Food for thought

Are you looking at or possibly looking or staying at a time share?
To better understand the process of a timeshare presentation, I did one.  Upfront I advised that I was in the travel industry and I was limited on time. The presentation was only 2 hours so we set the time at 8:00 AM so that I could make my first session of the conference.  At 11:00 AM I was getting nervous, we finally made it back to the hotel at 12 PM.  I did miss the morning sessions for that day but it was worth it.  Why you might ask?  Because I can advise you what I learned.

The presentation is well scripted out.  They tell you the type of accommodation's you can have and at what pricing when you go on vacation.  How the point system works and how inexpensive it is with a time share when you travel on your dates.  They will even take you on a field trip to show the actual accommodations for that resort.  Don't get me wrong they are very nice accommodations! You too could stay in that room for just say $400.00 a week every year.  Wow that is impressive.  At an all inclusive you could pay $2500 for a week.  This was at about the 2 hour mark.

Then they leave you for a bit so that you can discuss what you liked and did not like.  At this point they come back and discuss the real pricing.  If you are not good with math please note what they are telling you at this point.  You pay a down payment.  In my case they wanted $2000 down and $300 a month for 30 years.  Yes I did say 30 years, if I should die my children would inherit it the time share and payments of coarse.  The other option they would have is to find someone to take over the payments. 
The $300 would give me a studio apartment every year at various locations.  So if you are a numbers person you are looking at $3600 plus the cost of the one week.  So about $4000 for the week.  I did not include the down payment.

There are also various types of time shares.  You have the time share which allow you to stay just at that resort say like the Wisconsin Dells.  The other time share allows you to buy into the organization like Marriott or Hilton in the vacation clubs.  This allows you the flexibility of visiting other locations verses just the Dells or Cancun, etc.

One of the statements that our sales person was very correct about is that you do travel more.  I wonder if it is because you feel I am paying for it I better use it.  In fairness if you are not able to use some of the time.  He did state they do allow roll overs but not a lot.

Don't get me wrong for some people this is a wonderful alternative and definitely worth looking into.  It is a great way to save for a vacation and want to use it. 

If it is not for you be warned nothing is free.  You may get dinner and a show tickets in Las Vegas or Disney passes in Orlando, but do you really want to give up your vacation time?

Have a great week,
Kim

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