What does a membership in AARP give?

An enormous lot of junk mail from companies trying to hit the over-55 demographic.

A horribly ad-ridden newsletter.

A few coupons.

i was a member when I turned 55 (a dozen years ago) – never renewed. I never saw any value in the membership.

I enjoy the magazine to a certain extent, don’t really use the discounts and don’t find I get excessive junk mail. IDK if it’s worth it but it’s no biggie to me. Sidebar has a similar Q.

Nice discounts on rental cars and hotels as well as mobile phone service. Lots more. Check their website.

For me, it’s hotel discounts. Even though I have AAA, it’s one more thing that you can get a discount with and I believe using AARP gives you late checkout automatically. You should double check that but I believe it’s when you use it to make a hotel reservation, it comes with late checkout.

I bought an AARP membership when I was 50 and I couldn’t use the discount in some places, because I wasn’t old enough. Some places said they took AARP, but then there was fine print about meeting age requirements. I let my membership drop, but I think about eventually getting one again.

@jca2 The hotels don’t care how old you are?

A TREMENDOUS amount of junk mail…most of which is from them!!! It took me over 15 years after dropping my membership to even get close to very little mail from them. About every 3 months I’d receive a really sweet letter telling me that if I didn’t re up that I’d stop receiving any mail from them. I didn’t re up & the mail didn’t stop. I won’t sign back up because I don’t want to restart the junk.

Now, the benefits. They ALL sounded good, but was nothing I needed. If you travel much, you could most likely find some good deals. I was living close to most of my family & I didn’t travel very often, so I didn’t experience the benefits of traveling. With my friends, I found it to be either 100% love it…or 100% hate it situation. It has now been long enough that I don’t remember anything exceptionally wonderful about them…yet I’ll NEVER forget what a pain they were with the junk mail!!!

@JLeslie Hotels take my ID when I check in so they know I’m not 80 years old. Is that what you mean? I meet the requirements for AARP.

@jca2 I’m trying to remember where I had the problems. Maybe it was for a “senior discount” and my AARP card didn’t qualify. You only need to be 50 for AARP, that’s when I got the card.

I just looked up my next hotel reservation, which happens to be a Hilton family property, and AARP is the same price as being part of the Hilton rewards program. Basically, no benefit at that particular hotel for those dates.

My mom died in May of 2022 and they still send junk mail at least twice a month. I’m glad you asked this, as I really never understood the benefits but the hype/marketing is stellar.

I think they were honestly offering a good service when they first started. Then they got greedy & started selling their souls to the highest bidder. Now they are more like an advertisement agency for anything & everything that will pay them a commission!!! They say you need to be 50 to join, but I’ve known several 35 y/o’s that signed up just for the discounts. They used to fight with the legislature for laws that helped to protect the elderly…not so much now!!!

^^The AARP is the biggest lobby for senior Americans and their government benefits and in the top 50 lobbyists in D.C. That means they spend some serious money on their endeavors.You can’t do that on $12 memberships.

A friend was just discussing her auto insurance policy and she said that during the pandemic, she was calling around different insurance carriers to get quotes. The first best quote she got was from the insurance broker that dealt exclusively with members of our labor union ,and the second best quote she got was from AARP. I never thought of calling AARP for my car insurance but now it makes me think about it.

Another friend has her dental insurance through AARP. She told me the one she has. I never looked into it but she is a nurse and she’s pretty savvy when it comes to health insurance and also with choosing good doctors (when she says a doctor or dentist is good, they really are good).

You get a senior discount at Denny’s but turns out it only goes until 5:00 pm. At least the newsletter and magazine have articles pertinent to older folk.

I would much rather give my money to an organization fighting for LGBTQ causes, and I despise junk mail, so I’ll pass for now. I get discounts through my union and by being a Hawaii resident at things here in Hawaii.

AARP organizes a free tax service where I live. They must do tax returns for hundreds of people here, maybe thousands. It only works because people volunteer (I think they are volunteers) but someone from the organization still helps put it together.