please help me decide on DVC purchase

[VGCgroupie]

What do you book, resort view or boardwalk view?

So far only resort view. Eventually I will do Boardwalk View since it’s an amazing value

 

[Add-On-Itis]

So far only resort view. Eventually I will do Boardwalk View since it’s an amazing value

Even with home resort BW is not easy to book, those 2 bedroom resort is constantly walked. Alot easier if you only need a 1 bedroom

 

[VGCgroupie]

Even with home resort BW is not easy to book, those 2 bedroom resort is constantly walked. Alot easier if you only need a 1 bedroom

Yep. It's sad thing. But I have a better shot than others at 7 months.

 

[CraigInPA]

I don't know how you can ignore purchase price per point. That is such a big part of the equation. Yes after you have outlaid the cash upfront it comes down to the point charts and the dues.

Also if making these examples and paying the points why are you not showing examples using the home resort advantage?

All of your examples are using the dues of that said resort.

Your examples really should be the dues of your resort (BLT $8.02) multiplied by the cost of the room you would more likely to grab at 7 months or if your an owner the rooms that you have the first chance at grabbing.

As a BLT owner I'm not grabbing a Lake view that has quite the supply and instead would be grabbing a standard 1 br for 226 and costing $1,812.52 or a theme park for 305 costing $2,446.61

For Riviera use your BLT to stay at the preferred 1 BR meaning $8.02 x 328 = $2,630.56 but if I am an owner I'm taking advantage of the cheaper room so I would take my dues of $9.06 and multiply by the standard 1 BR of 259 costing $2,346.54

Likewise for AKL your BLT dues for a savannah 1 BR come out to $1,884.70 but as an owner there is a chance for a value 1 BR at $9.64 x 144 points which ends up costing $1,388.16

For the purposes of the calculation, the buy in price is a diminishing price per point per year. If I pay $100 for 40 years, every year is $2.50. So, year 1, it's $2.50, whereas my original maintenance fee was around $5, so it was 1/3 the price of the stay. Now, it's $2.50 and a maintenance fee of $8, which is about 20%. By the time I'm at 40 years, the $2.50 will still be $2.50, but the maintenance fee will be around $100 per point, making the buy in a diminutive 2.4% of the cost of that annual vacation stay. So, the buy in price is immaterial in the long term when compared with the maintenance fee and point chart. If you can afford to buy it, do the math and see how little paying an extra $1 or $5 per point over 40-50 years is on a yearly basis!

I attempted to present a likely scenario with comparable rooms across multiple resorts. You are assuming that people are always looking for the cheapest rooms. Personally, my wife and I NEVER stay in standard view rooms, even when we can get them. And, in some resorts, the number of standard resort rooms is small, and the competition large, such that you cannot regularly get them even at 11 months. One can play with these numbers all they want, but the overall issue is that some resorts have higher point charts, that, when combined with the maintenance fees, yield significantly more expensive stays. If you did the same calculation as I did, but used the cheapest rooms, you'd see that the only difference between your calculation and mine is that there's an across the board savings, but the resorts will pretty much stay in the same order of "costliness".

 

[Genie+]

For the purposes of the calculation, the buy in price is a diminishing price per point per year. If I pay $100 for 40 years, every year is $2.50. So, year 1, it's $2.50, whereas my original maintenance fee was around $5, so it was 1/3 the price of the stay. Now, it's $2.50 and a maintenance fee of $8, which is about 20%. By the time I'm at 40 years, the $2.50 will still be $2.50, but the maintenance fee will be around $100 per point, making the buy in a diminutive 2.4% of the cost of that annual vacation stay. So, the buy in price is immaterial in the long term when compared with the maintenance fee and point chart. If you can afford to buy it, do the math and see how little paying an extra $1 or $5 per point over 40-50 years is on a yearly basis!

I attempted to present a likely scenario with comparable rooms across multiple resorts. You are assuming that people are always looking for the cheapest rooms. Personally, my wife and I NEVER stay in standard view rooms, even when we can get them. And, in some resorts, the number of standard resort rooms is small, and the competition large, such that you cannot regularly get them even at 11 months. One can play with these numbers all they want, but the overall issue is that some resorts have higher point charts, that, when combined with the maintenance fees, yield significantly more expensive stays. If you did the same calculation as I did, but used the cheapest rooms, you'd see that the only difference between your calculation and mine is that there's an across the board savings, but the resorts will pretty much stay in the same order of "costliness".

I’d say there is no one right way to look at this because we all consider the time value of our money differently. For myself, I consider the buy-in broken down by year but I also looked at the TVM and averaged that across the years as well.

My $161pp Grand Flo direct had a buy-in of almost $4pp/py (per point/per year) being there were 41 years left on contract. If I apply 3% compounded interest over those 40 years, that $4 becomes $13.44 by the time it is paying for our room in 2063. But if I average out across all 41 years then on average it is under $8pp/py… so I just choose to look at that way instead of thinking that $4pp/py will be nearing $5 in 2030 dollars or over $9 in 2050 dollars, etc. Purely for simplification when I’m thinking about the cost of using my points. I’d rather estimate my buy-in at $8pp and my dues $8pp for a cost of $16pp each year as we use them than just see it as $4pp/py buy-in plus $8pp dues.

This was sort of a compromise with DH who said the money was going to get spent and not invested so TVM didn’t matter. Au contraire mon friere or however that goes, lol. We do carry some debt as a family. If I hadn’t given DVC $25k one summer, it could’ve saved some future dollars in interest or earned us money in the market. I was more comfortable applying at least a modest amount of TVM to represent paying toward future vacations years and decades beforehand.

DVC values points around $20pp for OTUP and MB which makes me think my $16pp cost estimate isn’t far off. I’d expect they have another layer of expense to cover in there, administrative costs or whatever. It’s tricky though! We do not plan to sell but if we did - I’d love to work out the actual math on what we paid, inflation over that time, salvage value, and look back at the rooms we booked. It would be fantastic if 20 years later my full actual expense per point worked out to $12pp in 2025 dollars. I’d love love love that! But even if it came much higher at say $20pp in 2025, I’d still feel fine and dandy about the vacations we took at that cost.

 

[eticketplease]

For the purposes of the calculation, the buy in price is a diminishing price per point per year. If I pay $100 for 40 years, every year is $2.50. So, year 1, it's $2.50, whereas my original maintenance fee was around $5, so it was 1/3 the price of the stay. Now, it's $2.50 and a maintenance fee of $8, which is about 20%. By the time I'm at 40 years, the $2.50 will still be $2.50, but the maintenance fee will be around $100 per point, making the buy in a diminutive 2.4% of the cost of that annual vacation stay. So, the buy in price is immaterial in the long term when compared with the maintenance fee and point chart. If you can afford to buy it, do the math and see how little paying an extra $1 or $5 per point over 40-50 years is on a yearly basis!

For me it is not a diminishing cost per year. It is not a depreciating cost that I can just write off my taxes. The money is gone in one swoop. I can't say for certain that I won't sell a contract or that my family will still be around to enjoy it therefore I don't take the price per point and divide it by how many years are left. Certainly your calculation works if you will be able to know for sure that you will hold it for the length of the contract. However nobody knows if that will be possible although we all hope that it is.

 

[eticketplease]

I attempted to present a likely scenario with comparable rooms across multiple resorts. You are assuming that people are always looking for the cheapest rooms. Personally, my wife and I NEVER stay in standard view rooms, even when we can get them. And, in some resorts, the number of standard resort rooms is small, and the competition large, such that you cannot regularly get them even at 11 months. One can play with these numbers all they want, but the overall issue is that some resorts have higher point charts, that, when combined with the maintenance fees, yield significantly more expensive stays. If you did the same calculation as I did, but used the cheapest rooms, you'd see that the only difference between your calculation and mine is that there's an across the board savings, but the resorts will pretty much stay in the same order of "costliness".

As a BLT owner I'm not grabbing a Lake view that has quite the supply and instead would be grabbing a standard 1 br for 226 and costing $1,812.52 or a theme park for 305 costing $2,446.61

Not correct my friend!

I did mention three options that were cheaper but I was showcasing using the home advantage.
Again as a BLT owner if I wanted a lake view I would use SAP to obtain that reservation and instead would use BLT points for a standard or TP view, the room categories that are hard to get unless you are an owner.

I was also pointing out since you used BLT in your example you should be using the price of those dues when calculating the price when 7 monthing to a different location and not the dues of the resort you are swapping to. You were taking each home resort and using their dues instead of yours and that goes back to the home advantage. Most people are grabbing the hardest to obtain rooms which the majority of the time is the lower point rooms or are rooms that cost the same but have different views such as boardwalk vs pool garden view.

 

[eticketplease]

I’d say there is no one right way to look at this

 

[Girlstar30]

We had a positive experience with Alamo at FLL through Costco! I will always book from Alamo.

Me too! Im going to be loyal to them because there was no bs, we even zipped thru some toll roads without paying cuz we didnt know how to or if we were even supposed to pay, I still dont know to this day

I was worried they would charge me and nothing

 

[Girlstar30]

Its funny because all these high seasons that everyone goes during is actually the hardest time for us to go.

I was really pushing for Easter because ive never experienced that and my wife's vacation calendar was full for those weeks leading up to March. We were lucky that we got a couple of days before Easter approved so at least I can go to this Epcot extravaganza and see the egg displays.

All the people with high seniority request during those times. No way we would ever be able to go around Christmas or NYE, which sucks cuz id love to use my home resort advantages during Xmas and nye.

I guess this is a good thing in some ways. Im sure we could swing the first week of december or def when Christmas time starts in November and the points that these high seasons command is crazy considering that we staying in 2 bedrooms in September for the points were staying in one bedrooms. And for one of our weeks we have to stay in one of those awful studios If I just pushed it back to May we could stay in one bedrooms the whole time But then I have to wait another month!!

What do you guys think, is easter worth it once or is it better to go during a cheaper time with less crowds? Help. I still see the resorts i want open for May in a one bedroom.

 

[PolyRob]

Its funny because all these high seasons that everyone goes during is actually the hardest time for us to go.

I was really pushing for Easter because ive never experienced that and my wife's vacation calendar was full for those weeks leading up to March. We were lucky that we got a couple of days before Easter approved so at least I can go to this Epcot extravaganza and see the egg displays.

All the people with high seniority request during those times. No way we would ever be able to go around Christmas or NYE, which sucks cuz id love to use my home resort advantages during Xmas and nye.

I guess this is a good thing in some ways. Im sure we could swing the first week of december or def when Christmas time starts in November and the points that these high seasons command is crazy considering that we staying in 2 bedrooms in September for the points were staying in one bedrooms. And for one of our weeks we have to stay in one of those awful studios If I just pushed it back to May we could stay in one bedrooms the whole time But then I have to wait another month!!

What do you guys think, is easter worth it once or is it better to go during a cheaper time with less crowds? Help. I still see the resorts i want open for May in a one bedroom.

Easter itself is kinda crazy for crowds. You can still enjoy F&G, the egg hunt, and egg displays the week prior which would be my personal preference if you aren't stuck booking for a specific spring break week.

I much prefer March/April to May at WDW. May is hotter and rainier. Anything new opening for "summer" doesn't typically happen until later May for Mem Day and the points go up significantly.