I see this a lot, and while I don’t completely disagree the idea of it, there‘s much more to the equation than just paying cash. For example, we financed our resale through Lightstream because most of our discretionary cash was tied up in stock during a downturn in the market, I’d rather pay some interest than sell off stocks at a loss just so I could say I paid cash for a luxury item. And we ended up paying it off in about 5 months.
Also this mindset is essentially saying “if you can’t afford to pay for your next 50 years of vacations in cash now, than you can’t afford to vacation.” Sure, if you are retired and don’t have earnings coming in other than your retirement investments, I’d agree, you can’t afford to pay interest for a luxury item. But someone who is still working, earning money, might not have a lump sum of 30 grand in their account they can afford to just lay down for future vacations, but they surely can afford a reasonable interest rate that still will save them money over the long haul. Another example, were you to buy 150 points at RIV direct today, you’d get the $2250 incentive discount. On a Lightstream loan for 3 years at 5.99%, paid off in just over 2 years you’d pay a similar amount in interest to the incentive. If you saved for 2 years then bought, will the incentive be there? Mostly likely not. Will the current prices remain the same for those 2 years? Absolutely not. My point is, there are situations and math that can support that financing isn’t the bad deal everyone plays it up to be. If all things were equal, sure, pay cash, but they aren’t, so sometimes reasonable financing makes sense.
Two caveats, Disney financing is not reasonable, nor is paying it off over 10 years.
I‘ll add another vote for looking into Lightstream, super easy, they’ll send you the money the same day at reasonable rates. Also, remember, Disney will let you split up your direct payments over 90 days.