- Joined
- Aug 14, 2008
There's been lots of discussion about the potential saving by buying DVC, but not that much on the risks associated with owning DVC. So what risks were you concerned about when you were looking into DVC.
For myself the risks I looked at were:
(1) Being unable to afford DVC and the ongoing MF. This one stopped me from buying for many years. Even though we went a lot of times, I preferred to pay out of pocket for each trip rather than making a long term committment. It wasn't till my mortgage was paid for and I had no debts of any kind that I was comfortable making a long term committment to DVC. When we first bought our house, my wife was informed that she might be getting laid off, and while luckly that didn't happen, it certainly made me very concerned of what could have happened in such a senario.
(2) Cost of getting to WDW. Living on the west coast I was concerned about how much flights could increase and if the potential existed for me to be unable to afford to get there. Related to flying but something that I had never planned or thought of was when my wife developed a fear of flying. For about 3 years she was unable to fly and every holiday had to be somewhere we could drive.
(3) Dues rising faster than hotel rates with the end result being that paying for a room with dues costs more than the normal hotel rate. I don't actually think this would happen while Disney is still trying to sell DVC otherwise it would make it too hard for them to make any cost saving arguement, but given that one can rent other timeshares for less then their MF, the potential does exist for the same thing to happen with DVC.
(4) Getting tired/bored of WDW. My daughter and I both like doing the same thing repeatily and don't get bored by it (I eat the same thing for lunch every day, but my wife can't stand doing that). My wife on the other hand wants to do different types of vacations (cruise, Europe, etc). Solution was to agree to alternate between WDW and something else each vacation.
(5) Needing to sell the contract for some reason (divorce, lost job, lost interest) and the contract is worth a lot less than what I paid for it. Because my breakeven point was after 6-7 years I was fine with taking this risk as the time period was so short. This is also why I bought resale. If the breakeven point had of been 10+ years, I would not have bought.
(6) Being healthy enough to go. Having not bought till I turned 50, one of my concerns is how long will I be able to use my DVCs. I tried talking my parents into going this year (they're in their mid 70s) and they didn't want to go as my Mom has bad knees and can't walk for more than 20-30 minutes (I didn't know this at the time) and we all know how much walking there is at WDW. So I deciede that if I get to use it for around 25 years (so I'll be in my mid 70s) I'll be happy.
Once I had thought about all the various risks and was happy with those risks, I then ran lots of numbers to make sure that it made financial sense to buy.
For myself the risks I looked at were:
(1) Being unable to afford DVC and the ongoing MF. This one stopped me from buying for many years. Even though we went a lot of times, I preferred to pay out of pocket for each trip rather than making a long term committment. It wasn't till my mortgage was paid for and I had no debts of any kind that I was comfortable making a long term committment to DVC. When we first bought our house, my wife was informed that she might be getting laid off, and while luckly that didn't happen, it certainly made me very concerned of what could have happened in such a senario.
(2) Cost of getting to WDW. Living on the west coast I was concerned about how much flights could increase and if the potential existed for me to be unable to afford to get there. Related to flying but something that I had never planned or thought of was when my wife developed a fear of flying. For about 3 years she was unable to fly and every holiday had to be somewhere we could drive.
(3) Dues rising faster than hotel rates with the end result being that paying for a room with dues costs more than the normal hotel rate. I don't actually think this would happen while Disney is still trying to sell DVC otherwise it would make it too hard for them to make any cost saving arguement, but given that one can rent other timeshares for less then their MF, the potential does exist for the same thing to happen with DVC.
(4) Getting tired/bored of WDW. My daughter and I both like doing the same thing repeatily and don't get bored by it (I eat the same thing for lunch every day, but my wife can't stand doing that). My wife on the other hand wants to do different types of vacations (cruise, Europe, etc). Solution was to agree to alternate between WDW and something else each vacation.
(5) Needing to sell the contract for some reason (divorce, lost job, lost interest) and the contract is worth a lot less than what I paid for it. Because my breakeven point was after 6-7 years I was fine with taking this risk as the time period was so short. This is also why I bought resale. If the breakeven point had of been 10+ years, I would not have bought.
(6) Being healthy enough to go. Having not bought till I turned 50, one of my concerns is how long will I be able to use my DVCs. I tried talking my parents into going this year (they're in their mid 70s) and they didn't want to go as my Mom has bad knees and can't walk for more than 20-30 minutes (I didn't know this at the time) and we all know how much walking there is at WDW. So I deciede that if I get to use it for around 25 years (so I'll be in my mid 70s) I'll be happy.
Once I had thought about all the various risks and was happy with those risks, I then ran lots of numbers to make sure that it made financial sense to buy.