My wife and I joined AARP several years ago. As the years have passed, we have found that the monthly bulletin, that used to have several informative articles, is now basically an advertising paper. It's full of ads for all manner of insurance companies and products that proudly proclaim that they are certified by AARP and promise specials for members. Of course, these companies have a relationship with AARP and pay a licensing premium to the organization in order to display the AARP logo on their product advertising. We also found that we received more and more advertising by mail from companies claiming a relationship with AARP. We stopped that activity by calling AARP and were directed to a portal on their website to edit what types of mailed information you receive. We declined all mailings.

Once in a while there is a good article in their monthly magazine, but the basic AARP discount on certain goods and services (10%) is not worth it from our perspective. I can get better deals searching the Internet and I can get a 10% veterans discount in the same places AARP offers. We let our membership lapse this year.

AAA gives the same or better discounts...

Their reason for being is to send letters to people like me telling them they're old enough to join.

Just to remind us we really are aging.