my starting point for our home gym after we moved cross country.
Dance Dancing GIFfrom Dance GIFs
  • Ditch the special wardrobe. Speaking of spandex, skip the trip to LuLuLemon. Your ratty sweatpants will get the job done my friends. There’s no dress code required at the gym, especially a home one.
  • Shop second hand. New fitness equipment can be stupid expense. One piece of equipment could easily bust your entire home gym budget, so go used to stretch your dollar. Facebook Marketplace can be a great option for second hand gym equipment. Also look into your local Nextdoor neighborhood community or see if there are any local Buy Nothing groups you can join. We cover all our recommendations for places to search below.
  • Don’t be afraid to negotiate a better price. When I’m selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace, I never offer it at the lowest price I’d be willing to take. I leave room for negotiating. Unless a seller notes that their pricing is firm, don’t be afraid to negotiate for a better price. They might not meet you at your offer, but they’ll often counter lower than the listing if they don’t agree to your pricing. Just be reasonable with your offers so you aren’t wasting your time. 
  • Set up notifications for “new” items match your interest. This might not be an available feature for all second hand shopping options, but it’s worth checking. When we were hunting for a used treadmill for our home gym, Facebook Marketplace gave me the option to see up notifications on my search for “incline treadmill.” For sites that offer free (my favorite word when bargain shopping) items, this can be your best bet at snagging one before someone else inquires.
  • Let your friends and family know what you’re looking for. Word of mouth is a great way to get leads on a job, and it’s also great for leads on bargain buys. They might not be in the middle of their spring cleaning, but they might know someone else, like a neighbor, who is. Tell them the item(s) you’re interested in so they can listen through the grapevine for you. I was able to coordinate my free(!) treadmill thanks to a friend shooting me a text that someone had put one in the Buy Nothing group we’re both members of.
  • Start with what you already have. It’s time to dust off that old yoga mat that’s been rolled up and jammed in the closet space under the stairs for the past five years. You’ve probably got an old jump rope and a few dumbbells back there next to it or hidden in the garage. Start with these and see what other household items you can multipurpose for your home gym. While I don’t care about building up beefy arms, I do want to stretch out my rounded shoulders and tight chest that I’ve gotten from being a desk jockey. Instead of buying 1 lb hand weights, my physical therapist suggested grabbing two cans from the pantry. If you’re interested in rucking but don’t have the budget to buy a ruck pack (as who does, because they’re expensive) grab your old JanSport from high school and fill it with some books or something else equally dense.
  • Build out your gym slowly. Slow and steady wins the race, my turtly friend. By building out your home gym piece by piece, you have more time to cash flow each new addition by planning for it in your monthly budget. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were Roman gladiators’ physiques. You’ll get to your goals, I promise. This also gives you time to be patient so you can wait for good deals to come up. I searched for a treadmill for four weeks before I found one I liked at a price point I was willing to pay, and it was so worth the wait.
  • Focus on key pieces you’ll consistently use. While a pimped out home gym might look great on your Instagram, you don’t need your basement to look like a Planet Fitness. Most people who go to the gym only use a few pieces of equipment regularly because again, everyone has different goals. As much as I would love to have a Stairmaster to train for the Manitou Incline, I’m not going to huff and puff up that bloody thing every day. And the reality is, it’s expensive and too big to fit in our home gym anyway. Instead, I force my husband to eat dinner in the backyard so I have to do multiple trips up and down the stairs from the pergola to the kitchen. Look at that, free Stairmaster and more room for a pylo box in the gym downstairs.
  • Prioritize price over ideal convenience. Speaking of a pylo box, I’m still on the hunt for a reasonably priced one. Call me crazy, but I’m not willing to shell over $150 for a set of three simple metal frames with a few welds. I haven’t been able to find any decent secondhand yet either. For now, I use the stairs in our house and alternate which leg is on the landing for a makeshift pylo box for my lunges and squats. It’s not ideal, but you can’t beat the price.
  • Don’t waste money on subscription fitness apps. Subscriptions are the definition of death by a million little cuts for your monthly budget, and there are all sorts of apps directed to fitness: training clubs, apps that tie into fancy treadmills, yoga classes, marathon training apps, nutrition and diet tracking, HIIT workouts, meditation apps; I’d be here all day and into tomorrow if I tried to list them all. If you need guidance as you get into a new routine, look for free alternatives. Instead of going to expensive workout classes, I utilize the workout gold mine that is YouTube. Tons of content creators have provided options if you don’t mind watching a quick ad before you get moving. Some of my favorite channels for fitness include Yoga with Adriene, REFITREV, and Jenny Ford Fitness. Just search the type of workout you’re looking for to begin.
  • Focus on versatile, cheap equipment to get started. You can often do a lot with a little. The first fitness equipment I ever purchased was a $10 yoga mat and a set of resistance bands. With the help of YouTube, I had all the makings of a yoga & pilates studio without the hefty class fees. I promise, you don’t need the Peloton, no matter what Facebook tells you. Put on some sunscreen or a hoodie and go run the block. The fresh air and sunlight will do you good and you’ll appreciate having the extra $6,000 (plus taxes) in your bank account.

A look at our home gym and recommendations for your budget gym

Our home gym has grown slightly over the years as we’ve adjusted our fitness goals. It currently includes:

  • A set of Theraband resistance bands (cheap and versatile, like we just talked about)
  • A yoga mat and set of yoga blocks (also cheap, plus you can skip the yoga blocks)
  • A set of wrist weights (one guess which of us these belong to; can also be skipped)
  • A can of coconut milk and a can of cut pineapple (nope, not even joking; I use these for light weights instead of buying dumbbells)
  • A set of adjustable dumbbells (there were several options on Facebook Marketplace, although we chatted in our cheap versus frugal article about why we opted for new ones since we had a bigger budget. You can easily get a few free weights second hand to start; these offer a lot more versatility than weight machines.)
  • A Sportsroyal power tower dip station/pull up bar (again, one guess who wanted this; there were plenty options available on FB Marketplace)
  • A Horizon Fitness T101 treadmill (we got it for free through a Buy Nothing group)
  • A weight bench (there were plenty of these on Marketplace too)
  • My tablet to watch videos on (no subscriptions here, thank you very much)

That’s it! We had a Gold’s Gym spin bike, but it wasn’t worth shipping across the country when we moved. We didn’t use it enough the past few years we owned it to justify repurchasing one out here.

An example of our budget home gym that includes resistant bands, adjustable weights, a power towel, and a weight bench.

Places to shop for second hand gym equipment

I started with shopping second hand above because it can make the biggest impact on building a home gym on a budget. If you’re new to the secondhand market, welcome! We’re glad to have you, as long as you aren’t underbidding us for equipment we want. Here are a few places (ranked by our preference) to explore when looking for used gym equipment:

We haven’t personally used the following but they’re worth exploring if you’re looking for other options:

  • Letgo
  • Craigslist
  • eBay

The final word

It doesn’t take much money or space to build a home gym on a budget if you focus on a few key pieces of inexpensive, versatile equipment instead of bulky, expensive specialty items. Build your home gym with your specific fitness goals in mind, and ramp it up slowly so you have time to not only cash flow the purchases but to make sure you actually enjoy working out and will use it.

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