Would you take this offer?

[disneysteve]

Your response in the other about lump sums made me think of this thread. What did you end up doing?

I think I saw that he went ahead and paid the fee. I seem to remember Steve saying that he backed off paying extra on his mortgage for a few months because of this.

Sorry. I didn't realize I had never told the end of the story.

We did not do the lifetime membership. I just figured that tying up the 20K at this point wasn't a great idea in the big picture (not that it wasn't a good opportunity, just that the rest of our finances made it not the best choice).

We did do the 3-year pre-paid dues. So between July and October, we paid 3 years worth of dues and are now paid up until July 2014. As Brian mentioned, we stopped the extra mortgage payments during that time and just the other day, I made the first extra principal payment again since June so we're right back on track. So we put up 6K instead of 20K.

[supercar]

I wouldn't do this no matter what.

Just consider lottery for example. Here you are the lottery company and they are the winner.

Would the winner prefer half paid now or annuity?

Everybody in their right mind takes whole half of it right then and there.

The reason is future value of money.

Future value - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[jadet]

I wouldn't do it...who knows what will happen after 10 years...what if they fold in 5 years? I doubt you'll get your money back.

In 2002 I paid 5 years worth of annual membership to get a lifetime membership for DVD rentals at a DVD store. They went out of business in 2007. Though I pretty much didn't lose anything in this situation...I'd be pissed off if I signed up in 2005.

[disneysteve]

a lifetime membership for DVD rentals at a DVD store.

Did it occur to you at the time that DVDs wouldn't be around forever? Just like 8 track tapes, cassettes, CDs, VHS and various other technologies that have come and gone over the years. I wonder how much they made selling lifetime memberships. At least you were lucky and broke even.