Our many memberships & how we use them

After writing a post about Monkey Joe's, it prompted me to reflect on just how many memberships we have these days and how effectively we use them. The first membership we ever got was the one for the City Museum. Their membership is pretty expensive, the lowest level is $200 a year. However, for that you get 20 admissions throughout the year (normally $12 each), 4 parking passes ($5 each) and in January & September you can take up to 5 people as often as you like for free. So, on the years that we have had a membership, I tend to take the maximum number of people I can as often as I can in the free months. By the time the month is out, the kids have had enough of the City Museum for a while and we can change to something else. Our second membership was to the Science Center. The first year we got it, they had a special offer on their 20th birthday & we got our membership for $20. With this membership, we got 10 Omnimax tickets ($8 each)and 6 parking passes ($8 each), plus unlimited admission to the Lego Mindstorm and Discovery rooms. My friend & I now share a membership to the St. Louis Zoo, primarily because her children are grown now but she still wanted to support them. Essentially, we get to share the cost ($40 each) but use the majority of the passes, which include 48 passes (worth up to $240 total) and 6 parking passes ($11 each). We have a family membership at the Maplewood Pool, which is $135 a season and allows us to go every day during the Summer. You can see how the savings can add up quickly if you utilize your membership to its maximum.

Our year pretty much consists of the City Museum in January, the Delta Dental special weekends at the zoo in February, Easter Egg hunting in March, lots of trips to the Botanical gardens in April & May, Summers at the pool, back to the City Museum in September, the zoo when it's nice in October/November and lots of holidays to get us through to the end of the year. Throw in trips to the Science Center, Money Joe's, McDonalds, etc and it makes me wonder how I have time to go to work!!!!