Looking to see what UY would be best for us (if I had a choice).. I'm an RN, so can vacation pretty well any week of the year.. do have to work every other holiday so would have to work around those, but other than that, I'm pretty open... DH is a teacher, so he's strapped to not vacationing from Aug. 15th (usually his 1st day back, give or take), until the 1st week of June. He does have a 2-wk period at Christmas, so it's a possibility we'd vacation during that time, but not real likely to do it too often. He's also off a week for the week following Easter every year (his school uses that week as their spring break every year). But due to the very high point values that week, it's very unlikely we'd ever go during that week. Plus the majority of the time, dd's spring breaks don't match dh's. Therefore, at least for the next 10 yrs till dd's are out of school, we'd most likely vacation summers, and the rare time at Christmas. So, given this scenario, which UY would you think would be the best choice for us? I was thinking either June or December... ideas? Thanks,
We are also an educational calendar-based family. We have a June UY, and it works quite well for us. As we travel mostly during the summer months, and sometimes throughout the holidays, the January 31 banking deadline is a good one for us to have. We usually know well in advance if we are able to take a spring trip, and this deadline allows us to bank our points and not have to worry about foreseeing a potential spur-of-the-moment week/weekend getaway between February 1 and the end of May. It also allows us to book our summer vacation, and in the event of a last-minute cancelation, have points to use for the fall and winter months of that same use year. Hope this helps.
My approach to Use Year is: which 3 months are you LEAST likely to travel? If you decide to bank your points on the banking deadline, you have no access to those points until your next Use Year begins three months later. USE YEAR BANKING DEADLINE February September 30 (can't use the banked points from October 1 through January 31) March October 31 April November 30 June January 31 August March 31 September April 30 October May 31 December July 31
I am a teacher and I have a June UY. I also only travel in summer for now as the airfare from Syracuse to Orlando around all our breaks is about $500 - $700 per person (too rich for us!!). With June UY, you have until January 31st to bank points. Since you can still bank any points for vacations cancelled 31 days or more ahead of time, so any summer or Christmas trips would fall within that time frame. Those Spring break trips are the only ones that would be risky in case of cancellation or changes and it sounds like those would be the ones you would take the least.
Thanks everyone for the responses! Sounds like June would be my best bet... it is very rare we'd go anywhere in the spring.. if we were going to do that, we'd probably just wait till June anyway. And thanks for that banking deadline post.. really helped a lot in determining what months I should be looking at. I guess the only catch (if you could really call it that) with a June year is if I had decided to take anyone else, such as my parents, and escape during the nastiest winter months here (jan and feb) ... would have to be really careful that we wouldn't have to cancel that trip...
