On the way home from a day trip the other day my old girl and I stopped at a Whataburger for a bio break and a cold drink. When we tried to pay for the drinks the woman behind the counter told us that small drinks were free for seniors. I think my wife was a little miffed that the woman realized how old we are but I was just happy to get the discount.
Lots of places have senior discounts these days. Sometimes they promote them or at least tell you about them up front as happened to us at Whataburger but sometimes you have to ask for them. Many events and tourist attractions have senior discounts too though, again, you may have to ask for them. Recently my wife I went to a fair where they offered half price tickets to seniors. That made the price $6 apiece instead of $12. For us that's a significant savings.
Often times stores, such as Kohl's, have senior discount days. They are usually in the middle of the week when there aren't as many non-retired folks out shopping. You can usually find out about senior days by checking the store's web site or asking a cashier.
A lot of restaurants offer senior discounts, sometimes on particular items and sometimes on the entire menu. Some McDonald's have a reduced price on coffee for seniors and some provide free coffee. Some IHOPs offer a senior citizen discount across the board while others offer a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deal for seniors. The key here is that many chain restaurants are franchised so the senior deal varies between restaurants of the same chain. That often means that, in order to get that senior discount, you have to ask for it.
Many restaurants, and other businesses too, offer discounts and free meals or other perks if you join their club. These discounts are available for any member of the club regardless of age. The number of restaurants that do this is way too numerous to list here, but a couple of them are The Spicy Pickle and Mimi's Cafe. A word of caution is in order. If you join the club you will have to provide an email address at which you will receive coupons or offers for discounts. That's the good news. The bad news is that in many cases your in box will also get cluttered up with a lot of advertising email that you'd rather not receive. So it is a good idea to establish a sort of junk mail email id on google, yahoo or some other web mail system in order to receive the mail from the clubs you elect to join.
Quite a few businesses give discounts to members of AARP, so if you have an AARP membership it is a good thing to ask if the place you are doing business with gives AARP discounts. To get a list of the businesses that do give AARP discounts just check the AARP website. Another organization whose members get discounts is AAA. Check the web site for details. Of course the AAA discount is available to any member regardless of age. My wife and I have found that most hotel and motel chains offer discounts to both AARP and AAA members. By the way, many of them have senior discounts that don't require membership in AARP or AAA.
There are so many places that offer senior discounts that a slew of web sites have been established to let seniors know about them. Some of these websites require membership. For those that do, I would advise the same caution as I mentioned above. That is, use a junk mail email address when joining them, and certainly be careful that you do not reveal any personal information that you wouldn't want to be sold to some company that might inundate you with email or snail mail offers you just can refuse. Here is a partial list of sites that provide lists of senior discounts. To find more, just google “senior discounts”.
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