Years ago, before kids, I was a gym rat. Pretty much every day of the week you would find me taking a step class or lifting weights or doing yoga. Then my free time got filled up with parental duties, and going to the gym fell out of favor with my way of life.

A few years ago, when I first joined Weight Watchers, I started going to the gym again to help with my weight loss. However, the only class that really caught my attention was a 6:00 (as in a.m.) step class, and I just couldn’t sustain that early rising for very long. So we invested in a treadmill, and I started relying on walking on it–and walking the dog–as my aerobic exercise.

Now six years later I’m looking to switch things up but without making the mistake of rejoining the gym. I say “mistake” because it would be a mistake for me. I am just not a gym person anymore. Plus, with our frugal ways, I just can’t justify spending money on a gym membership.

About the time I was looking to add something new to my workout, a friend of mine, who has been looking extremely fit lately, told me that she’d been doing “The Biggest Loser” workouts. OK, well I’d heard of the show, but they had exercise programs, too?

Well, it turns out that I can get two different “The Biggest Loser” workouts–a cardio max with trainer Bob Harper and a power sculpt with trainer Jillian Michaels, both from the show– for free from my cable provider. They are available via Exercise TV On Demand, one of Comcast’s offerings. Granted, the program I get this way is only 20 minutes long and does not include the full power sculpt workout that you would get from buying the DVD. But, man, do these workouts kick my butt. No wonder people lose so much weight on the show. (I’ll admit that I’ve actually started watching the show, too.)

The best part about Exercise TV is that I get to exercise when I want to, not based on a gym schedule, and I’m not spending any extra money to do so. Plus, not going to the gym means not driving somewhere on a regular basis–definitely good for my carbon footprint.

Understand that Exercise TV doesn’t just have these two “The Biggest Loser” workouts on it. There are at least a dozen different workout categories available, and then at least two different exercise programs within each category. With Exercise TV, you never have to join a gym–and they’re not paying me to say that. I’m just a satisfied customer.

That’s why this week I’m giving the Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval to Exercise TV. If you’re looking to get in shape or supplement your already frugal workout schedule (such as walking, which is free to do), I would recommend you check out Exercise TV.

Tonight, on NPR’s All Things Considered, there was a segment that came on about the possible second round of economic stimulus checks that could be going out to Americans when President-Elect Obama takes office. The commentator on the radio was discussing how the first round of stimulus checks didn’t work as well as hoped, because so many people used the money to pay off debt or they decided to put it in savings. Even the New York Times endorsed using your stimulus check to build up savings.

Not me. I did my part in stimulating the economy by cashing in my stimulus check for Shop Rite gift cards. That move allowed me to grocery shop for free for a couple of months.

Back to the radio program, though. Eventually, they got around to saying that this time around, the government should figure out a way to make the stimulus checks with “strings attached” to ensure that they get spent, not socked away.

And that got me thinking.

What if the government sent out economic stimulus gift cards? Then citizens would have no choice but to spend them in the retail environment.

Imagine not only what these gift cards would do to entice people to shop, but how much they would help the companies that issue gift cards? I’m thinking specifically of VISA and American Express. Would this be a win-win for both Wall Street and Main Street?

I know that in the past I haven’t showed the love to these bank-issued gift cards, but I’ve changed my opinion on them. That’s because I recently realized that, in the past, technology hadn’t caught up to bank-issued gift cards, which made them difficult to use.

These days, though, technology is on the same page as bank-issued gift cards, making them as easy to use as a credit card. You step up to the checkout counter, you swipe your card, you hit the “OK” or “Accept” button, sign the slip and you’re done. If you don’t have enough on your gift card to cover your purchase, technology knows to debit that amount first, then ask you for a second form of payment. Then you’re done.

So while I try to avoid stepping up on my political soap box here on this blog, I just have to say this: I think it would be brilliant of the Barack Obama administration–the first presidential campaign to harness and use technology to its advantage–to consider delivering the next batch of economic stimulus checks in the most technologically advanced and retail-centric way it can. And that would be in the form of gift cards.

What do you think about the idea of economic stimulus gift cards?