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, it is much higher. This makes a life membership a good investment for members, but works to the detriment of the financial health of the club.
For example, a life membership in Mensa for someone aged 35-39 (like me) would pay $1,342 (based upon the current annual dues of $59/year). Presuming I live until I am 80, the annual interest rate I get on my money for 'investing' in a life membership is 3.65%. From a pure investment perspective, I would generally be better off putting the money in a long-term CD and paying dues with the interest earned (since in most interest rate environments I could get an interest rate higher than 3.65%). Thus, I purchase a life membership either 1) as a hedge against future membership increases; or 2) to be able to purchase special 'life member' Mensa memorabilia (if that particular perquisite appeals to me).
Let's perform the same calculation for dues: assuming I was currently eligible for life membership and invested $450 today, living to the age of 80 would provide me an average annual return of 6.74% on my investment. Someone joining when they were 25 would earn an internal interest rate near 7%.
Why do I bring this up (other than I like to hear myself type 
)? Hopefully everything that we do as a club could be beneficial not only to the individual members, but to the organization as a whole. However, in this case what is beneficial to individual members could be detrimental to the club as a whole, since life members are incentivized to join not just as a hedge against future dues increases, but for the financial return of the investment itself. In other words, having more life members could actually harm the viability of the club-- the exact opposite of what I would presume both the club and life members would want.
In any case, I would propose at a minimum a sliding scale, based upon age, for life membership. If you are younger you pay more, merely because (actuarially speaking) you will be around longer to enjoy the benefits. Thus, you wouldn't have to impose age minimums on life members, because the sliding scale would ensure that each was paying his or her fair share. Life membership should carry some beneficial return just so the club can get money today for benefits that it can pay out over time; the club will just have to figure out what that inflection point is.
Unfortunately, however, this does little to address the current financial difficulties of the club, given the fact that the cost of producing the club magazine is generally more expensive than the cost of annual dues. My proposed solution to this would be to have one annual printed magazine per year, and the other quarters in electronic only format. In this way you could still have something tangible that club members could receive (as well for entering into the ANA contest or other such considerations), but you could save 75% of the printing costs overall. While I certainly like to hold and read the magazine when it arrives, I hate having to store boxes of materials when such can be stored electronically (which is why I love that prior CCTN issues are now available electronically). In the long run, the real value of the CCTN to me is as a reference for future knowledge/research when I have more specific need of the information, which (for me at least) is best accessed in electronic format anyway.
Just my $0.02,
Brent J. Jensen
R-8007
orbis non sufficit
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