Seeking the weight of authority....

[ricapito]

The responses both here and via email are just more evidence of the caliber of people on this board, amazing.

The fact that so many people fall on different sides of the issue tell me I'm not crazy at least for struggling with this decision, it's a hard one.

 

[Muushka]

Originally posted by ricapito
The fact that so many people fall on different sides of the issue tell me I'm not crazy at least for struggling with this decision, it's a hard one.

Boy, you are not kidding that it is a hard one. The fact that you presented such a well thought dilema, well I had to have my husband read your post also before we could come to an agreement on what would we would do if we were in your shoes!

Best of luck in your decision. And welcome to the DVC boards

 

[Dean]

I would agree that it does not sound like buying DVC is a sound decision for you at present. May I offer a few alternatives. You could buy a cheap timeshare and trade into Orlando every eyar. Not DVC but there are some great places. You could also rent timeshare, likely for about as little. You could rent points and likely not be any the worse off if you play your cards right. You could chase codes and still likely save money. There's no doubt that DVC fits your personal situation, just not your financial one. If you can do the cheaper options and save money toward a DVC purchase, by the time your personal situation is stable, you'll be ready to buy in full force with 150 points or more.

 

[mbb]

Originally posted by ricapito

The fact that so many people fall on different sides of the issue tell me I'm not crazy at least for struggling with this decision, it's a hard one.

Emotional vs. Financial

Tough decision...one that we made, and struggled through as well. So many of us, obviously, have been right where you are now.

When your heart wants what it wants...ask, what does it really need?

Good luck, and keep us posted



Mary Beth

 

[KLR-wlv]

My family's situation is similar to yours...my husband started taking pre-med after our first child was born. That was 7 years ago - and he graduates from MEd school this May (!). We have 2 kids - 7 & 5. We bought DVC 3 years ago - in med school with neither of us working...We are not frugal at all...we'll most likely be paying of student loans until we retire but honestly - with the stress of school I decided I wanted to take care of my kids and have great family vacations to plan, look forward to and enjoy. I totally understand where you are coming from. Now - you certainly don't need to buy into DVC to enjoy vacations - but what is has done for us is make us take them. We know other med students with kids - and other families not in school who have decent incomes - who never take a vacation and we have used DVC about 3 times a year since buying. I guess I look at debt a lot differently than most since living in debt has allowed us to live a comfortable life at the most critical time. And knowing you'll most likely have a decent job afterwards - you need to live your life in spite of being in school and being insanely busy. I always justify it by saying it's the price of a cheaper car that will fall apart in 5-7 years...but you'll get another 35 years out of DVC...If it will alleviate stress and provide an outlet for you and your family - which you need - than I say do it. We did and have never regretted it. But we're not ones to freak out about debt all that much. we should! but we gave up long ago! Good luck!

 

[Stinson]

We have 4 children, and although we love DVC (members since 1994, OKW and BWV), we have found that purchasing our Vacation Club points was only the beginning of the expense of our DVC vacations. As a family of six, we budget for 6 round-trip plane tickets (from Boston to Orlando), 6 park passes, money to get to and from the airport (rental car one way and Mears Shuttle the other way), as well as the cost of food and all the other small and large expenses that arise during a vacation. Then, as others have mentioned, there is the expense of the annual maintenance fee. While DVC is a great way to pre-purchase vacations for a lifetime, it is very expensive and you may be able to get just as much of a Disney vacation experience purchasing one vacation at a time, paying as you go, and avoiding the stress of added debt. Good luck.

 

[borncinderella]

KLR-wlv brings up an excellent point.

You are living a life where "working hard" is a matter of course.
It is easy to get lost in it; particularly when you graduate and
feel you need to "pay your dues."

Doctors and lawyers -- it is easy to get very wrapped up
in the day-to-day. I have fallen into the "trap" of taking very little
vacation in order to pay down my debts for the past three years.
Our most recent trip to WDW was the first time in my marriage
of four years to enjoy play time with my family.

I come from a family where we took 2 family vacations together --
one to the Grand Canyon, and one to WDW. I have a wonderful
family, but we were all working so hard all of our lives that I feel
I have been trained to be the ultimate workaholic. I was even
volunteering for extra days! Having an excellent work ethic
does not necessarily create a feeling of family, and our
puchase is not only an investment in our family, it is a reminder
for me everyday why I go to work in the first place. Researching
going on vacation has forced me to actually value this time off
for the first time in my life -- for the better in my general state
of mind! For the workaholic who is a penny-pincher, taking the
time off and spending money for vacation are just two excuses
to never take vacation. Your personality may not tend in this
direction, but speaking for myself, it has refocused our family
towards goals that include play as well as work. My parents
taught me to "work hard," now I am hoping to teach my children
it is ok to give themselves permission to "play hard" once a year
as well. The fact I have made this pre-paid financial arrangement
will force me to save for our trips home and, ultimately, our time
together.

As to SSR versus a resale, give yourself the extra points. You
sound like you are going into this with your eyes wide open,
and if you are working as hard as I suspect you are, take all
the points you can to give your family all the space you need.
If you can finance with SSR & can sleep at night with the payment
of $190/month, do it! I consider the purchase an addition to
my health insurance where I directly benefit from stress reduction.
(It just reduces my stress to cruise these board postings!)
If it becomes a problem, points can always be rented.
(From paying pretty close attention to these boards, it seems
people have a lot of success renting.)

Just my $.02 (from a recovering workaholic and newbie DVCer).
Good luck in your decision!

 

[MrShiny]

NOt knowing your details exactly, it is hard to say what to do. However, if you buy SSR, you will probably be able to finance at a much better rate than resale, and you wouldn't tie up your capital like you would paying cash for the resale.

If things work out, you'll be fine. If not, you will probably be able to recoup much of your costs reselling SSR in a few years.

Let's say you buy SSR 150 points with 20% down.

Your payment would probably be around $140 plus another $50 for dues. Keep in mind the interest and about $10 of dues per month might be deductible.

Let's say you get through 3 years and decide it's too much. Let's say you can sell your points for $75.

You'll get $11,250. You'll have paid $9,425 in dues and mortgage payments. You'll still owe about $6,600 on the loan, so your profit would be about $4,635. So the net effect is you paid $9,425-$4,635 = $4,790 for probably about 15 nights worth of accomodations at WDW, or about $320/night. (could be lower depending on room & time of year - I assumed a 2 bedroom to fit everyone).

Now of course if you are able to keep making payments, you'd even reach a point where you'd get payback on your investment.

 

[ricapito]

I've taken the time to read everyone's post at least 3 times, and my wife has read them through as well.

As of now, the majority of you, by a slim margin counting the dozen or so personal emails, fall on the side of "take a bit of a leap of faith" and put my family first so long as the financial burden is not unduly large. There have been even a few of you with directly analogous scenarios to mine it seems, and no one in that scenario had any regret it seemed for buying. Many have proffered the analogy to a car payment, and how much more you get from this for less per month! And of course the "worst case scenario" -resale- isn't that bad at all. As for which buy option, the majority again to be in favor of SSR, over resale, but not by much... with deference to the slight minority position of "don't buy", the points are equally well argued. The purpose of this post has been far exceeded as I have heard a lot of points made I'd never heard before, and a few new tips too.

An interesting result thus far overall. I will indeed post our ultimate decision when we make it, and since the deadline is a couple of weeks away that is likely when it will happen. Thanks again, and if anyone has any other insight please don't hesitate to post.

 

[panfan]

Especially if you will go to WDW anyway....

My husband and I first thought about DVC back in 1993...we were newly married with no kids...we decided not to....(Bad decision)....Then we looked into it again when BWV were being sold...again didn't buy....( all the while visiting WDW at least once a year and staying in delux) FINALLY, last may we took the plunge to BCV....we have used our points 3 times so far!! We can really stretch 150...

We did finance the points and we do have credit card debt and car payments...but guess what we can afford the payments and are certainly not over our heads !! If we had only done it back in 1993 we would have 230 points for less $$

My opinion is if you can swing it...Why not ??? Sometimes the safest decision is not always the best....I know there are all types out there ....no debt etc....but I say you only live once and I'm not gonna just sit around and wait for it to happen !!

 

[MrShiny]

Oops - realized my numbers were a little off (forgot recouping your down pmt and miscalclated your ppl bal at 3 years).

So:
Buy 150pts @ $89/pt = $13,350
20% down = $2,670
Amount financed = $10,680
Payment @ 9.75% 120 months = $139.66/mnth
Dues @ $3.84/pt = $48/mnth

Sell after 36 payments:
Ppl bal = $8,478.64
Sell @ $75/pt = $11,250
Profit = $11,250 - $8,478.64 = $2,771.36
You paid = $2,670 down, $5,027.85 ppl+int, $1,728 dues = $9,425.85

So your cost was $9,425.85 - $2,771.36 = $6,654.49
Which would be $443.63/night (still a little less than rack rate)

Sell at $80, and it's $393.63 for night

Sell at $75, but squeeze 20 nights out of your 150 pts, and it's $332.72.

Still in ths "worst case," you are getting accomodations similar to what you would have paid just to rent them.

Hold them longer and not only would the sale price be higher probably (up to a point - it won't be higher in 2053!), but your payback occurs (I think others have calculated that at about 7-8 week long trips).

Hope you are happy with whatever you choose!

 

[Disney Doll]

I would make the recommendation that oyu buy SSR and finance through Disney. When DH and I first bought in 1997, we financed it for 10 years, because that had the lowest monthly loan payment. Our hope was that we would be bale to make a larger-than-required loan payment every month, but if something happened some months where we couldn't afford to pay more, we had a fairly low payment due. That is what we did, and were able to pay it off in about 3 1/2-4 years.

Another option is to finance through a home equity line, and then a portion of the interest can be written off.

I understand that you have small children, and DW may be a SAHM, but is there anytihng she can do to alleviate some of the financial crunch??? Even a work-from-home thing??? I have a neighbor who had a small crafts business form home.She would make items and then go to various craft fairs and sell them. Between that and her DH working full-time, she was able to be a SAHM, but bring in some income. There are various things that DW may be able to do from home...computer work etc. Just a suggestion, and I am certainly not looking to add more work onto what I am already sure is a very busy life for DW!!!!

I can't help but think,from the tone of your letter, that your heart is to buy DVC and have that time with your children when you can.

 

[disneyberry]

<font face="times" size="+0">it's unclear if the recommendations towards buying SSR are because people feel that you will need 150 points anyway, or if it's because Disney offers financing options, so you don't have to pay so much upfront right now.

in any case, if it is the former, that you need more than the 75 points via resale that you originally mentioned, then you could also consider a larger resale package. maybe 100 points? or even 150 points, which seem to be much easier to find than packages of less than 100 points.

if it is the financing issue, i believe there is a way to finance resales through a company called Tammac. i don't know the details about it though. a DVC resale broker could probably help get you info about that.

i'm just pointing these out because i still believe that resale is the way to go to save money. and i'm of the opinion that the extra 12 years doesn't seem to be the most important thing for your family <i>right now</i>. but that's JMHO, and i don't know any more about your family than what little info you provided. also, there's the usual "buy where you want to stay" thing. you did not mention if you had one particular resort that you really wanted to stay at. of if there were any resorts you did NOT want to stay at.

and, i wanted to reiterate (esp since MrShiny did offer a few selling scenarios) that you should not count on being able to get out via resale. it's dangerous to assume that the resale market will remain as good as it currently is.</font>

 

[chunkygal]

Everyone has contributed great perspectives and thought.

DVC is one purchase my husband and I agonized over after med school -- same situation--- loans.... But by living less "large" in other areas we paid it off in 2 years (300 Points 1995). WE knew we would always take vacations. It is the best money we have ever spent.

I have never done this until this year, but one to soften the blow( and I would buy the 150) is rent out your points every other year
and use this to make payments until you are in a better situation. You will have many years still to enjoy.


The other perspective is children and time. I have a child who is 25. Yesterday I was 25. It will be over before you know it -- making memories is more important than making oney. YOu don't have to go DVC to do that, but some of our best scrapbook memories are looking at our DVC times.

 

[Stinson]

I spoke with my wife this morning and she agreed that DVC is one of the best purchases we have ever made. But someone in this thread correctly stated that if it brings 51 weeks of pain, then it is not worth it.

 

[dvcssr1]

I will try and keep this short.
We (DH and I) started to take our kids to Disney many years ago. We went 1st year and stayed off property. Went back 2 years later and stayed on property, just that one time to see what it was like but would probably not again it was just ''too expensive". Well that was a joke. Haven't stayed off since.

Well, anyway, the next year oldest DS 13 at time was diagnosed with a very rare heart birth defect and things were not looking good. He needed open heart surgery-right away! Day of surgery they were wheeling him into pre-op and the only thing he said was "will I ever see you guys again?" If that doesn't break a parents heart nothing will. Well DH said sure and when you come home we are planning next Disney trip. Surgery went good. Pretty much the first thing he asked was "when are we gonna go?"
Needless to say we started planning the trip when he came home and have been going at least once a year since.

Fast forward. DS is now 25 and a proud owner of 150 BCV points and DH and I own 150 SSR points. Other DS is going to honeymoon at Disney this July. We don't have a big house or a fancy car but we have memories with our kids. We will endlessly talk about our vacations at Disney. In fact, just this afternoon we were looking at pics from our vacations at Disney with our future DIL. DS showing his bride to be all of the things they will be seeing.They are young once enjoy them before it is to late. You cannot go back and get those years back.

The only thing I would do differntly would have been to purchase sooner. The only reason we didn't was DH and I thought we couldn't afford it. Well, we would have saved a lot of money if we had. I am not saying to take food out of the mouth of kids. But if you go anyway and spend the money, why not put the same money towards your own piece of the "magic" however big or small it would be.


(BTW, DS is a healthy, active, DVC owning adult now.)