How do you afford DVC?

[Simba's Mom]

I was a high school teacher, who'd gone back to work because our two sons were in college-but they only had a little time left. DH was an engineer whose idea of vacation was to"So how many days of vacation are you NOT using this year?", and at his company, at the end of the year, you couldn't carry over vacation. It was shortly after 9/11-my non-financial motivation of "No one's guaranteed a future" So for those 3 reasons (actually the first was the financial reason), we could afford.

 

[Disney Spaz]

DH and I do okay but do live in a HCOL area so for us it was a choice to sacrifice in other areas to have DVC and create the memories for our family. Our DS34 is also a small DVC points owner and we are at 600 points with the push of our DD19. She has been going to VGF since she was 7 and it is her home away from home. She already talks about when the points are hers. DH works for our local county goverment and I work in a nearby school district. We make good money but again the HCOL are hits hard. We are in our 50's and 60's so we hope to use it well into retirement. We have zero regrets and if we had to sell we could but hope to never be in that situation.

 

[Lumpy1106]

We are a family of 5 and we didn't really fit in a studio as the kids got older.
Since we bought resale;
We have not really "lost" money on the purchase. Price per point has gone up and down, but if we were to sell our DVC contract we would get back most of the money we spent on points. That in mind, our annual cost is the amount we spend on MFs. That gets us a 1br suite for around $225-$250/night. Yeah, we could stay in a hotel room off-property cheaper, but there is no way we would spend the kind of money Disney demands on a suite in a DVC resort. Renting points is better but still pretty pricey.

One other benefit you don't see mentioned often; owning DVC commits you to going on vacation. The MFs are paid, you are going. You would be surprised how many trips we passed up on prior to owning DVC. Just too costly, too much of a pain to plan - forget it.

Thinking of it that way, how could we not own DVC?

 

[atthebeachclub]

I had some cash. I also paid myself out some PTO and I also used some receipts and cashed out some medical bills from my HSA piggybank/investment account. Decided going on vacation was good medicine, so it was ok to spend a little bit (even though that HSA is triple tax advantaged....).

 

[tgropp]

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.

Other than you buying Riviera, this is exactly how I would have replied on my DVC ownership

 

[DisneyGal24]

DH and I are both teachers. We actually started looking at DVC in 2005. They were building Saratoga at the time and we came home from our very first WDW trip together with a fancy hardback book telling us all about DVC. Financially, we just couldn’t do it. Fast forward to 2012, two kids, a couple of college degrees and job moves, we were able to make it happen! We purchased Saratoga direct. Then in 2015 we purchased AKL resale. We own a little over 300 points total. Everything is now paid off and we’re considering adding on again to accommodate our need for more space since the kids are older. We have used our points every year since 2012. Our children have grown up with Disney and we have enjoyed making memories with them year after year. DVC was an excellent decision for our family!

 

[Tumnus]

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.

I am also an actuary! That makes three of us DVC on this board I know of now!

For my answer - I'm an actuary in consulting and have done pretty well, on the high ends of the salary/bonus charts you can get. My company was also acquired so I had a nice retention bonus last year that went directly into DVC. Bought our house in 2018 when costs were low, refinanced to 2.5% post COVID, maxing out all retirement avenues plus a good amount extra a month, cars paid off, college funds on auto-draft. Big lump sum bonuses twice a year with all of that taken care of means I've bought four DVC contracts in less than a year!

 

[Adopted By Disney]

Wondering whether we’re the exception or the norm, We bought 125 points at 147 pp for Poly and am going to buy 150 points this incentive period for Riv. I am 33 and luckily have the means to afford this but also am thinking in terms that we have been to Disney multiple times in the last 4 years as we have two kids (expecting a third) and I started to wonder how it could become more affordable than spending what we were. Which brought me to an insurmountable abundance of research including disboards which is now my number one source of all things dvc and realized yes this makes sense. So after countless nights of running numbers through my head I eventually realized DVC over time would save us money . Noticed a lot of posts mention HCOL or LCOL . Wonder how many are of the FIRE mindset on this board. I feel like a lot understand this motive which is why I am significantly drawn to these forums.