I solely do car rental reservations through Costco. It’s awesome. If you don’t like a price, go ahead and make a reservation but keep checking on the Costco travel website…and then when you find a newer cheaper price, you can cancel the first reservation at no penalty.
You don’t pay for the reservation ahead of time…only when picking up the car.
D24 tried those but they always fell off of her head.
I realize I may be the only person in the US without a Costco membership 
I used to compare car rentals directly but now I almost always go through Priceline. I’ve never had an issue through many rentals (despite also some distrust of 3rd party apps), prices are good and it’s easy to change the reservation if needed (and sometimes there’s a different company that’s cheaper when you change and again this is easy to see on Priceline). I only ever do pay at pickup though, even though the prices are a little higher, but I approach hotel bookings (which I mostly do direct) that way too - if a hotel is only offering advance purchase (looking at you for certain destinations, Marriott) I’ll go elsewhere. Maybe I’m too much of a “just in case” person 
On the car rentals piece, I’ve used auto slash for many years to compare prices and have literally saved thousands of dollars with little effort. Regardless of where I book a car, I then go to their site and provide the details. They then email me when there is a cheaper price for the same class of car at same location (meaning airport not necessarily rental co) for the same dates. I then rebook if it is cheaper, and repeat. I have a couple car companies I strongly prefer, especially in certain cities. When autoslash alerts of lower price, I often find the lower price directly on the company website as well. https://www.autoslash.com/
Have you all considered signing up for AARP membership… I think many non-retirement aged people would be quite surprised on how many things AARP can save you significant money on. I started as a member in my mid-40s when the membership cost about $8/yr, and it had the activation charge waived for our AT&T/Iphones as we bought them for each of our three kids - the AT&T rep asked: Don’t take this the wrong way but do you have AARP? - Okay, so sign up right now here, and save your activation fees…
It’s now like $12/yr and I put it on autorenewal (and most things I refuse to do that!) and since you can sign up at 18, two of our three kids are already members as well. Our youngest (17) was laughing because her instructor for the mandatory High School - Economics and Personal Finance - brought up AARP and everybody but my daughter was laughing at the thought - and he was like “No Seriously, when you turn 18, get your AARP membership”
Skeptical ? - take the top 10 things you do for travel:
Hotel, Flights, Auto, Dining etc - and put them into AI to ask typical AARP benefits for those things…
We fly home from Atlanta Sunday evening and the piece on last night’s daily show is making me worry that our day planned exploring Atlanta will need to be a 1/2 day spent in TSA line or sitting at the terminal. As featured in the piece, “Oh no!!”
I don’t have Costco either -but I can book discounted car rentals through USAA. I also pay at the counter - I’ve been burnt once of twice by the ‘pay ahead’ bit for hotels.
I am sorry. 
I’m so frustrated by the whole debacle (that shall not be discussed here).
I signed up because the annual membership was less than the saving on one hotel booking I did that year, but I now keep forgetting to check for discounts when I book things. Thanks for the reminder!
Didn’t see it, but curious if any objective evidence that the“assistance by DHS” has been cutting wait times. I think a number of airports post real time data but don’t know how to track. Photos I’ve seen just show them standing around but those may be selective, idk.
We already pushed our flight time later out of Chicago on Sunday because we drive up from Urbana that morning, but I guess we may have to wake up really early anyway unless something changes dramatically in the next few days 
I grew up thru my late 20s in the suburbs of “Chicagoland” and spent 7 years at UIUC…I infrequently go back as almost all of our family have left this city / state.
For O’Hare, you should plan on TSA check taking anywhere from 2-4 hours normally… There are times when the TSA line extends from the security corridors all the way to the front airline registrations counters - and on occasion it will extend out the entrance doors. This is consistently one of the worst managed airports I’ve ever used.
…with current TSA concerns, who knows you may want to show up Saturday night 
Oh, this didn’t even occur to me to ask! I suspect they don’t stay on all night, but for S22 (the one who uses them), once he’s asleep, he’s good. It’s the falling asleep part that he needs the noise. So I guess I’ll call this a YMMV issue - if you just need for falling asleep, thumbs up. If you need them for staying on to keep the white noise, maybe no.
Even with TSA Pre?
ORD is our home airport. The longest TSA pre line we’ve heard about is 40 minutes. So far, we’ve had no issues, nor have any of our friends. My niece flew out Monday morning and waited 10 minutes.
Ditto
Not at JFK. A friend flew out yesterday am. Monster regular line, but she was through pre-check in 25 min.
I’ve been wondering how TSA pre effects things too. Like how long TSA line at Atlanta airport will take us if we have precheck? I don’t want to miss my flight, but also don’t want to breeze through TSA and sit at the terminal for 4-5 hours on a Sunday afternoon.
I think we’re going to try to figure out if there is anywhere for us to ask around Friday evening when we land in Atlanta. If anyone has other ideas/knowledge that would help re figuring out when we should arrive at Atlanta airport Sunday, I’m all ears.
Thanks, I just looked at the O’Hare Reddit (tsa app not being updated atm) and it looks like most lines are reasonable and even fast. That said Sunday might be a busier day?
IME Sundays usually aren’t too bad for departures. Friday evening and Monday mornings seem to be the busiest to me.
We had this dilemma flying out of NOLA two weeks ago. We got a notification from United to allow 3 hours. We were super worried after hearing about 4 hour lines at Armstrong so we went 4 1/2 hours early. We were through security in under 15 minutes and sadly just missed trying to get on the earlier flight. It made for a very very long wait at the airpot but we didn’t have an option of missing our flight.