How many points?

[ssawka]

Does anyone have a "rule of thumb" on deciding how many points to buy? We are thinking of buying in BLT and would like to at least have enough for a week in a studio at any resort at any time of the year, so I'm thinking a little over 200 points, say 210-225, but we may need to upgrade to a one bedroom in the future, so I actually have 2 questions:

1. How do you decide how many points to buy?
2. How easy is it to add points once you are a member?

Thanks

 

[ThePecks]

I too am in your shoes. This is how I figured what I would need. I have a family of 5...to adults, a 5 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, and a 1 year old girl. Personally I think this is a great time for me to get into the DVC.

about 4-5 years ago my wife's parents took the family to Orlando and we rented a house. Back then it was 12 of us, now it is 17 of us. I want to be able to return the favor, but rather than stay in a house off property, I want to stay in my BLT with a MK view in a Grand Villa. I'll also need a studio as well, since the Grand Villa only sleeps 12.

I thought I would do this ONLY in adventure season, and I did the math for 6 nights including 1 Friday, and if I remember correclty, I'm looking at 706 points. I'm OK with taking 3 years of points to pay for this, so I divided 706 by 3 and got 235.3. I figured I had to get 236 points to do this.

Then I looked at what I could get wtih 236 points in BLT...and I can spend a week there when the kids are bigger, nearly in any season. Having 5 in the family nearly guarantees that no matter where I stay a double room at a value resort or a studio at DVC won't get me what I need. I'm looking at suites or one bedrooms vacation homes.

This 236 points should also get me the 236 developer points, and I might take my 5 year old and his friend down to WDW for his birthday later this year...maybe staying at the Treehouse resorts at SSR.

Those were my thoughts in determining my points. I was going to go with straight 160, but figured that I'd kick myself later when I needed/wanted more points.

 

[hellerjw]

Just remember to include a small buffer into whatever number you come up with. As many found out with the 2010 point realignments their Sun-Thurs vacation style went up in points required while the weekends went down.

As an example of what could happened, someone who bought exactly 205 pts last year and based that on staying at a particular time of year in a particular size villa suddenly found out they needed 217 pts for that same size villa and time period in 2010. Since the Fri-Sat points went down while the Sun-Thur points went up, many who were used to staying Sun-Thurs to avoid high weekend point costs suddenly found they were going to be hit by the now higher 2010 weekday point costs. Those folks are now faced with having to drop a day, borrow more from the next year, add-on or change their plans.

Having a small buffer, say 15-20 points, will provide some added protection against future point reallocation issues.

 

[the who #3]

i have 3 dvc homes and each time i thought i knew exactly how many pts to buy. surprise!!! each time i was wronge. each time i had to go back to my guide and buy a few more pts. and i am about to do it again. i purchased at blt the first week of sales to existing members and then right before making my first reserv. purchase a few more pts. now i wish i had more, so i will probably do it again.

i am a dvc/disney addict and love it more every year. during these tough economic times i worry that something will happen to my wdw that i love so much. may wdw have a lot of to keep them safe from the hard times of the world.

 

[Darkside]

We bought in at 150 pts, but added 50 more last year. I believe we need another 100 pts, but 300 pts is where I am comfortable with paying maintenace fees. We go to WDW about 2 times a year. It is easy to add points and we can buy over time, it's pretty nice to not have to worry about accomadations.

 

[redrosesix]

We're just in the planning stages, but so far we have this:

We always travel to WDW during Magic Season and it will usually be just me and my DD, sometimes my DH. The least amount of points we would need is 97 for a value studio, so we plan to buy at least 100. Since we can always book 11 months out, we're hoping we can get that -- if not, we can borrow and then add on to make up the difference. We definitely don't want to buy more points than we need, since that can be trouble too.

Since this is only 1 week of a 2 week trip, and not the only traveling we do every year, we're ok with just the studio.

 

[Anal Annie]

We figured being a family of 3 we'd almost always be good with staying in studios. We figured we'd likely want to be able to plan for 2 trips or 14 days / year and most likely would bounce between going in the Magic and Dream seasons. We thought there will be years where we might want to trade out for a week somewhere but yet would still want a few days at WDW. Also, there's likelyhood that if we don't plan to go 2x then we might want to splurge on a larger villa. Some resorts take more points some less and we knew we'd want to resort hop. But since we were purchasing at SSR we used that as our guide. Two weeks in a studio at SSR during the Magic season would use 123 pts. / week x 2 = 246. Round up = 250 points.

We decided to purchase our main master contract with 200 points and did a second contract for the other 50 points. That way if we ever decide we don't need all 250 points we can sell the 50 pointer. The smaller contracts are easier to sell and you can't sell just a portion of your master contract. It's all or nothing. You have to sell it the way you buy it. There were no extra fees or anything to do it this way, just twice the amount of paperwork to sign.

This is probably actually a good number of points for us but I DO feel like I'd like to have more and have been battling addonitis for some time now. I sometimes feel "points challenged" when there are some people who have hundreds and hundreds and HUNDREDS of points. It's very tempting to use our tax refund for an add-on but we need to just sit tight right now and not succumb to addonitis.......

Just think about not only your current travel patterns but how they might change as your kids get older etc. Sports and school often change how people vacation. Play with a few different scenarios and round UP!! The point charts are subject to re-allocation so I wouldn't buy EXACTLY the amount that you THINK you need. Build in a little buffer.

 

[crisi]

I'll give the opposing view....start out with no more points than you think you need. And if its over the minimum, buy it in two contracts. Its easier to add points than it is to sell them, its easier to sell small contracts than large ones, and contracts cannot be split up. Its easier to pay cash for a night than it is to rent a few leftover points. Its not too hard to find someone who can transfer in points to you if you need a lot more points one year. And you can bank and borrow.

Then, if after two years you know you will always be in "borrow" mode and you like DVC, do an add on.

 

[DVC Mike]

How easy is it to add points once you are a member?

Too easy; way too easy...

 

[DVCconvert]

Try to map out in your mind where you want to stay, when and for how long.
I'd buy based on that with a small margin say 10% "extra" -- you can always add on more either direct thur disney or via the resale market.

HTH

 

[Dillon]

, , , its easier to sell small contracts than large ones, and contracts cannot be split up. . . . .

Remember these words - Crisi is right. After our initial buy into DVC, we indeed added on to our contract (that story in another thread; add-on-itis!) but we added on in small numbers, balancing them out with the number of little ones that may eventually inherit the fun, but also knowing that contracts of up to 75 pts go fast if you need to rebalance your finances. We bought dual contract amounts directly from DVC at each step, i.e 60 + 60, etc.

Have fun and enjoy every moment!

 

[WilsonFlyer]

Too easy; way too easy...

 

[SunnieRN]

Too easy; way too easy...

I must say that add-on-itis is a horrible yet wonderful thing!?
We bought our 160 pts at AKV and the day we got home added on 50 pts when we realized we didn't have enough....
Then we added a 100 and 60 pt contract on with blt....
Now we want 130 pts and we are trying to decide by next week whether to add additional small contracts to blt or to add points on by purchasing at GCV. We are meeting with our guide while we are at WDW.
Oh man, when do you feel like you really have "enough" points???