Workouts, Reading, Financial Literacy in Needham’s 2025

January 6, 2025
• As locals pursue their New Year’s resolutions, some Needham businesses and organizations are observing a spike in interest around fitness and education.

In December, Paul Romeo celebrated his 15th year running Koko FitClub, a personal training studio in Needham Heights. When January rolls around — this will be the gym’s 16th — more people sign up for and visit Koko with resolutions in mind, Romeo said.

Health and fitness are reliably common New Year’s resolutions, and Romeo said he hears old and new clients express desires to exercise regularly, lose weight or develop a strength training routine, which is growing in popularity.

Koko patrons are primarily 40 years or older, which means the gym doesn’t see a huge increase at the start of the calendar, Romeo said. He and other trainers do hear about clients’ trepidations with starting to get in shape, especially when it comes to visiting a traditional gym.

“A lot of times it’s because they’re too busy, or they just don’t know what to do, or sometimes they’re even just intimidated by the whole scene,” Romeo said. “Our whole approach is trying to find ways to respond to all those challenges and make it easier for people to just stay really consistent.”

Consistency is key, Romeo said, since almost everyone that makes a resolution will break it in a matter of weeks. His gym is running a month-long promotion and a challenge over January and through March to build a habit, he said.

Financial wellness features prominently in other resolutions. Middlesex Savings Bank launched a financial literacy program called Money Matters, in which its bankers visit schools and other local groups to teach about saving, budgeting, credit management and other topics, according to Courtney O’Regan, the bank’s senior vice president and director of marketing.

The bank recently shared an article about preparing finances into 2025.

In an email, O’Regan wrote that “financial literacy is a need in our community.”

“Middlesex Savings Bank is deeply committed to promoting financial literacy and empowering individuals to make informed financial decisions,” O’Regan wrote.

For some, fulfilling a resolution begins by checking out a book at the Needham Free Public Library. Visits and check-outs pick up in January, when the holidays are over and people look forward to a fresh start, Director Rob MacLean said. End-of-year “best of” lists also boost library visibility, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of books line their physical and digital shelves, with overall usage increasing both in person and online, MacLean said. In January 2024, patrons checked out close to 38,600 titles, which was a more than 12% uptick over the previous month. In that timeframe, the library also observed a nearly 16% bump on Libby, which stores its digital library.

The topics visitors choose to read often reflect the new goals they set, he added.

“We see much more people checking out items about health and fitness or diet, personal finance, healthy cookbooks, healthy cooking, things like that,” MacLean said. “There’s a shift from the type of non-fiction works that convey to us that there are some people who are turning to the library to help kick off their resolutions for the year.”

Over the next month, patrons will stop in seeking recommendations on their next read, as well as technological help with their new devices, including e-readers like the Kindle.

For reading-related resolutions, the NFPL participates in the Mass Center for the Book’s 2025 Reading Challenge, in which bibliophiles are encouraged to read a book that corresponds to a new theme each month. January’s challenge is to read a book published in or around the year you were born. A rotating display on the library’s second floor will be devoted to the challenge.

Over the next 12 months, MacLean said he hopes to read childhood classics he never encountered as a kid, like “Anne of Green Gables” and “The Wind and the Willows.”

For those still in search of a resolution, MacLean made his pitch for why cracking open a book is beneficial.

“Reading is a great way to develop empathy for other people or different situations. I find that immensely useful, in putting myself in other people’s shoes,” MacLean said. “But also it’s a cheap way to visit the world. The best writers really put you in the locale of where they’re writing, and I really love those titles where I feel at the end that I visited a place as well as been told a great story.”

Starting to tackle resolutions can prove daunting, but Romeo stressed that “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” — in more ways than one. Making up for the last 10 years will likely end in failure, injury, burn-out or all of the above, he said, so it’s important to be realistic.

“I think if you can come up with a plan that’s realistic, that you think you can fit with your life and can stay consistent with, that’s the key,” Romeo said. “Consistency beats intensity… any day of the week.”