Find a place to belong

Make it easier to visit local attractions, even for a short time

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to find a place to be long. Become
a member at a local destination you enjoy, and you

(00:24):
will be able to give yourself and your family an
appealing entertainment option for even short periods of time. On
my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds, my co host
Sarah and I recently shared what we called a long
weekend with Little Kid's Survival Guide. One of the tips

(00:45):
was that being a member at a fun, local place
can make weekends easier. Not so much that you plan
a trip to the local children's museum as your big
adventure for the day, though of course you could. It's
more that being a member makes the marginal cost of
going zero. You aren't going to pay an admissions fee

(01:06):
for that particular trip, so you are more likely to
go even if you don't have much time or there
is a high possibility that your visit will be cut short.
You can see how this plays out. If you are
paying one hundred twenty dollars to take your family to
the zoo, you are going to want to stay there

(01:27):
all day. You are going to be upset if your
kids start screaming that they hate the zoo fifteen minutes
in and just won't stop, this, of course, being the
kid who absolutely loved the zoo the last time you went.
But if you are a member, the extra cost to
go for a visit is nothing, so you could go

(01:47):
for a short time. Let's say your kid wakes up
from their nap at three pm and the zoo closes
at five pm. Not a problem, get your snack, get
in the car, and enjoy your hour long visit. Even
if you didn't get there until four fifteen, it would
probably be fine. You could see two exhibits and leave.

(02:09):
Given how important it is to have something interesting and
fun in that post nap slot, this can be a
very useful thing. Indeed, Or if you are a member
at the children's museum and your kid has a total
meltdown ten minutes into a visit, you can follow through
on that threat to leave. There's no marginal extra cost
to that visit, so why not. Even for adults, it

(02:34):
is nice to have a membership. You can see a
single exhibit at an art museum on a lunch break,
for instance, rather than thinking you should stay at the
museum for hours, as you might if you are paying
for admission. When you want to get your money's worth,
you won't go for a short period of time, but

(02:54):
that might mean that you won't go at all. Better
to pay the money up front and then go in
the little marginal bits of time now. Obviously, a membership
tends to be a little more expensive than a single visit,
though it might not be much more expensive than two visits.
So with the holidays coming up, you could be strategic

(03:17):
and ask from memberships to places as gifts. If grandparents
are looking to give your family something, a zoo pass
and an aquarium pass might fill a lot of weekends,
whereas a toy might get discarded after an hour. When
you have somewhere you belong, it makes weekend fun, free, easy,

(03:40):
and reliably appealing. So find somewhere to belong and you
will probably enjoy that place more In the meantime. This
is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
most of our time. Thanks for listening to before Breakfast.

(04:05):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(04:27):
listen to your favorite shows.