If you are reading this blog, then it has happened to you.  You're on a getaway or a family vacation and the front desk person at your hotel asks if you'd like free tickets to a show or, better yet, a Visa or AMEX gift card that is as good as cash.  "It will only take an hour or two of your time and there is no obligation to buy", says the polite representative that is earning a small bonus for booking your time.  Then you agree and they feed you juice and lunch, or better if you're lucky.  Then you meet with a timeshare sales representative and they ask you about how often you take vacations and where you'd like to go in the future.  All you want is the gift they promised you so you can go on with the rest of your day.  But these guys are good so the next thing you know, you're in a presentation room waiting for a message from the President of the timeshare company you are meeting with.

You watch a well-crafted presentation showing all the places you and your family can visit and the current timeshare owners who are telling you the benefits of owning a timeshare.  The three most common reasons that you hear from young couples, families, small and large, and retired couples are (1) a timeshare membership allows you to travel all over the world, (2) owning a timeshare forces you to take vacations that you would otherwise keep pushing off, and (3) because the more vacations you take, the lower your stress level and the longer you live.

All the benefits sounds great but how much is this going to cost me?  Your sales rep takes you back to the round table and flops open a huge binder full of more pictures of places you can be right now if you owned their timeshare.  They use up more of your time without actually telling you how much this will cost.  Then they offer to take you on a tour of their Presidential Suite which is that amazing 3 bedroom, 3000 square foot suite that you would never really end up staying in unless you purchase their top of the line product.  Your kids see the suite and "their own room" and go nuts so now you go back to the round table and talk price.

The fact is, the price for a typical timeshare ownership runs between $40,000 and $60,000 and this price will allow you to spend one week at a 1-bedroom or 2-bedroom suite anywhere in the world.  It also comes with a membership to "the club" that will allow you to purchase additional vacations at a steep discount.  So now that I have re-familiarize you guys with what happened at your last timeshare presentation from which you most certainly DID NOT make a purchase (or you wouldn't be reading my blog), let me give you the run down on how the timeshares differ and why I do believe you should own one when it is the right time in your life.

My husband and I own a total of 4 timeshares and we have not regretted a single purchase even though our friends think we're pushovers who got bamboozled to buy every time we said yes to getting a nice gift for our time listening to a sales presentation.  We are mortgage/finance professionals who did a lot of calculations during the presentations before signing on the dotted line and completing a purchase.  Just to prove we're not pushovers, we didn't buy at our 5th presentation because well to be honest, we already have 3 months of vacations we can take with our 4 timeshares that anymore vacation time would make us traveling gypsies.

We purchased our first timeshare in 2006 when my husband and I went on a quick getaway to Las Vegas.  We were in Old Town Vegas and was approached by a nice gentleman who said he will give us complimentary tickets to a Vegas show of our choice along with a ride back to our hotel.  We said yes and were swept away to construction site next to the old Circus Circus.  We waited in a room full of round tables filled with couples just like us.  They fed us some food and drinks and then they fed us a bunch of data about the benefits of timeshare ownership.  They showed us some models of the 2-bedroom units they were building at a nearby site of a large timeshare project called The Grandview.  We couldn't see the actual units because the entire site was still under construction.  So if we were to purchase, we would get "pre-construction" prices which would be significantly lower than the price after The Grandview is open for business.

It all sounded good and my husband and I had not gone on a real vacation together ever.  We told them we needed some time to think about it and can get back to them in a day or two.  Of course, that is not how timeshare presentations work.  They want you to commit right away and they throw the sales person, his supervisor and a few other "important people" at you so you agree to make the purchase at that moment.  This is probably why most people don't buy timeshares because being asked to impulsively commit to a $40,000 purchase is not everyone's cup of tea.  So my husband and I asked for a few minutes to discuss the commitment on our own and after a few minutes, we decided to make the purchase.  We based our decision on 3 major factors:
(1)  We were buying "pre-construction" which is usually a good investment for any type of investment.  This investment was in real estate (to a certain extend) and in 2006, the real estate market was booming.
(2)  We had never taken a vacation since we got married and we needed to be forced to take a vacation and the fact that we will be paying every month anyway (since we financed the purchase) would force us to take time off from our busy schedule.  It would be pretty stupid if we keep paying for a "vacation" but stay home.
(3)  The inventory of resorts and properties in the RCI timeshare network, "the club" membership that came with this purchase, was quite expansive and consisted of amazing places that we would love to visit on our future vacations.

We took our first family vacation in 2009 and it was an amazing vacation for 12 friends and family at the Kaanapali Beach Club on Maui.  With all the points we saved since our initial purchase, we were able to get three 1-bedroom units at a cost of $450 for all three units for the entire week.  This was the first of our many vacations that we are now able to take with our twin boys (now 4 years old), my mom, her friends and my husband's sister's family.  A true family vacation for us is never just our little family of 4 and we're only able to do this because of timeshare ownership and membership.

Kaanapali Beach Club is a property of Diamond Resorts International so a few weeks after our stay at this resort, we received a phone call from Diamond Resorts offering a complimentary 3-day getaway our of our choice.  They of course want us to buy their timeshare now and since we didn't have any more points left for this particular year after the Hawaii vacation, we accepted their offer.  We decided to go to Lake Tahoe since we live in San Francisco Bay Area and Lake Tahoe was a hop, skip and a jump for us and a perfect weekend getaway.  We stayed at the Lake Tahoe Vacation Resort which is a few blocks from Heavenly Ski Resort and walking distance from the lake.  This getaway deal from Diamond Resorts came at the price of a couple hours of our time - at least that was what we thought at the time.  We were more seasoned timeshare owners by this time so we knew they couldn't "persuade" us to buy another timeshare.  Who needs more than one timeshare?  Well, apparently we did.

Why did we buy a second timeshare, this time with Diamond Resorts International?  Because they offered us inventory that would be difficult to book thru RCI.  Many of Diamond's properties are listed on the RCI Exchange Network.  But in reality, the likelihood of booking is slim because Diamond Resort owners have the right of first refusal and, as it appeared, Diamond Resorts timeshare owners not seem to give us their week into the exchange bucket.  We learned that it was pure luck that we landed three 1-bedroom units at the Kaanapali Beach Club because we honestly tried to book future dates right after our stay and nothing popped up.  But when the Diamond Resorts salesperson showed us their website and the website of their affiliate Interval World, booking dates for Kaanapali showed up.  Furthermore, Diamond Resorts has properties in England and France that also never showed up as available thru RCI.  So after wheeling and dealing for the lowest purchase price available since we already had so many points and vacation time thru our RCI association, we got what we wanted and bought the lowest point program just so we would be able to book those properties in Europe in the future.

So before I proceed, let me give you some figures to consider.  We bought The Grandview with RCI affiliation for $40,000.  Thru this association, we booked three 1-bedroom units in Hawaii.  The sign on the door said the room should go for $600 per night but I'm sure it would more realistically go for about $300 per night which would be way worth it considering the resort's location, amentities and room size.   We stayed for a week so that is $300 per night times three rooms times 7 nights which is a total of $6300.  Now let's be honest.  We would never pay this under any circumstance for a typical Hawaii vacation.  But we didn't pay this amount.  We paid $450 and we had 3 rooms with a full kitchen, a master bedroom with a king bed and a queen size sleeper sofa so we saved a lot of money on food and there were 12 of us.  If you booked a typical hotel room, it would have cost you at least $100 per night for a livable room and it would be just a hotel room with one or two beds so for 12 people, to be comfortable, you probably would have had to get at least 5 rooms if you had some little kids factored in.  So 5 rooms for 7 nights at $100 (minimum) per night is $3500.  How much have we paid thus far to our timeshare loan you might ask?  By this time, we had paid about $15,000 of our $40,000.  So technically, we've prepaid more than we've actually used thusfar if you consider the $6300 package price I mentioned earlier.  But we're not done vacationing yet and we can even deed this timeshare to our kids when we get old so for us, we're benefiting already from timeshare ownership.

More details to come along with how our timeshare presentation went, why we bought and how the RCI point system differs from the Diamond Resorts point system.  I'm just writing this blog in between a full time job and taking care of 4-year old twins so don't expect much from me all at once :-)