Ya know... I've heard the arguments since the changes were made a few months ago (on resale points) and over time about cruises on points being a bad value
anyway.
I'm still not convinced that it is necessarily true that cruise and RCI (or II when and if it comes back) tradeouts are really as bad of a value as people say they are.
I have to look at this thing over the length of the deed which brings up some interesting possibilities when calculating the time value of money.
It's all a matter of what risk is worth the reward potential over the long haul. Nobody knows what other penalties may be imposed on resale purchases over time. Granted, we don't know what could happen to direct-buy points either, but the changes are likely to be less penalizing over time on points bought directly from DVD.
Let me ask you a hypothetical question. Let's suppose you can buy twice as many points resale today for the same amount of money. Let's jump 10 years down the road and just suppose that you and your family want to take a cruise or go to the Rockies for a change in vacation venue. Suppose you tired of Disney last year because of family and time obligations and just banked all your points. In that situation, there's a good likelihood that I might just happen to have more points
laying around than I might have disposable income to take a cruise. Sure would be nice to use those points, but I bought them resale and I can't use them for what I want.
Sure, there are no guarantees that I could use those points for a cruise 10 years from now either, but the likelihood that I could is much higher. what if this happened 7-8 times over the duration of the contract? Suddenly, the initial outlay, given the time value of money and assuming inflation continues at some rate, doesn't seem to matter quite as much.
There's always more than one angle. That's all I'm saying. In the interest of full disclosure, I bought all of my points direct. The first ones I didn't really know any better but I've had ample opportunity to do something different in my purchases that followed. Resale market prices have been in a somewhat steady decline, especially of late, much more so than when I had added on, and I admit it's tempting now, but the only reason I would buy resale even now is that I have points under my belt that are universally good for anything. If I bought resale now, I would buy them going in assuming they were only good at the resort I bought them for. Any other
value or use they might have would just be
gravy.
The pencil pushers will come along and tear my argument all to pieces. I already know that. I also know that buying any timeshare and especially DVC (re: buying into
DISNEY for ~50 years) is an emotional and a somewhat risky purchase anyway.
They make a base Camaro for 16k. Fully loaded, it's upwards of 37k. That's a pretty big spread. Wonder which one most people buy? Why?
