A little reservation and banking and borrowing 101:
1. Regardless of use year you can go anytime of year and call to make ressies 11 months in advance at home resort and 7 at others. Use year has no impact on that rule. Points you actually use are determ ined by when you will be there not when you make the ressie.
2. The only time you would borrow points is when you make a ressie. You can borrow points from a use year back into the immediately preceding use year for a trip in that use year. For example s uppose use year is Feb, meaning points for the use year are issued on Feb 1. If you wanted to call now for a trip in Feb 2002 you would be calling 11 months out at your home resort. The points you could use are (a) those to be issued in Feb 2002, which wo uld be the points from the applicable use year, and/or (b) those to be issued in Feb 2003 which you could use by borrowing; and/or (c) those points which are issued Feb 2001 which you would have to bank to use in Feb 2002.
3. You can bank the current yea r's points into the next use year for a trip in that use year subject to banking deadlines. By the end of the 6th month of the current use year you can bank 100% of your points, thus with that Feb use year you have until July 31 to bank all of your 2001 p oints into the 2002 use year. By the end of the 9th month you can bank 50% (October 31 for a Feb use year) and by the end of the 10th month 25% (November 30 for a Feb use year). Those are cumulative totals--if you bank 50% or more by the end of the 6th mo nth you can bank no more thereafter; likewise, if by the 10th month you have already banked 25% or more you cannot bank anymore in the 10th month.
4. The only potential impact use year actually has on a trip concerns your having to cancel a trip. Suppose you have a Feb use year and schedule a trip in Jan 2002 using points issued Feb 2001. In November something happens and you need to cancel. All those points go back into your regular account but you are beyond the banking deadlines except the 25% one. Th us, you couild bank 25% of the points but all the others would have to be used for a trip that concludes by the end of January. Thus, some like to get a use year that begins before the usual time of year they go to protect against that cancellation proble m. Note though that any use year beginning 6 months or less before the time usually go solves that problem as you will still be within the 6 month bankinbg window to bank all your points if you cancel.
5. Points once borrowed stay borrowed and points once banked stay banked. Thus if you were to bank points now into the 2002 use year you could not bring them back to this use year for a trip in this use year. If you borrow points and have to cancel you cannot send them back to the use year from which they were borrowed and must use them durinmg the use year into which they were borrowed.
6. Cancellations: As noted above if you cancel you can have points sent back to your regular account and still bank them if you are withing banking dates and they are cur rentuse year points. However, that is only if you cancel 31 or more days before scheduled date of arrival. If you cancel 30 days or less before scheduled date of arrival then all usual rules are out the window. All points for that canceled trip (whether c urrent year, banked or borrowed) go into a holding account and all must be used for a trip that concludes by the end of the current use year and can only be used for ressies made no more than 60 days before arrival.