Last Day – All AARP Points Will Expire Tonight at Midnight – Get Free Magazines with Your Points

Are you an AARP member? Did you take those quizzes for points and marvel at the 10,000, 20,000 or even 100,000 AARP points you racked up? And then did you look at your redemption options, shake your head and move on to something else? Yeah, me too.

Well, AARP is canning the current Rewards for Good Points program and starting a new program on Tuesday September 24, 2019. And that means you have until September 23rd at midnight EST to try to get some…. any … value out of those points.

LINK: Redeeming Rewards for Good Points  

photo: pixabay

Rewards for Good Points WILL NOT roll over to the new AARP Rewards program. Your points will do a Cinderella tonight at midnight. Cash them out now as best you can. 

Here are some basic (yucky) redemption methods:

1. There’s a long list of local deals. In most cases, you pay points to get a certain percentage off your meal or a buy-one-get-one free (such as a foot long Subway sandwich). Honestly, I could never find anything I wanted.
2. You can use points towards buying gift cards, Except, the 1,000 or so points only reduces the gift card by 10% or so, so you still have to pay $90 out of pocket for a $100 card. No thanks.
3. AARP sometimes has a good daily deal, such as a gift card for points-only, but I can never catch these deals. And the auctions are pretty craptastic as are the deals on merchandise. (Maybe that’s why they’re canning the program?)

Wow, talk about points that are impossible to redeem!

There are only two halfway decent point redemptions that I’ve found, and while not much to write home about, here they are:

1. Make a $10 donation. Donate 1,000 points and for a $10 tax-deductible donation. The limit is one. Not much, but might as well do it.
2. Free Magazines! Right now, you can order a slew of magazines for a few thousand points – and $0 dollars. I just ordered Women’s Health, Travel and Leisure and Harper’s Bazaar. I’m not even a big fan of magazines (I’m trying to declutter), but I can always bring them to work and share them with others.

And all those left over points that you couldn’t find diddly-squat to do with – –  they’ll be entered in a contest for various Visa gift cards. Good luck with that!

Do you have any other ideas?

All the best,

Kathy