Choosing how many points to buy

[Lorajo]

When choosing how many point you will need, should you allow for growth in the future?

What happens if you buy a 150 point contract and then the vacation that you take starts taking 152 or 160 points?

What have Member Guides told you when you were buying about inflation and where to expect the point charts to go in the future?

Have they gone up a lot the last 10 - 15 years??

Thanks

 

[chalee94]

When choosing how many point you will need, should you allow for growth in the future?

depends on your situation - some allow for growth in the future while others split their contracts into multiple units when they buy (300 pts = 160 pts +50 pts +50 pts + 40pts) so that they can sell a smaller contract or two when they no longer need as many points.

it's generally pretty easy to add-on if you really need more, though. no closing costs for add-ons either.

What happens if you buy a 150 point contract and then the vacation that you take starts taking 152 or 160 points?

you can borrow pts from the next year (or try to transfer them from another DVC member if possible).

if you consistently need more pts, you can do a small add-on of 25 pts.

What have Member Guides told you when you were buying about inflation and where to expect the point charts to go in the future?

point costs can't "inflate", the point costs for each entire DVC resort are fixed. if point costs for monday nights go up, point costs for saturday will have to drop - if point costs for summer go up, point costs for autumn will have to drop...

when point charts are reallocated like that (see the 2010 pt charts compared to 2009), some weeklong stays may require slightly more points...but others will require slightly less.

based on the 2010 charts, many DISers would not be surprised if sun-thurs stays get a little more expensive in the future while weekend costs come down a little more...but anything could happen.

Have they gone up a lot the last 10 - 15 years??

point contracts at OKW originally cost around $50 per pt, so the upfront costs have gone up. annual maintenance fees for the contracts have also gone up.

but a stay at OKW for a week is still around 80 pts for a studio...give or take...

 

[rkwier]

I am by no means an expert, but this is how we determined how many points that we would need. We knew that we wanted to stay in a 1 BR for a week at least once a year. I put the points required at each resort we were interested in staying at for a 1 BR for that one week time period into a spreadsheet for easy comparison. I used standard views if applicable to try to compare "apples to apples" as much as possible. We started at the 160 base and then went up in ~20 point increments to see what options would be available to us. We settled on 225 points.

Our Guide told us that points could be reallocated, but the amount of points in the entire system would remain the same. I would use the 2010 charts to make your determination since they will be changing next year. For us, the change is not an issue. We will be staying at SSR in a 1 BR for 4 nights (including a Friday & Saturday) for 225 points this year. The same stay will be 112 points next year, 10 points cheaper. We are staying at BLT in a LV studio for 4 nights (also including Friday & Saturday) for 76 points. It will be the same number of points next year. I can't speak about point changes in previous years, but this is definitely the place to have that question answered.

We really did not factor in any increases when we were first making our determination. We selected the amounts of points to give us the most options, so I feel like we will be alright.

I hope that this helps. I poured over this board when we were making our decisions regarding location, number of points, etc. It is an excellent resource.

 

[disneynutz]

The 2010 points reallocation that was just made causes our normal vacations to require 30 more points per year. Our choices are to change our normal travel dates, borrow from next year, or buy more points.

 

[MrsG]

Since we bought in 2002 many things have changed for us. Our children were in HS and college at that time. In the next few years we needed larger accomodations to bring along fiances, then spouses. Now DH&I are vacationing on our own so we get a studio. We have, however, found that we need more points, not less. We are using them for Adventures by Disney and cruises.

Keep in mind, we tend to think of immediate needs. Once children are in school you are stuck with high point times. I'm a teacher so I always have to go at peak times so we bought accordingly. What I am trying to say is to buy what you can afford, but also buy enough so you don't have to worry about a few points here and there if they tweak the charts.