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my wife and i are considering a social membership at prestonwood country club, and we have some questions i hope people can help me with. we are newlyweds, i am 34 and she is 29. we have no kids yet, but hopefully they are not too far off. we would like to meet people and make new friends, as we are relatively new to the area.
i know we will use the gym quite often, and during the summer we will absolutely use the pool. what other "benefits" would we get from this? it is not cheap, with a 16K initiation fee, and i want to make sure we know what we are getting in to, and aren't throwing away this money.
if we decided to leave after 5 years (say we get relocated or move for family reasons) do we get any of that large initiation fee back?
can we upgrade to tennis and/or golf down the road? how is the food/prices/do people actually use the restaurant?
what are the members like? young people? kids? are they social?
that is a start - hopefully some of you can help me!
Well, my personal opinion, if the amount of money you'd be laying out in initiation fees is a big deal to you (and it sounds like it is), hold off on joining. I'd find a way to go there first as a guest to get a feel for the place (and probably a couple of times).
I worked at the Country Club growing up back in the late 90's - 2000 for 4-5 years so I have a good feel of the club. I doubt much has changed since then. As a comparison to other area Country Clubs, it has a young membership. Id say the average age is probably 45 or so. The SAS employees make up a bigger share than many think since they get a significantly discounted rate (or at least used to).
Your $16K figure sounds like you are just doing the Social membership, which is everything but golf. Yeah, the pool is nice, the gym is okay. I think the dining room is okay but you can eat better around town for less. Including golf, it is in my opinion ridiculously expensive at like $40K, plus the monthly dues. I played golf in college, no way Jose. Those courses are okay, but not worth that kind of money IMHO.
I am not sure the policy around fee transfer. I know back in the 90's I believe some of the members sued around the value of the transfer.
If you have $16K to blow, than maybe its for you. You will find yourselves amongst some of the youngest members. I know you said you want to meet people, but not many people our age (Im 30) have that type of money since many are just starting families.
Apexguy, I believe you are a little off in your assessment. Even in this economy, Prestonwood is a thriving private club. With 54 holes of well-manicured golf course and top notch amenities, Prestonwood is one of the finest in the area which has several successful high end country clubs.
Where in there did I say it was not a high quality club? I only criticized it from a golf point of view. The courses are nicely manicured, yes, but the low lying land inhibits the overall character. I played every one of those courses zillions of times (maybe not Fairways, its pretty bland to me), even caddied when the Nike/Nationwide Tour came around. To me, there are numerous private club courses in the area with more character than any of Prestonwood's 3 courses. Raleigh CC, North Ridge, Devils Ridge, even Briar Creek have more character IMHO.
It all depends on what you want. If you want to join a place to be status, then PWood is for you. If you want to join the best golf club, than I personally think there are better choices.
my wife and i are considering a social membership at prestonwood country club, and we have some questions i hope people can help me with. we are newlyweds, i am 34 and she is 29. we have no kids yet, but hopefully they are not too far off. we would like to meet people and make new friends, as we are relatively new to the area.
i know we will use the gym quite often, and during the summer we will absolutely use the pool. what other "benefits" would we get from this? it is not cheap, with a 16K initiation fee, and i want to make sure we know what we are getting in to, and aren't throwing away this money.
if we decided to leave after 5 years (say we get relocated or move for family reasons) do we get any of that large initiation fee back?
can we upgrade to tennis and/or golf down the road? how is the food/prices/do people actually use the restaurant?
what are the members like? young people? kids? are they social?
that is a start - hopefully some of you can help me!
thanks.
I am a member of Prestonwood CC and I will try my best to answer your questions.
If you do join the club you will get 75% of that 16,000 if you decide to cancel membership, but it may take up to 5 years to get that money back as they need to resell your membership. You cannot sell or transfer it to anyone else. You pay a monthly dues of 145.00 (which you do not get back).
You can upgrade to tennis or golf, but will pay what the going rate is at the time you decide to upgrade, not from the time you join.
We use the restaurants. They have a great lunch buffet during the week.
Most members we come in contact with are mid 30's - 40's with young kids. The other end is 50's - 60's retired people. You will find tons of kids in the summer by the pool.
Some people are social, but most of my friends live in my neighborhood. I have a few hi bye friends at the club.
The first two amenities you mention are the Gym and the Pool. You are clearly on the young end of the membership base, and I will respectfully offer up that you will be in the minority at your age as a childless couple-that may make it a bit trickier to make friends in your age bracket (I speak from personal experience relocating here with my wife as a childless couple in our 30s.)
Have you considered joining Lifetime Fitness as an alternative? The facility has both indoor and outdoor pools, and certainly will offer more gym/class/workout options than Prestonwood. Your monthly membership will be less than P'wood and I believe that the initiation is a bit less than $16,000 ;-)
Yeah, for $16K and those kind of monthly dues, unless you are hellbent on spending your money that way, my suggestion would be to join a nice gym, then join several meetup.com groups that do the kinds of things you enjoy doing (there are groups for EVERYTHING out there, including high end foodies) (oh and it's free to join meetup.com and the people are friendly and interesting), then take your wife on a FABU vacation somewhere. After all that you'll still have lots of money left over so you can plan yet another fabu vacation, plus a spa day for her, and probably fund your savings account too.
Lifetime Fitness seems to be the place to be these days. I think everyone in my neighborhood goes there. Tons of the neighborhoods here have get togethers so you would have ample opportunity to meet people & make friends like that. My neighborhood has a wine club, playgroup, etc & I've heard others say their neighborhoods have similiar activities. I myself would never consider a country club membership, but I am sure there are those who feel like they need to meet the *right* people blah blah blah. The one thing about this area is that everyone seems to be from someplace else & people are looking to meet & make friends. I don't think you'll have any trouble meeting people. Heck, for $16K I'm sure you could buy yourself some friends! j/k
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