In need of opinions

[disneycrazed139]

I have to agree with Richyams on this one.
I would say that if it possible, as you say it is, then why not do it? Other expenses always come up. That's a given, but it's also a given that the price of DVC is going to go up fast. Say you wait 3 years. I don't think it's inconceivable that DVC will be $100/point pretty soon (which is 20% more than it would be now with the $79 point incentive). You could finance 150 points now for about 10,500 after down payment. In a few years this same 150 points (after 10% down) will likely be 13,500. Anyone else have any thoughts on what the numbers will be in 1, 2, 3, years, etc.? I guess $100/point by 2007.

Food for thought anyway. You could pay interest now or pay more later--either way, it might come out the same. I would find it hard to pass up (actually I couldn't resist). But what matters most is your comfort zone. You need to think it's the best deal. Hey, there's always resales, too! (which might be your better option if you decide you have to wait and use your home equity).

 

[pmcpmc]

Every new family has these problems but experience shows that buying property at an early age has its benefits and typically now a days 80-90% of income in uk is spent on house purchase withall its benefits.
go for it ,you can always rent the points if you need the money in any year.
worst scenario you can resell.
Because of Disney's buy back system prices stay up unlike other timeshares.
May you live as long as you want to. lol

 

[septbride2002]

Okay now I'm thinking we should do it. AUGH! I have forwarded your comments to my DH to think about. Here is a couple of questions...

1) How does one rent points? We don't plan on going in 2005 and would either bank our points or we could rent them to give us some breathing room.

2) Since 150 points can get us a studio at SS for 12 nights (we could never take vacation that long) do you buy Annual passes and go twice a year...something I'm not sure we could afford. Or could we rent half our points to someone else. Please revert back to question 1 on renting points.

3) Is there anywhere besides Disney Financing or a Home Equity Line that I can borrow the money from? I don't want to put the entire purchase on a credit card (my heart just stopped). Because there is no way I could pay it off in 6 months on the no interest. Although I bet I could put half on the credit card...hmmmm.....

Just some comments:
Our jobs are pretty secure at the moment. DH has worked for the same company for almost 5 years and they have a great business going. I work in lending for a national bank and am pretty secure as well. My commission fluctuates month to month and that is a concern.

Rich you are cracking me up!

~Amanda

 

[DisneyKidds]

I cast my vote with Rich. You are young, despite the fact that you might have to tighten the belt you have determined you can afford the $185 a month, your incomes are probably on the rise, the current incentive will make it a little easier to get in now, most DVCers biggest regret is that they didn't buy sooner.................these are all indicators that it might be worth a go, IMHO. But let me ask a few questions.

If you don't purchase SSR now will you be making any trips to WDW (paying cash) anyway? If the answer is yes, why throw that money away renting when it can be put toward the cost of ownership?

If you don't buy SSR now are you REALLY going to put that $185 in a savings account? Now be honest (with yourself if not with us ). Yeah, in a perfect world you would. In a perfect world my DW and I would have put away a lot of excess disposable income when we were younger. Not that we didn't save, but being young, new homeowners, no children.......................oh how easy it was to dispose of (read: piss away) $185 a month. I only wish that we explored DVC when on our honeymoon at WDW and bought into DVC 10 years sooner than we did. Some of that money that we pissed away could have paid for our DVC ownership long before we had kids, etc - and all it would have taken was a little belt tightening ten years ago.

If you can afford the payment now, if you have good jobs and your incomes are on the rise, if you are going to spend money to vacation at WDW anyway.................I'd consider jumping in now.

Yes, the "responsible" thing to do for young new homeowners might be to wait a year or two. Then again, the best time to take a calculated risk is when you are young.

 

[DVCtinkerbell]

Go for it! I agree with all the others who say the same. It will make you vacation at time in your life when it could be hard to get away. In the hardest of times, you could always sell it.

Good luck with your decision.

 

[Disney Doll]

I'm going to go on to Rich's side (now I am scaring myself!!!! ) and say think seriously about buying it now.

There is a great incentive to buy SSR now. That can be gone at any moment. If you were to rn into financial hardshiop, the DVC is relatively easy to sell, and you probably wouldn't suffer a huge, if any, loss.

If you're truly not planning on going every year, the renting option gives you a good alternative. You can rent through these boards, or to friends, if you feel more comfortable not dealing with strangers.

Right now, you don't have kids, so you don't have all the extra expense of kids. You say you're not planning to have kids for a few years,and I assume you will be able to stick to that plan, so why not take a bit of a risk now, when you are only risking for the 2 of you, as opposed to the 3 or 4 of you????

Furniture for your home...you can furnish a home fairly inexpensively(especially your first home). You don't need to spend a fortune on decent, serviceable furniture. When DH and I first got married, we bought our bedroom set for $200 through The Bargain News...a local magazine that has all stuff for sale. While it would not necessarily have been my first choice in furniture if money had been no object, the fact was that at that time, money was an object and so I settled for it for a while, knowing that eventually life would lead me to being able to buy the bedroom set I wanted. And so it did...we just bought(12 years later!!!) our dream bedroom set, and gave the $200 set to a friend for his first house. And we used a North Carolina furniture company, so the bedroom didn't cost as much as it would have locally. We bought a used dining room set from my friend's aunt for $250. We did get a new couch and loveseat for the livingroom, and a new kitchen table for the lkitchen though. My point being, there are ways to have attractive furniture without spending a fortune.

When DH and I were at WDW on our honeymoon in 1991, they were just building OKW!!!!!! At the time, I said "We should buy that" because we both knew that WDW was someplace that we'd want to keep going back to. Well...we didn't buy it then, because we were saving for a house, we were just married...blah,blah,blah. We went 1 or 2 times per year every year, and by the time we bought in 1997, for what we had spent on trips in the intervening years, we could have had the DVC paid off if we had bought in 1991.

Only you can decide financially what's right for you, but if the stretch isn't too big, think seriously about it.

 

[septbride2002]

Okay just got off the phone with DH. If we take out a disney card and put $5000 of the loan on the credit card with the 0% interest for 6 months that brings our payments down to $113.00 a month over 10 years and with a monthly due of $47 brings the total to 160.00.

Since the payments don't start until June that gives us 8 months before the payments start. Recently we have been putting $800 to $1000 a month towards our credit cards anyway to get them paid off. So to continue doing so would not be a big deal it just means only putting $400 a month into the savings account instead of $1400 a month. We would have to put off buying DH a newer car until after the credit card was paid down but I think he is willing to wait.

Does this make sense to do?

~Amanda

 

[septbride2002]

Disneykidds:
If you don't buy SSR now are you REALLY going to put that $185 in a savings account? Now be honest (with yourself if not with us ). Yeah, in a perfect world you would. In a perfect world my DW and I would have put away a lot of excess disposable income when we were younger. Not that we didn't save, but being young, new homeowners, no children.......................oh how easy it was to dispose of (read: piss away) $185 a month. I only wish that we explored DVC when on our honeymoon at WDW and bought into DVC 10 years sooner than we did. Some of that money that we pissed away could have paid for our DVC ownership long before we had kids, etc - and all it would have taken was a little belt tightening ten years ago.

Actually I am really good at saving money. Currently we are taking $20 out of our paychecks everymonth to invest in Disney Dollars for spending on our trip. A certain amount of money has to go into the checking account every month and a certain amount has to go to our credit cards every month. Yes occassionally we do "piss away" some money but for the most part we are pretty strict with ourselves. Like I said we were forced to grow up fast so we have gotten used to brown bagging lunch everyday and saving money for a special occassion. Plus all our friends are in as much debt as we are. So we usually hang around our houses and drink cheap beer and wine for a good night out. Anyone is invited if you can make it down to St. Louis!

~Amanda

 

[DisneyKidds]

To answer your questions on renting...................

Renting is pretty easy. Long story short, we decided to purchase enough points initially to cover accomodations we'd need in the future. This way we got the purchase over with when we had the cash available and won't have to make another purchase at a later date. Soooo.......................we currently own enough points to stay in a 2 br for a week a year in the summer even though we only stay in studios during off season now. That has led us to making two trips a year (and getting AP's) but still leaves us with points to rent out. So, yes - you can use some of your points to stay for a week in a studio and then rent out the remaining points. If you won't use your first year points at all you could rent them and knock $1,500 off the loan right off the bat. Renting can be a nice way to defray part of the cost of ownership if you won't be using all your points. Renting out points takes a little bit of work, but we have always been able to rent out whatever points we haven't been able to use. Check the rent/trade board and you can find a lot of info on renting.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Let me just say that I WISH we could have done DVC at a young age. I say go for it. You will be able to afford it less after kids come along.

 

[Richyams]

Remember what made America great!

Risk takers, people not afraid to move forward and make themsleves as good as they could be. Everyone striving for better lives benefits the entire country....

Thanks for being a good American!

 

[Laurabearz]

I am on the fence here.... both sides offer great arguements....


I suppose I am leaning towards the do it now, with the Disney credit card, like you stated.... Just pay that sucker off ASAP to avoid as much interest as you can. BUT Cancel ALL your other CCs so your not tempted by them.
I also like the idea of you renting out points. That can get you thru tough times, and help pay the sucker off.

But at the same time.... house can eat up money faster than anything.... What if your furnace blows up? Plumbing problems can cost 1000's..... Etc....

AND as others have mentioned... just because you accomdations are paid for... nothing else is.... Food, Tickets, airfare all add up quickly at WDW. With that said, we just got back from our first no park trip, and it was wonderful. SSR is sooooo close to DD... a 4 day trip just hanging out there would be great. The Comedy club is Marvy!

And one more note.... have ya thought about a part time job at The Disney Store.... you could get the CM discount for DVC... saving ya even more money! <wink>

 

[tjkraz]

Originally posted by septbride2002
Okay just got off the phone with DH. If we take out a disney card and put $5000 of the loan on the credit card with the 0% interest for 6 months that brings our payments down to $113.00 a month over 10 years and with a monthly due of $47 brings the total to 160.00.

One comment--DVC is actually giving you an interest-free period of almost 9 months. Rather than putting the $5000 on a credit card, I'd suggest making the minimum 10% down payment with DVC, and then put the rest in your savings until June 1, 2004. At that time, write a check to DVC to eliminate a significant portion of your debt.

Sounds like you don't already have a Disney Visa, and I wouldn't recommend waiting for an application to go through. The current SSR promotion is scheduled to end no later than 10/31. With $1500 in savings on the line, I wouldn't want to take a chance that the promotion might end early.

 

[septbride2002]

Dang Lisa! I was already to throw in the towel and say no and then I read your post! Augh! Now we will be running numbers when we get home tonight.

~Amanda

 

[disneyberry]

Amanda...

oh beware of this message board! the people here somehow manage to convince most people to buy into DVC ASAP, and then once you've bought in, they convince you that you don't have enough points, and you need to add on right away. and it doesn't ever end!
you must beware!

anyway, sorry to be repetitive, but i have to say again: why put yourself into more debt right away?
please don't try to justify more debt by saying your friends are in just as much debt as you are...
i'm so happy to hear you finally paid off your credit card debt. i really don't think the thing to do now is to immediately pile on another huge loan.

about me: dbf and i are in our mid-20s as well. we are not married (yet), we have not bought a house yet. we do not have stable jobs (both self-employed consultants).
early this year, despite all of the above, we decided to buy DVC.
we paid for the whole purchase in cash.
there was a thread a few months ago about whether it's crazy to purchase DVC before you've even bought a house. it was an interesting read.
anyway, i still sometimes feel like what we did was a rash impulse purchase.
but my own justification is: we managed to save up a huge amount of money pre-911 when we did have stable jobs, so we could comfortably afford DVC this year. and most importantly, at least we did not put ourselves into debt w/ the purchase.