Use Year

[Steven41782]

Can someone point me to a thread on the importance of and explanation of your use year?

I'm wondering: We vacation in the month of June. If we were to buy DVC, what use year do we want?

Thanks.

 

[vicki_c]

I don't have the link but I think it's called "understanding use year". You could try a search on that, limited to the DVC section of the boards. It's best to have a use year that is a few months before your normal vacation times. The problem with that is, over 40-50 years, are you really going to have a normal time? My normal time was usually January and February. Now that my kids are older, that's out because of school. Now my normal time has been Easter, sometimes even June.

 

[iluvthsgam]

Try this:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1942668

And also if you travel mostly in June, the optimal Use Year is right before you travel most - so in your case that would be June or April (and you could even do March and February as well).

 

[chalee94]

I'm wondering: We vacation in the month of June. If we were to buy DVC, what use year do we want?

"use year" tells you 1) when your pts are valid for a stay and 2) when your banking window closes (currently 8 months after your use year begins.)

use year has nothing to do with when you can call to book. you can book your home resort at 11 months out. when your UY starts is a non issue.

ideally, you want to travel early in your UY and never in the last few months of your UY (as your banking window will have closed, as in #2 above.)

it's a good idea to bookmark the UY thread linked above...

 

[JimMIA]

If you have reliable vacation planning, UY is not going to be a big deal -- it's just something you manage.

The importance of UY has to do with banking deadlines. You can currently bank unused points during the first 8 months of your UY. The difficulty arises if you make a reservation tying up your points, and then have to cancel that reservation after your banking deadline has passed. In that case, you would have points that you couldn't bank -- "use or lose" points.

If your vacation plans are pretty solid, you really don't have to worry much. For example, we had an October UY in an account shared by three families, all of which had school aged kids (and one teacher). Needless to say, our vacations are mostly during the summer school break. But, once set, we rarely cancel.

In more than 30 trips, we have canceled exactly once after the banking deadline. However, those points were almost immediately used by another family member, making the banking deadline a non-issue.

If you have complete flexibility in picking UY, I would follow Vicki's advice above and get a UY which allows maximum flexibility.

But if you are buying resale, I would not pass up a great contract because of UY. Just be aware of the implications of UY and manage it like you would any other aspect of your DVC account.