If you buy from
DVC direct, you would have effectively paid $85 per point at Saratoga Springs. However that $10 discount referred to in the above post expired today and I haven't see what the new discount is. Figure out how many points you need per year, multiply by $85, and you have the initial one-time cost for 50 years worth of points. DVC pays closing, you pay the dues. As the other poster said, Disney makes financing easy, but the rates are around 10% APR, with 20% down.
Dues are around $4 per point, per year. At SSR, I believe they are $3.83; at Old Key West where I'm buying, they are $3.86. At some resorts, they are close to $5. They will go up, although probably slowly.
If you buy resale, what you pay per point varies from resort to resort. Click the "Current DVC Resales" link above to get an idea. You'll see prices generally from the mid-$60's to the mid-$80's, depending on resort. (For the most part, when you buy resale, you are getting
37 years of points.)
With a resale, you get your own financing (a lot of people who need financing use home equity loans) and you pay closing costs. I don't have an accurate number, but figure on roughly 3% closing costs. [The actual process of buying resale is a WHOLE other topic, which could take volumes.]
How can people afford it? People who can afford to vacation at Disney in style can afford it. They are just pre-paying their future vacations. I think if you surveyed, you would find that few DVC owners finance - or if they do, it is only for a short period.
DVC works for people who go to Disney and stay in a certain level of accommodation for a certain number of nights every year - or in the case of many of our European neighbors, every other year. To determine if it is for
your family, you have to look realistically at your anticipated visits - how many people, how many nights, what size accommodations, etc., and then compute the number of points you need and the associated costs.
If the numbers work, they work. If they don't, it's a great thing, but it's not for you. There are a lot of other wonderful ways to enjoy WDW beside DVC. DVCers have no monopoly on magic.