Favorite Discounts and Memberships
 

I am hoping to get feedback on some of your favorite membership/savings ideas. We have been living outside the US for almost 3 years and just getting back into the swing of US trips (especially driving trips!).

So we are considering things like joining AAA (mostly for discounts versus the road or travel services) and am wondering about things like entertainment monthly subscriptions (does anybody know if you can just join on a monthly basis versus annually? Their website is not really clear about this-so I thought maybe if you have a summer trip, you can just subscribe for July for example??)

Also, does anybody have favorite hotel clubs they really like-especially for families??

thanks in advance.

Hi jpie -

I can only comment on AAA - I joined that years ago for a combination of things: the automotive help (I am a single woman who needs help changing a tire), the triptiks (great maps and directions), and the discounts. There have been some years where I've wondered if the expense was worth it (didn't use it enough), but then other years I've used it tons of times!

Would be interested in what others have to say about the Entertainment monthly (have used the Entertainment Books before and liked them).

We took a 16 day road trip to California in Sept and while planning I noticed that a lot of hotles and attractions offered AAA discounts that were worthwhile. My husband signed up (we just did the individual membership) and it was around $63. On our trip we saved more the cose to join so it was worth it. We are going to Vegas in a week and when I called hotels, nearly all of them give an additional 10% off lowest rates. If you sign up, always call hotels to find their lowest rate and then ask them if there is anything better if you have AAA. Not every AAA rate will always be the cheapest but so far we have seen the value. We purely signed up for the travel benefits but you do get free towing (for any car even if it's not yours as long as the member is in the car) and they gave us about $1,000 maps for our trip which we used. The also have some other travel services and you can book travel direct with them as well. I am pretty certain you can only join anually, not by month.

As for hotels, we signed up with Marriott and primarily stayed with them on our CA trip. I think we already have enough points to at least upgrade or get one night free.

Sorry, my grammer is off today. Meant to say that we saved more money on our CA trip than the cost to join. They gave us about 1,000 maps not $1,000 worth of maps!

Thanks all-I think you guys are right about joining AAA just for the hotel savings.........my husband just joined AARP (thank goodness I am still just shy of the minimum age) :) and many of the rates are the same as the AAA rates. However, it does look like some places only offer AAA and not AARP and I agree that the maps and triptiks are probably worth it as well and at least some of the emergency services (I notice on the basic membership the free towing distance isn't very long).

On a somewhat related topic-as a suggestion from someone I did go to Costco and buy the Microsoft software streets and trips or whatever it is called. The have a $20 rebate going so that it only costs $15.00. And at that price it is well worth it. It still isn't perfect, but a nice tool to have for road trips.

Yes-I would still love to hear form anybody who has done the entertainment subscription service.....I will go back here and do a more thorough search and also on google and see if I can find any opinions on it.