Psychological traps of DVC

[ShaneDJ]

This is the biggest thing we gained... The sense of a forced vacation, a respite from the world for that one week where we can connect as a family, know the hotel bill is already paid, and just enjoy each other's company. It is a really special feeling...

The perceived psychological traps may be dumbed down to feelings of joy, happiness, and fulfillment. I have never had a bad trip to Disney.

When we're there, we're having our best times. It brings me a great deal of fulfillment that my wife and I's hard work has allowed us the financial freedom to continue to invest more of our money into experiences and memories with our kids. I don't feel trapped psychologically at all.

As others have mentioned… it is the forced vacation. We used to always put off vacation. It just seemed frivolous. Honestly, we were kind of tense and miserable. Now all we do is vacation. We go somewhere pretty much every two months. I don’t know what has happened to us, but wasting a lot of money on dvc has made us really happy. It’s made it so that we don’t have an option anymore. We have to vacation.

So for us dvc has relieved us of the psychological pressure of deciding to vacation.

Love these comments! They resonated with us.

Before we owned DVC, I dreaded thinking about the massive hotel bill from WDW stays (and we've stayed on hotel rack rates at Value, Moderate, and Deluxe WDW properties). I never liked the trip planning due to the stress of money "wasted" in on-property stays.

Now owning DVC, I'm excited about the future stays with our points! It's exciting owning DVC points and thinking about how we might use them. Makes planning future trips fun!

Before DVC, there was no way that I would ever pay cash rates to stay at the Copper Creek Cabins or the crazy beautiful Riviera 3-bedroom Grand Villa. But now we've had wonderful, amazing family experiences at these insanely priced room types. We won't spend that many points often, but we also will never go back to just a studio.

DVC ownership has made our vacation planning fun again, and we are still excited about owning DVC points.

 

[Cfabar1]

Love these comments! They resonated with us.

Before we owned DVC, I dreaded thinking about the massive hotel bill from WDW stays (and we've stayed on hotel rack rates at Value, Moderate, and Deluxe WDW properties). I never liked the trip planning due to the stress of money "wasted" in on-property stays.

Now owning DVC, I'm excited about the future stays with our points! It's exciting owning DVC points and thinking about how we might use them. Makes planning future trips fun!

Before DVC, there was no way that I would ever pay cash rates to stay at the Copper Creek Cabins or the crazy beautiful Riviera 3-bedroom Grand Villa. But now we've had wonderful, amazing family experiences at these insanely priced room types. We won't spend that many points often, but we also will never go back to just a studio.

DVC ownership has made our vacation planning fun again, and we are still excited about owning DVC points.

Another thing... a couple years in... it has "uncomplicated" our vacations.... Having fewer options, and knowing there are repercussions like holding, etc. has made it easier to just book the trip and forget about it and not worry and stress about rebooking our vacations ad nauseam in hopes of "getting it right".

 

[atthebeachclub]

Another thing... a couple years in... it has "uncomplicated" our vacations.... Having fewer options, and knowing there are repercussions like holding, etc. has made it easier to just book the trip and forget about it and not worry and stress about rebooking our vacations ad nauseam in hopes of "getting it right".

This is it for me too. After kids and after one of my parents died and the other sold my childhood home, I stopped vacationing at all (we used to go visit my parents and stay with them as our only vacation destination).

It was too complex and difficult to deal with kids and my schedule (which requires PTO requests over 8 months in advance). But I can do a DVC vacation. I love it. It’s simple. It’s fun. It gets us out of arctic type weather. We all enjoy it. And I can bring my own parent (the one remaining). The predictability is a huge plus for me.

 

[Carouselofplanning]

Some psychological traps I've noticed:

1) Willingness to give up 60-90 minutes of your time for a piece of "swag" worth $5 (e.g., a plastic water bottle, fanny pack, or string backpack) when most of us would otherwise claim that our time is a lot more valuable when on vacation.

2) The desire to "future proof" the ownership (at a very high extra cost upfront, often compounded by borrowing at a high interest rate) by worrying about what things will look like 17-20 years down the road when 2042 resorts expire. It's highly likely that having those extra funds invested in the stock market for 20 years will be worth a lot more down the road than the act of "future proofing" upfront...

#2 is true but at the same time how many of the people who look at DVC and don’t buy say to themselves “you know what let me take that $20-$40k and invest it in the stock market”.” In reality they spend most of it on other things. Maybe not all at once but majority of the time it’s simply spent.

 

[brightmango]

In reality they spend most of it on other things.

I think about this quite a lot. DVC, for me, acts as a barrier against spending money frivolously since I won't have it to spend. And assuming I didn't buy DVC and put that money in the stock market, I'm still paying out of pocket for Disney trips every year. So that kills the invest vs. buy DVC argument for me a bit.

 

[Brian Noble]

And assuming I didn't buy DVC and put that money in the stock market, I'm still paying out of pocket for Disney trips every year. So that kills the invest vs. buy DVC argument for me a bit.

Except that the argument is not "invest vs. buy DVC". The argument is "pay as you go or pay up front."

Here's the basic idea. Suppose you know you want to stay in a DVC 1BR for a week every year during Spring Break. There are two ways to do that. One way: Buy enough DVC points to make that work and pay your Dues each year. The other way: Put the purchase price into an investment account of your choice, and add what you would have spent on Dues each month from then on going forward. Then, each year, you rent a DVC 1BR from the supplier of your choice---a private owner, a rental broker, or Disney.

The question is: which one "costs less"? You have to make a few assumptions, but (a) they are not that difficult and (b) the answer isn't particularly sensitive to small variations in them. After that it is just 10th grade math plus a little bit of economics.

Every time this comes up, people seem to want to cast Option Two as "invest and never vacation," and that's not it at all.

 

[atthebeachclub]

Option 2 does work. But you need a significantly larger pile of money to start with in order to maintain your vacations vs buying DVC. But also, you need the mental fortitude to schedule your vacation and spend the money year after year. I lack in that department.

 

[Brian Noble]

But you need a significantly larger pile of money to start with in order to maintain your vacations vs buying DVC.

Maybe. Maybe not. I think MouseSavers does a pretty good job with this.

https://www.mousesavers.com/other-disney-vacations/disney-vacation-club/#opportunity

I will note that using fairly favorable (for buying DVC) assumptions, my first-year direct points ownership is pretty close to par with renting. Over time that should get better, because only Dues are subject to inflationary pressures in Option One, while the total cost is in Option Two. But it is slow.

The other difference in Option One vs Option Two is that Option Two has "sequence risk" while Option One does not. Of course, that also means it has "sequence reward" but you won't know which one you get until after it happens. And, reducing that variability itself has some value.

 

[atthebeachclub]

Renting is hard to beat financially, but I won't do it, personally, as it lacks flexibility.