Calling all Virgin Active and Planet Fitness Gym paying members: Why pay for your gym membership if you can pay for life cover instead?

Confused, well it is, a bit – so read this carefully: by paying the gym membership amount into a Discovery Life policy, you can get your gym membership (and more) for free! 
For a detailed explanation (and professional assistance) , go to the GymForLess web site:

Navigating the newly revamped web site is really easy and fast and it explains in detail the steps needed to “swop” your gym membership for life cover and Vitality membership, and gym membership.

So, to repeat: if you are not on Discovery Health, you can still benefit from the Discovery Vitality ‘world’.
You do not need to belong to Discovery Health to benefit from this deal – in fact, it’s cheaper to purchase an “entry level” life policy than to join Discovery Health.  You will also benefit from the Vitality benefits too.

The web site also explains the benefits of getting a Discovery Credit Card and their cash back schemes.

From the Gym For Less web site:
How to get the Discovery Life Insurance and the Vitality Benefit:

Step 1: Purchase a life insurance policy with Discovery Life for a minimum monthly premium of R350.

Step 2: Attach the Vitality Benefit at an additional R116 per month.

Step 3: Discovery Life and Vitality members are entitled to savings and benefits and can join either Virgin Active or Planet Fitness for a R595 once off activation fee.
Result: For only R466 per month – almost the same price as you would pay for a regular gym contract – you get:
    * Life insurance with Discovery Life.
    * An 80% saving on the monthly fees at either Virgin Active or Planet Fitness.  This saving can be increased further with a Visa DiscoveryCard. 
    * Access to the entire Discovery Vitality Benefit without being on Discovery Health!
    * Huge savings with Kulula, British Airways, Imperial Car, Southern Sun, Clicks, Ster Kinekor and many more!
    * A saving of up to 25% on over 10,000 HealthyFood™ products at Pick ‘n Pay.  Save 100’s of Rands every month!
    * Vitality members can get up to 25% of their life insurance premiums paid back to them every 5 years, tax-free! 

For more information, why not go to the Gym For Less web site, and contact them if necessary by email.  There are also online forms that you can fill in for prompt action (at bottom of the web page).
This is not a scam nor joke – it works.  See here for their Financial Services Provider details: True2Life Financial Services (Pty) Ltd details

Note: the joining fees and gym monthly payments will change in 2011 – so act before 17Dec 2010 to benefit from 2010’s scheme and prices – if you join now, then you won’t be affected by the new scheme.

How much cashback will I be losing out now that I’ll be earning 10x Discovery Miles? [Calculator]

I received another “good news” email from Discovery Card the other day… Subject = “Now MORE places to earn up to 10x more Discovery Miles”, and I read it with the good news anticipation that it called for… until I got to the last paragraph.  Lucky I was used to receiving these emails with misleading subject lines.  See here for more info: https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/credit-card-news-cashback-miles-benefit

Here’s the paragraph that “takes it away”:  “As Incredible Connection, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Reggies and The Pro Shop become Discovery Miles Multiplier partners, from 15 April, you will no longer earn cash back when shopping at these stores.”

Ok, so how much cashback hath Discovery taken away?

Well, I’m on Diamond Vitality level, so I get 20% cashbacks calculated on a maximum monthly spend of R10,000.
To do that, my total credit card bill needs to be 5x the spend, so that’s a total bill of R50,000.

That means a cashback of R2,000 taking the purchase down to R8,000.

What will that same purchase cost from 15th April 2017, ie: how much will I be losing out?
I have a platinum credit card – so the monthly miles cap is 10,000.

Well, according to my calculations, it will be R1,333 less in my pocket

Here’s the tabulated figures for someone that is on Diamond (and has been on Vitality for more than 5 years):



The miles are also capped per month… which isn’t mentioned in the email.
The cap is linked to the type of Discovery credit card that you have:
Blue or Gold cards: 5,000 miles per month… Platinum card: 10,000 miles per month.
(see here for the info’s hiding place: terms and conditions: https://www.discovery.co.za/discovery_coza/web/linked_content/pdfs/card/terms_and_conditions/discovery_miles_ts_and_cs.pdf)

As you can see there are (true to form) lots and lots of loops to jump through – and it’s not surprising that people are so “accepting” of all these changes!

To see how much you are losing out, use my handy calculator and change the 3 purple cells: DiscoveryMilesComparedToCashbackCalculator_2017.xls