Q: ive visited two gyms that are local to me, both of them are full of posers. is it ok to train at home or is the equipment you can buy inferior to gym stuff? thanks in advance mike.

A: Gyms have the same people as does real life :) So, yes, you'll find plenty of posers. But if you think about it, why does it matter? You're not there to look at them, to listen to them, or to be annoyed by them. You are there for only one reason only: to give your all and have the best workout possible for yourself. Unless they are actively hogging all the equipment (which does happen sometimes unfortunately), you shouldn't care about the one way or another.

Having said that, I certainly understand why you may prefer to work out at home. Good news is that yes, you definitely can have a pretty darn good workout at home with not too much equipment to buy. What you will need at the minimum is a bunch of dumbbells like this (get all the different weights, from light to very heavy for the different exercises), a chinup bar, and an adjustible flat-to-incline bench (like this). A good bench will run you around $100-150 (get a sturdy one), a chinup bar will be cheap, maybe $15, and each pair of dumbbells (plain hex dumbbells are perfectly fine) will be from $10 to $30 or thereabouts.

Obviously with this equipment you'll be substituting all barbell exercises with dumbbell ones. For bench press it's almost no loss at all. For deadlift dumbbells will test your grip more than a barbell which is probably a good thing (and you can always get wrist straps to help hold the weights, though try holding them on your own as much as you can). The squat will be the most difficult to do well with dumbbells. You'll have a tendency to 'deadlift' the dumbbells instead of standing up properly in the lift phase of the squat. If you can be mindful of that and, again, hang on to the dumbbells, then the squats will be OK with dumbbells as well.

Alternatively you can splurge and purchase a full-blown 'power cage' with a barbell and weights which will allow you to do regular squats, deadlifts, pullups/chinups, and possibly even barbell bench press. A power cage looks like this (I'm not endorsing any of the specific products in the photos, just using them for illustration).