How do you afford DVC?

[Brittleebee]

I thought it would be fun to start a casual thread to discuss everyone’s DVC journey. How do you afford your contracts and what do you do for a living? When did you buy and what age? I would love to hear anything anyone is willing to share, because I have a huge interest in the psychology that drives a DVC member. I’ll start:

I’m a single, 31 year old female who lives in a rural area with a very modest job working in the front office of a medical complex. I was able to purchase my current 240 resale points by saving quite a bit of my income and being blessed with a very affordable home. I purchased my first contract at age 29.

 

[Mouseforward]

My coworker's and friends (who I assume are in the same income bracket as I am ) make different choices.

I live on the East cost where "going down the shore" means a 5-8k a week rental so somewhat more than a weeks DVC expense. I hate sand it gets everywhere....

Or they drive BMW's / german cars, I have Hondas. All of my direct points are about the cost of a nice 5 series that will be in the junkyard faster than any of them will admit.

I also live in a LCOL area, with a house that would be a 20% deposit on a home in California or other HCOL areas.

And of course I don't gamble , it is a shame how many of my coworkers will blow 5k on sportsball bets in a weekend.

Now I might have more points if I did not love swiss watches, and custom 1911's but some toys are needed when you are not at Disney.

 

[mrandmrsthomas0618]

I'm an actuary, my partner is an accountant. We make about 215k combined. We are both 36 and live in the suburbs of STL.

We were able to to use a couple credit cards that had 0% apr for a year and sign up bonuses to purchase a resale contract at SSR for about 17k.

We then made a payment plan and paid it off over the year and very excited to use our points at the Grand Californian in a 2 bedroom for 2 nights next month.

 

[Stargazer65]

We bought into DVC in our mid 40's. After our youngest of 5 kids was born, we decided to take a trip to WDW for a fun family vacation. Although we'd been before in our younger days, we had never stayed on property, so that was something we wanted to do. We stayed at a FWC in 2009. We didn't expect to frequently do it, we thought it was something we might do again in another 10 years when the youngest was older. We had never heard about DVC. When we stopped for a moment to get our bearings at DHS, we happened to be in front of the DVC kiosk on Sunset Blvd. The DVC salesperson asked us if we needed help finding something...1 day later...home resort BLT...

Taking trips every three years with the kids became a treasured memory as they grew. The add-ons came a decade later after I became more financially able. We still take family trips using DVC even though the kids are grown, and are getting married and having their own kids. I work as an engineering supervisor for a large corporation, make a good salary, live pretty modestly in a semi-rural area otherwise, so DVC is one of our splurges.

 

[tom1944]

I purchased a resale contract when I retired. Luckily, I had paid off our mortgage and I received pay for my accrued vacation days. It was 50 days of compensation.

For actually now paying for the vacations I have a position with a trade union as the Financial Secretary which is part time, and I make about $2,000 a month. I also have a small bookkeeping business I started but that only brings in $5,000 a year. I like doing both because I do them from home besides attending 3 or 4 meetings a few nights a month.

I use 100% of that for vacations.

 

[RivGirl]

Trying to figure out how to answer without giving away more personal information than I'm comfortable with, hahaha.

Like others, we live in a relatively LCOL area. Our mortgage is well within our means at a low interest rate. We drive older cars. Our kids go to public school.

I work part time, husband is full time. His compensation package includes a yearly, variable bonus. We are used to living off of the base compensation (minus 401K contributions) month to month, and the annual bonus gets earmarked for bigger goals. Larger college savings chunks, big home improvement projects, etc.

This past year part of the bonus got funneled into our first DVC purchase. Which we *agonized* about, LOL. But we ultimately decided that we had been "responsible" with the bonus spend for many years, and it was time to have a little fun with it, too. We hope to add on at least one more time and double our points.

7 months later and we still feel a bit crazy and sheepish for buying a timeshare, but I'm sure that will fade with time. Or we'll just joke about it for the rest of our lives.

 

[tidefan]

Easy, we bought when points were in the 90's-110's direct... We did splurge on VGF direct at $145 pp...

 

[muppets3d]

We live within our means.

 

[MagicalDaze]

We used the proceeds of a totally unexpected pension fund payout that I received upon my mom's passing. Last summer my nephew turned 21 and we used our points for a couple of rooms at BWV, a fireworks cruise and extended evening hours at Epcot -- magical core memories for the entire family! The annual dues we pay are nothing compared to the value we get year after year along with the ability to let our kids (and future grandkids) know their happy family WDW memories are a gift from an extremely hard-working woman who loved us all very much.

 

[sanibel93]

Bought resale about a year before we retired, points were in the $50 range (OKW because of room sizes and how quiet it is), found out within the year that we needed more, have bought more points direct while they were all under $100. Sons' family and Daughters families are all DIsney nuts like us, asked if they wanted to be on the deeds and they both said yes (did not want to stick them some day with maintenance fees when I can't go anymore) We have enjoyed 2-3 trips a year. Have 3 grandsons now and am enjoying many trips with them.

 

[ShaneDJ]

We afford DVC because we got tired of wasting money.

We don’t have an RV or boat. Double-income household and we drive older model reliable cars.

We got tired of spending thousands of dollars on Disney hotel rates. Money thrown away, we realized.

We knew that we wanted to visit WDW at least every two to three years.

Doing the math, we were stunned how much DVC could save us over time. (Which made us even more upset that we had been paying Disney rack rates for too many years!)

So we used some of our excess funds to buy DVC points. We don’t regret one dollar spent on DVC.

We had to buy more DVC with Riviera (the RIV has our heart).

If we had been smarter years ago, we would have bought DVC sooner. But we live and learn.

 

[davidhr]

DINK. That’s the answer

We’re not frugal, but we’re not interested in some things “expected” for our incomes. Yeah, we could definitely be driving nice Audis, but were totally fine driving our RAV4 for 10+ years if it’s reliable. We like dining out, but a $50pp dinner is perfectly fine. We don’t need that $200pp dining experience. Things like that (or avoiding them) help a lot.

 

[foodiddiedoo]

My husband and I are both high paid engineers and we don’t own things like second homes, third cars, boats/RVs or other what I consider “frivolous” expenses. We only have one kid and she doesn’t need daycare or aftercare any more. A decent chunk of my frivolity goes towards Disney. We did the math and figured we’d be repaid with the way we stay within 6-10 years (we were always doing 2 bedrooms at places like BLT with my parents and spending like 10-17k for the room) so this was always a plan to spend less “down the line”. We live in NJ where it’s very expensive, but I am good at saving money and we were able to pay cash for our 450 points direct, as well as the 170 point resale we just bought. My parents contributed some of the money for the direct since they come with my family every year and figured they would contribute without expectation of owning.

 

[zackiedawg]

I bought into Boardwalk in 1996 when it first opened - the points back then were something like $63 per point - so it was a massive bargain compared to today. I bought all of my points at once - 440 - enough to cover staying for 10 days peak season in a mix of 1-2 bedrooms...knowing that my actual stays would be at different point levels throughout the year, and mixing in occasional studios, so those points would easily stretch to cover 15-20 days a year, enough for 4 to 5 trips of 4 days each...which has remained true through to today.

I was 27 when I first bought in - I lived in S Florida, and had my parents and my brother both living nearby in the same town, so we often had annual family trips, and I'd take other trips solo or with friends during the year.

I've been with Raymond James, a financial services company, for 31 years now - I had been with them 2 years when I purchased DVC. I tend to only spend money on things I really like - I don't have too many expensive vices or habits, and I'm not big on designer clothes, new phones and electronics every year, and other costly little add-ups that many of my friends and relatives are into...when I splurge, it's usually on watches, cars, and travel - three things I like the most. Even then, I don't buy Ferraris and Rolexes - I might buy a nice sporty car every 3-4 years under $55K and a 'commuter' every 4-5 years in the $30-35K range...as long as it's something I like the look of, comes in a cool color, or is something you don't see every day on the road. I can be just as happy buying a $150 watch as a $10,000 watch, if it's a cool design or interesting complexity. Because I live just a few hours' drive to Disney, having DVC and an annual pass means when I go, I don't really have any real trip costs - the gas to get there, and whatever food and drink I buy while there...so I can enjoy and splurge each trip with good restaurants or bar tabs knowing DIsney is overpriced - most of the year, I cook my own meals.

I've gone to Disney with some friends who comment on how expensive it is and how can I always go to these expensive restaurants, deal with the pricy drinks, the valet fees, and so on - then I break down how much they spend on daily take-out or delivery lunches, restaurant meals every night, 100 pairs of shoes and some designer bags every month or two, 10 different streaming service subscriptions, etc...all things I don't have to deal with - add up 3 months worth of those expenses, and it would more than cover my pricey splurges at Disney every 3 months or so. We each buy what makes us happy and is within our means - they just happen to be different things!