Should I join AARP?

[Rich Engelhardt]

Title says it all.
Since I'll be a RP pretty soon, should I join?

[Myk Rian]

Sure. Travel discounts, restaurant discounts, motel/hotel discounts, all kinds of reasons.
You even get a magazine each month.

[glenn bradley]

Just the dollar off on coffee at Denny's pays my annual membership easily.

[Jim Tobias]

Like Juan, I have not joined as I have felt that AARP is too much of a "politically oriented" organization. I would gladly join if they would stay out of(or at least be neutral) on political issues.

Jim

[Mike Null]

I joined and quit. They are a political organization but I don't think they're liberal. That wasn't my reason for quitting either way.

I think the people who run it have succumbed to greed. There is a suspicion in my mind that there is corruption throughout the executive staff and I won't support them.

[Al Wasser]

I belong but sometimes wonder. My question is: Does AARP exist to help seniors or are seniors there to help AARP. I often think it is the latter!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I will remind everyone that politics and political statements violate the Terms of Service.

That being said......in a lot of organizations that may have started out with volunteer labor, once they get "too" big, or begin to use "paid, professional" management, the tone of the organization changes and one could ask the question Al asks....does the organization exist for the members or the members exist for the organization?

[David Weaver]

That last question is one I would think about, too.

I'm nowhere near old enough for the AARP, but it seems to me that their mission has become one of pushing for intergenerational inequity, political power and organizational growth.

The first I think is a product of the two latter issues.

There may be some offshoot things they do that are good, but I generally will never join a group as large as those because when a group gets large enough that leadership is no longer beating the street and spending the majority of their time with the average members, then it becomes a group that exists for itself first and its members second (or worse).

But, still, the adversarial stance and push for intergenerational inequity regardless of the consequences really bothers me. I know this isn't going to be popular, but the generation that is hitting AARP age and has in the last 10 years has been the generation that has and will have the biggest deficit in what they've taken out of society vs. what they've put in, and the push to get more just seems to keep coming. Not that the younger generations now don't have the same behavior, but fiscal reality at some level is going to catch up with that group and they won't get away with it for their entire life.

When I see the AARP pushing bent on social security scare tactics and medicare scare tactics when the generation they're pandering to has already absorbed scads more out of society than it's put in (the numbers are there, 16T is hard to argue with, it occurs as a group, regardless of whether some individuals pay their own way - someone else will be left with the consequences of the slowly-occurring car wreck), it really irritates me.

Somewhere along the way, generations went from giving their all to make things better for the next generation to getting their all and letting the next generation figure out how to deal with the bill.

[Mike Henderson]

Advocacy organizations exist to support positions which are important to their members. The NAACP pushes positions which generally are important to black people. A farmer's organization pushes to support positions which are important to farmers, etc. I don't see anything wrong with older people banding together to support positions which are important to them. One day each of us will be old (if we're not already) and we'll want some way to influence policies that affect older people.

AARP seems to do a good job in supporting policies that affect older people, and the members get a variety of discounts from merchants who want older people's business.

Mike

[Terms like "intergenerational inequity" are just scare terms and don't have any meaning. What one person sees as just and fair, another sees as inequitable (and maybe "intergenerational inequity"). It all depends on whose ox is being gored. To properly discuss the issue, specific policies need to be discussed in a polite and rational manner.]

[David G Baker]

I once belonged to the organization but got bored with the solicitation so I quit. I now get the feeling that AARP is an insurance company or is getting a lot of funding from insurance companies. I do feel that they do offer some very good information and advice on occasion so if I felt the need for a little education in the Senior area AARP may be a good place to check out, it won't hurt you and the only pain is the membership cost which isn't really that much.

[Greg Just]

Not worth the money IMO. Seniors can get discounts at restaurants and hotels without being a member of AARP.

[David Weaver]

[Terms like "intergenerational inequity" are just scare terms and don't have any meaning. What one person sees as just and fair, another sees as inequitable (and maybe "intergenerational inequity"). It all depends on whose ox is being gored. To properly discuss the issue, specific policies need to be discussed in a polite and rational manner.]

That's actually a term that I pulled from my profession, and one that's not political (at least not within my profession). If there are scare groups who use that, it's different than the context I'm talking about.

What I'm referring to is improperly designed and priced benefits and legal financial obligations that are either pay as you go or that are funded, but done so in a way that assumes a deterministic non risk-adjusted outcome and creates or funds an obligation that is static, while comparing or funding that benefit on a non-risk-adjusted basis (i.e., taking credit for the yield on future risk immediately at the benefit grant).

What happens is that the benefits are given, locked in, and all future risk is assumed to be priced into the benefit immediately. The inequity issue comes when the risk of a different outcome or demographics places to the cost of meeting a deficit in income on a different group than the one that is guaranteed benefits. That is clear intergenerational inequity unless there is absolute certainty a future generation will continue to be able to do that. At this point, i'd say that's not the case.

We are learning quickly that there are trillions of dollars of obligations that have been granted to the generation of folks that is retiring or will be retiring in the next decade that were never properly funded. By design, the risk that continues with disbursement of those benefits is flung onto someone else. Some of those are obligations that at least from a conversational standpoint were "paid for" (but they really were not, they were only partially paid for, at best funded on a snapshot basis taking credit for future risk that would be borne by someone else) and some are pay as you go benefits.

My issue with AARP is that it aims to push that envelope as far as possible, continuing to saddle non-members with more risk and more deficit on behalf of members.

There have always been fraternal organizations or trade organizations or local organizations, etc, that have lobbied on behalf of their members, but in most cases, that lobbying was never done on the scale such that it had so much leverage on an entire financial system.

All of this is entirely outside of the scope of even discussing $16T of accumulated debt and who knows how much state and municipal debt that has afforded the same generation a lifestyle that was not one-to-one with their productivity.

As I said, it's continuing, and not exclusive to the generation of folks who are children of "the greatest generation", but the reality is that the generation that I refer to is probably the only one that will actually get away with being saddled with relatively little of the risk from the prior generation while strapping so much on the following generations. The ones who are just learning to consume more than they produce now will be a lot more likely to face the consequences.

[Frank Guerin]

When I turned 65 and went on medicare and future heath looking weak I looked at the offers AARP had for supplemental insurance and they were not even close to what I could buy from others.

[Charlie Reals]

When I turned 65 and went on medicare and future heath looking weak I looked at the offers AARP had for supplemental insurance and they were not even close to what I could buy from others.

+1 to that. I stand informed I do belong because the lmol joined. I feel about them the same as I feel about the NRA and I am a life member. The magazines are good but the groups are what they are.
We also found far better coverage elsewhere.

[Rick Potter]

Like others, I never will join because it is too political. Also agree that prices and discounts are available anywhere.

Rick Potter

[Bill Leonard]

Don't belong and never will. It is a PAC and serves it's political whims and not the members. I get the same benefits through AAA and don't have to be furious over my $$ being used for things I oppose.

[Bonnie Campbell]

To me it seems like AARP wants 'eternal' members. My husband passed away over two years ago and they STILL keep sending things in his name. Yes, I informed them more than a few times he had died. I guess next thing I get from them I'll change the address to the cemetery. Think they'll catch on then?

[Zach England]

My parents aren't even old enough to join AARP...

[Jim Becker]

I did join initially when I became eligible a few years ago, but didn't renew. I get similar "discounts" from my very long time AAA membership and that really was the only incentive to join AARP.

[Rich Engelhardt]

My parents aren't even old enough to join AARP...
Grrrrrrr......
LOL!
Thanks for that real pick me up there young fella!!!! :D

[Larry Edgerton]

Don't belong and never will. It is a PAC and serves it's political whims and not the members. I get the same benefits through AAA and don't have to be furious over my $$ being used for things I oppose.

Ditto that...

I joined and dropped them when I figured out it was a huge scam.

Larry