A great way for New York parents to save money is by joining AAA. Formerly the American Automobile Association, you don’t even need a vehicle—or even a hotel vacation—to tap into the discounts.
There are enough NYC-specific deals to more than cover the annual membership fee, which ranges from $51-129 for the first person on an account and about half that for the second.
Area discounts include:
*Movie tickets for AMC movies run $34 for four tickets, a savings of $12; Bowtie Cinemas (formerly Clearview) run $30 for four tickets, a $15 savings; Regal/UA tickets cost $41.25 for five tickets to save you $21.25; Four Showcase Cinemas tickets cost $35, a savings of $15. Of course there are caveats (tickets can’t be used during a movie’s first two weeks).
*Sporting events at the Barclays Center as well as Mets and Yankees tickets.
*Attractions like the Guggenheim Museum, Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Top of the Rock.
*Radio City Music Hall (20 percent off).
*Woodbury Commons and other outlets.
*Businesses like Hertz (up to $15 off a weekend rental) and Sprint.
For a complete list of savings, click HERE.
Another feature that I quite like is the daily identity protection service. The basic package is free for members. It offers daily monitoring and email alerts of your Experian credit report along with fraud resolution and $10,000 in identity theft insurance. For about $9 more a month (a 60 percent discount), the premium service adds monitoring of TransUnion and Equifax along with services such as child identity protection (child identity theft is a growing and frightening business in this country. For a story I wrote on the subject a few years back, click HERE).
The free car seat program is another feature I wish I’d known about back when we had no car and had to store our kids’ bulky car seats in our Manhattan shoebox apartment. AAA has a limited number of convertible car seats available to loan members for when you do take to the road. When you travel, you might also call ahead to your destination to see if you could borrow a car seat once you land. Many offices also provide seats for members.
It’s not in my nature to endorse any company, but if I were, it would be for AAA—and the money it saves us.
Hillary Chura writes the Le$$er Parenting column for New York Family. Follow her on Twitter @hillarychura for money-saving tips and advice.
