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Nine Great Discounts for the 25-and-Under Crowd

Financial-services companies often punish the young.

If you’re 25 or under, you’re likely to have a short credit history, few assets and a load of student-loan and credit-card debt. As a result, young people typically struggle to get decent rates on credit cards, mortgages, car insurance and personal loans, just to name a few.

For all the financial downers, however, we figured there had to be some rewards—some stuff specifically discounted for the 25-and-under crowd.

Here’s what we found. Please help us round this one out to an even ten–leave a comment and tell us if we’ve missed any.

1. Theater tickets: Theaters like the Round House in Washington, D.C., South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif., NYC Opera in New York City, Intiman theater in Seattle, Wa. and Washington Shakespeare Company in Arlington, Va. offer discounted tickets to people 25 and under. Tickets can be as cheap as the price of a movie. Check if your local theater does the same.

2. IYTC: The International Youth Travel Card is available to anyone under age 26—you don’t have to be a student as you do with the ISIC (International Student Identity Card), which has its own perks. The IYTC costs $22 a year and earns you discounts on flights, trains, museums, food, clothing, music, hotels and more. Check out all the discounts here (we searched USA discounts only, but you can look up IYTC benefits worldwide by selecting an individual country.)

3. Airlines: AirTran offers standby fares of $69-$89 for people willing to show up at the airport and fly only if a seat is available. Those prices are per segment (one takeoff plus one landing equals one segment) and are available to travelers between the ages of 18 and 22.

Other airlines like Luxair, Turkish Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Czech Airlines offer youth fares. The age cutoffs depend on the airline and range between 22 and 28. Before buying tickets on any airline, check if it offers something similar. If it doesn’t, ask why.

4. Credit Unions: Check out credit unions when considering where to store your cash. Patelco for example, which anyone can join, offers something called the “gr8 r8 savings” for people under 21. The savings account offers an 8% interest rate on accounts with a balance of $1,000 or less—that’s nearly double even the most generous rates that banks offer. So if you don’t have that much money, why not make what you do have grow faster?

5. HPV Vaccine: Health-insurance providers generally won’t pay for Gardisil, a new vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), except for women under 26 years old. Initially Merck, which makes the vaccine, presented a study to the Food and Drug Administration that only showed the drug’s effectiveness for women ages 9-26. The FDA and the insurance companies subsequently made decisions based on the study.

While Merck has just released a study that suggests it is, in fact, beneficial for women up to the age of 45, it will take some time for the FDA and the insurance companies to process this. For now, generally only women under the age of 26 can get insurance coverage for the vaccine.

6. Alumni Association: Tap your college alumni association for discounts. Many of them offer lower prices on social events (cheap booze and dinner!) for young alumni. You should also take a look at discounts that insurance companies, gyms and others offer to all alums — not just young ones. Ask your alumni office for a list of deals.

7. Car Rentals: Car rental companies like Avis and Dollar will often rent to people between the ages of 21 and 25 (sometimes even to 18 year olds), but they levy daily surcharges that are generally between $25 and $50, depending on the state.

Zipcar, a car-sharing company, lends cars to drivers over 21 (sometimes over 18 on certain college campuses) and doesn’t charge an age-based fee. It does, however, charge other fees— a one-time $25 application fee to become a member and a $50 annual fee. Then, there’s the $7.50 (and up) hourly fee or a $56 (and up) daily fee, whichever is cheaper.

Depending on where you live and how often you rent, car-sharing services may be cheaper overall. You should do the math, given that Zipcar doesn’t automatically ding young drivers the way Avis and others do.

8. European Trains and Hostels: Europe is far better than the U.S. in being 25-and-under friendly. In addition to youth hostels that charge as little as $10-$30 a night for young travelers, European rail lines give discounts on single trips and Eurail passes to people under 25.

9. Car Insurance: This is an area where younger people typically get truly screwed. Car insurance companies tend to charge significantly higher rates to younger drivers because they have less experience on the road (and are thus more at risk for accidents) and often have credit scores inferior to someone older.

Since companies use different formulas to determine rates, however, there are a few that end up giving less weight to risk (and thus age). Paul Moss of Insurance.com–like Orbitz but for car insurance–suggests that Geico, Progressive and SafeAuto are a bit more young-driver friendly than their competitors.

– Irina Aleksander

Photo: EdenBookshop.com