Downside to planning on using points early in use year every year?

[ygracey]

I have been doing research and planning on buying resale in the future. I would likely vacation each year in Feb or March. I see most owners would recommend buying a use year in June for this scenario. If I find a listing for resale at the right number of points and at the right price, would purchasing with a Feb use year be a bad idea?

 

[graychef]

I don't think June would be your ideal UY. You want to choose a UY where you'll vacation earlier rather than later. This is in case you have to cancel a reservation. You'd still have time to bank or rent out your points and not have them distressed.

 

[LisaS]

It's best to pick a Use Year where you would be traveling early in your UY. In your case that would be a Feb UY, unless you might occasionally start your Feb vacation in late Jan in which case a Dec UY would be good. There is no January UY so that is not an option.

Here is an excellent thread on Understanding Use Year: http://www.disboards.com/threads/understanding-use-year-updated-january-2-2015.1942668/

 

[cmrdgrs]

Honestly, IMO, I would not get hung up on UY. I have an AUG UY and it was chosen for me by Disney when I bought direct. I didn't know what I didn't know when it was assigned to me, and yes, a different UY would probably be more ideal -- October would probably be "better" so to speak, but AUG is very workable, and I don't stress about it.

To me when buying a resale contract what is more important is finding the right contract. The right amount of points, trying to get one that is loaded and at the resort you want. I would put that as priority over UY (personally).

FWIW that's my opinion. Good luck finding a contract that works for you!

 

[supersnoop]

I have been doing research and planning on buying resale in the future. I would likely vacation each year in Feb or March. I see most owners would recommend buying a use year in June for this scenario. If I find a listing for resale at the right number of points and at the right price, would purchasing with a Feb use year be a bad idea?

June is a terrible idea. Some people get confused with the use year and 11-month home resort advantage, and think they need to vacation late in their use year. The opposite is true. The earlier you vacation in your use year, the longer you have to recover if something unexpected happens.

 

[jekjones1558]

Over the course of ownership it is likely that you will end up needing to cancel a reservation for unforeseen reasons. Use year does matter. You will have a far better chance of not losing those points if you have a use year that begins just before your reservation. When buying resale I would definitely take use year into consideration.

 

[curan69]

You want a use year that is right before you usually travel. For example we go two times a year Once in Nov - Dec and then again in Jan- Feb. Our use year is October. If anything happens we have until October to rent or plan another trip.

My Sister has a March use year and she just lost 52 points Because she had made a reservation for my Aunt for the End of Feb. My Uncle got sick and they had to cancel. Her use year is March so she had 2 weeks to get rid of the points before they expired. Luckily she got rid of half through David's but 52 were lost.

 

[Reppstir]

This is a fascinating thread. We have use year September, and been DVC owners since 1997. We vacation at WDW at least once, and often several times per year.
Never once, has the fact that my use year is in September factored into my vacation plans, nor affected them in any way.
I read the previous posts, and I see those points of view, and acknowledge them, however, I just don't see that much difference as to what your use year actually is. So, read it all in and take it with a grain of salt.
In our case, I cannot imagine how changing our use year to any other month would make our vacationing better or worse.

 

[ygracey]

Thanks everyone!

 

[disneynutz]

UY is only important should you need to cancel and bank your points. It's free insurance and like other insurance, some people buy and never use it and for some it may have been a major life changer.

You can roll the dice and hope that you never need to cancel or you can try to buy a contract with the free insurance.

We have used our free insurance twice, once when we had a death in the family and the other time when we had a forced job relocation. In both cases rescheduling a vacation later in the year was out of the question.

Bill

 

[LisaS]

I agree with Bill - having a UY that fits your travel patterns is free insurance. We have had to cancel a couple of trips in the past 12 months and because we were traveling early in our UY I did not lose the points allocated to those reservations. This is particularly important if you used banked or borrowed points for that cancelled reservation because you cannot bank those points. Having 10 or 11 months to use them for something else can make the difference between using/renting them or losing them. Having a convenient UY also allows you to keep a wait list in place longer when you are trying to switch to a less expensive room.

Some people may never have to cancel or may never try to switch to a less expensive room via the wait list so UY is never an issue for them. But you only have to cancel one trip, especially one using a lot of your points, to be glad you chose a convenient Use Year.

 

[DizBub]

Having a convenient UY sounds great if you travel at the same time every year. But sometimes travel habits change and people start travelling during different times of the year.

We have had to cancel a few trips and have been lucky to be able to bank some points but most of the time we had to cancel on shorter notice because of an emergency. Those points go into a holding account and will expire if you can't use them before the end of that UY. At that point Use Year does not matter.

 

[bobbiwoz]

Life changes. Banking rules could change. We have now been to WDW in every month. Retirement has made losing points because of UY less likely!

 

[supersnoop]

Having a convenient UY sounds great if you travel at the same time every year. But sometimes travel habits change and people start travelling during different times of the year.

We have had to cancel a few trips and have been lucky to be able to bank some points but most of the time we had to cancel on shorter notice because of an emergency. Those points go into a holding account and will expire if you can't use them before the end of that UY. At that point Use Year does not matter.

Use year still matters with holding points. If you cancel early in the year, you'll have longer to find a chance to use them. Sure, they're trapped in one year, but you still want to maximize you opportunity to use them.

 

[LSchrow]

We have now been to WDW in every month.

I need to add this to my bucket list

 

[LisaS]

Having a convenient UY sounds great if you travel at the same time every year. But sometimes travel habits change and people start travelling during different times of the year.

That's true. I can't take the heat and humidity in Florida from June through the end of September so I doubt we will ever book a stay during those months. We bought an October UY for that reason and so far it has worked very well for us. But for those with school age children, I can see where their travel schedule could change dramatically from now (traveling during school vacations) to later when the kids are in college and mom and dad might start doing solo trips.

We have had to cancel a few trips and have been lucky to be able to bank some points but most of the time we had to cancel on shorter notice because of an emergency. Those points go into a holding account and will expire if you can't use them before the end of that UY. At that point Use Year does not matter.

I think UY matters a lot if you end up with points in Holding. The longer you have to try to use them or rent them, the better your chances you won't lose them. The same is true if you used banked or borrowed points for a reservation and have to cancel. You cannot re-bank those points and must use them by the end of your UY, so the longer you have to use them for something else (or rent them out) the better.

 

[skier_pete]

We have now been to WDW in every month.

I need to add this to my bucket list

I would live my life perfectly happy if I never visit WDW in July.

To the OP - I'm sort of in the middle on this. The UY is only critical if you think you are going to have problems with your vacation. I have been on more vacations in my life than I can count (probably over 100) and have never cancelled.

In our case, we like to go in the fall, but also plan on going Feb-Mar more often in the future, and also sometimes in August. We ended up with a December UY, because that worked well for at least some of the time. But I wasn't really stuck on UY.

If you think you will be going at the same time every year (Feb-Mar) ad infinitum, then by all means try and get a February UY. But if not, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Dean]

I have been doing research and planning on buying resale in the future. I would likely vacation each year in Feb or March. I see most owners would recommend buying a use year in June for this scenario. If I find a listing for resale at the right number of points and at the right price, would purchasing with a Feb use year be a bad idea?

For Feb/March, Feb is the best UY by far. IMO UY can easily be worth a years worth of points or more. For those that can't take advantage of the insurance that UY can provide, they are simply taking more risk owning DVC than those than can.

 

[Tunseeker1]

we travel in october/november and in march.

We picked Sept and October for UY.

I have gone on a trip and used 4 years worth of points by spanning the Last/First week of UY. On that trip we got the travel insurance in case something happened.