Friday, November 28, 2008

Massage Recliners Save Thousands on Massage Therapy

By James Knolan

It may seem like a contradiction. How do you save money when you have to spend money? Most people look at massage chairs as luxury items. They certainly are luxury items if you really do not need the massage therapy that they can provide. On the other hand, if you do need the massage therapy that they then massage chairs can save you a significant amount of money. Many people suffer from back pain or other conditions that require medical or chiropractic treatment. We all know that health care costs continue to rise. How do you save money buying a massage chair?

Let us take an example. We go to get our massage at the day spa. First, we need to call them and schedule a time. We are going to have travel time to go and come back from the massage. There is also the total time involved. Massage time is the bonus time the rest of the time can be considered the cost involved. The massage is not free, so we must pay for the time of the massage and a gratuity. If we go 3 times every month, by the end of the year we are spending thousands.

Some people need to go physical therapy or perhaps a chiropractor. The health care providers help to set you back on the right path of healing your condition. They help you get started with some basic techniques and treatments to help correct the situation. Many of these providers make use or recommend massage therapy as a compliment to your healing process. If you have started a path to recovery then these visits start to add up until you can take over on your own.

Now, if you really need massage therapy, then you have options. You can certainly see a massage therapist. A massage therapist is definitely a great way to go, when you can afford both the time and the money. However, massage chairs are another viable alternative. Massage chairs range in price from $599 to $5,999 and offer a terrific range of massage therapies and full body massages.

People like to look at sticker prices and judge massage chairs as expensive. Of course anything that costs over a thousand dollars is expensive. On the other hand, they see seventy five dollars per hour for a masseuse and think that is cheap. But let us dig into the real economics of a masseuse versus a massage chair. If we pay $75 with a gratuity of ten dollars then each hours runs us $85.00. Now a good midrange massage chair runs $3,000. Let us suppose we get a weekly massage. How many weeks until we pay for the massage chair? It will take 35 weeks. The thirty five weeks means we received 35 hours of massage therapy.

If we look over the longer run, we find that paying for the massage by the hour will buy the massage chair after 48 sessions. OK, now let us look at this from the massage chair perspective. A $3,000 massage chair is designed to last 1,000 hours. How much do we need to pay per hour of massage therapy. Let us divide $3,000 by the 1,000 machine hours and we get $3.00. That is right, with a massage chair we are paying $3.00 for an hour of massage therapy. Compare that to the $85.00 we are paying our massage therapist!

The real economics of the massage recliner is that it is a vastly superior value to traditional massage therapy. Obviously, getting a massage from a masseuse has its advantages beyond just the economics. But massage chairs also have some major advantages of availability and accessibility. Not to mention the overwhelming economic advantage. There certainly is tremendous value over the long run with a massage chair. - 14130

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