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Timesharing Full Time

jberndt10

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As my husband and I are looking towards retirement (about 5 years), one of our options for snowbirding would be full time timeshare. Right now we have 406k points resale. Would VIP be worth it then? With rumors of changes coming to VIP just wondering if this would be the time to do it? Also piggybacking on this, could someone explain to me how the PIC program works, give me an example of it and tell me if it would help us accomplish VIP.
 

55plus

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We spend about 5 months in Florida over the winter. We are VIP Platinum so we basically double our points in Florida in the winter. Our ownership dates back to the early '90s when the point system was new and points were cheap. Our ownership cost around $30K and it paid for itself many times over. You need to factor in the cost and how many years you'll use it. Since point usages in Florida during winter are less than spring and summer you maybe better buying the amount of resell points you'll need instead of forking over a hundred plus thousand dollars. Do the math.
 

Baby Jane

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We spend about 5 months in Florida over the winter. We are VIP Platinum so we basically double our points in Florida in the winter. Our ownership dates back to the early '90s when the point system was new and points were cheap. Our ownership cost around $30K and it paid for itself many times over. You need to factor in the cost and how many years you'll use it. Since point usages in Florida during winter are less than spring and summer you maybe better buying the amount of resell points you'll need instead of forking over a hundred plus thousand dollars. Do the math.
How do you manage that most of the southern resorts are booked way before discount period?
 

ecwinch

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How do you manage that most of the southern resorts are booked way before discount period?

Check availability regularly is what I have to do. It is a pain, but you do what you can with what you have.
 

55plus

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Myrtle Beach is cheaper points wise in the winter. Wyndham Westwinds is the cheapest and all units are oceanfront. It's 10 stories with one and two bedroom condos. It's a very nice resort and right on the beach.
 

55plus

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How do you manage that most of the southern resorts are booked way before discount period?
Destin and Panama City Beach have availability all winter long. It gets a little tighter around spring break, but there is availability. We spend the entire winter at half points there. Daytona Beach is a little different. You need to book prior to 60 days out during Daytona 500 and Daytona Bike Week to guarantee a reservation. Sometimes you can find cancellations within 60 for those demand weeks so we book the cancellation we find and cancel the full points reservation.I

When I say Destin and Panama City Beach I mean Florida Panhandle.
 

HitchHiker71

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CWA VIP Gold (718k EY)
National Harbor Resale (689k)
Check availability regularly is what I have to do. It is a pain, but you do what you can with what you have.

There's plenty of availability at most of the Florida resorts during the "winter" season. You might have to be flexible on dates, resorts and room sizes, but it's fairly easy to find availability within the 60 day discount window in Florida during the off season. The only exception would be Clearwater IME, since there aren't that many rooms there to begin with and it's a very new and popular location.

We booked an entire week at Reunion for 107k points total in the third week of January 2019 within the 60 day window as one example.
 

HitchHiker71

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National Harbor Resale (689k)
As my husband and I are looking towards retirement (about 5 years), one of our options for snowbirding would be full time timeshare. Right now we have 406k points resale. Would VIP be worth it then? With rumors of changes coming to VIP just wondering if this would be the time to do it? Also piggybacking on this, could someone explain to me how the PIC program works, give me an example of it and tell me if it would help us accomplish VIP.

Noone knows for sure what VIP changes are actually coming when Wyndham Privileges is formally announced, but to the best of our understanding, it will be announced far in advance of when it will actually become effective, so I wouldn't rush into anything. Actually there are rumors we may see some type of announcement to current owners on May 16 (tomorrow), but the program won't become effective until sometime in 2020, so the answer to your question on this item may come sooner than you think. Then you can decide how best to move forward from there. High level, it appears that there won't be many changes to the existing levels, they are simply adding two new levels, one under Silver (300-399k points), and one beyond Platinum (1.4MM+ points). I would hang tight until we see an announcement before doing anything.

Here's a link to my original thread on PIC, its a good example of how to utilize PIC. I bought in last summer using PIC after rescinding a contract we initially purchased while in Myrtle Beach. Short answer, it's the least expensive way to get to VIP levels IMHO, without spending a fortune.

https://tugbbs.com/forums/index.php...llation-period-need-some-quick-advice.275991/
 

Jan M.

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Wyndham Presidential Reserve at Panama City Beach
Club Wyndham Access
Grandview Las Vegas and Discovery Beach Resort - Both in RCI Points
Woodstone and Summit at Massanutten - Both in RCI weeks used as Wyndham PICs
In the past couple of years the South Florida resorts have undergone repairs from hurricane damage and scheduled remodeling. Hopefully they are finished. Well, with the exception of the one building at Royal Vista. I haven't heard anything recently about the progress or lack of progress on it. If you are open to staying at any of the four resorts and are willing to do the work to keep searching it is possible to find and put together stays.

I posted some of this on another thread. We moved to Florida for my husband to take a new job after he got downsized from his job up North with a few years left until he could retire. For four months and a few days, December 5, 2010-April 8, 2011, he lived out of two Wyndham timeshares. Mostly at Palm-Aire and a few weeks Sea Gardens.

He actually preferred Palm-Aire because they were great about keeping him in the same unit so he didn't have to move. During a two week stay at Sea Gardens I was in Florida with him for a few days of intensive house hunting. Not only did they not keep him in the same unit like they told him they would but they moved us 3 times in less than 24 hours! They called us before we left for full day of looking at houses to say they could move us right then and would we please do it because it would really help them out. My husband had already been in Florida for close to two months, had a refrigerator full of food for the coming week and I had sent him with a car packed full of stuff if he had to find an apartment so there was a lot of stuff to move. But we packed everything up and moved. When we got back after 10:30pm that evening they called to say we had to move, again, that night! We were already exhausted and when we finally got to bed after the second move it was after 1:30AM. We were both in whatever state is beyond completely exhausted with another full day of house hunting scheduled. Before even 8AM they called to wake us up to say we had to move a third time! I hung up on them, unplugged the phone and went back to sleep. About 20 minutes later security showed up knocking on our door until we got out of bed and answered the door. We explained that we had already moved twice in less than 24 hours, that thanks to whoever was in charge of this hadn't even been allowed 6 hours sleep and had another long hard day of looking at houses scheduled. We both looked like zombies and while they felt sorry for us they had even worse news. We had to be out of the unit by 10AM and there wasn't another unit ready to put us in. My husband spoke to the resort manager who gave us back all our points for the stay. Needless to say after that my husband asked me to only book him into Palm-Aire if I could. My point in telling you about this is that if you don't want to move every week or few days you would be better off focusing your searches on some resorts and avoiding others.

Whenever I had time I was checking for reservations for him. All of it was booked with our VIP discount and a free upgrade on the unit size for most of it. Our developer purchased timeshare was a real blessing. My husband got really spoiled by housekeeping coming in to clean, bringing him fresh towels, making up the bed with clean sheets and resupplying him with paper and soap products. He only had to wash his clothes and take care of the shopping, cooking and clean up for his meals for a little over four months. It was a tough life but he managed, lol. Btw his whole stay was during the winter months when stays are supposedly hard to find in this part of Florida.
 

Richelle

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Wyndham Canterbury
Wyndham Atlanta
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VIP I think is good for those who can both afford it and use it. Just keep in the back of your head though, that they can change the benefits at anytime. They could kill the whole program altogether. I doubt they will kill it, but you can bet good money that they will change things over time. If there is a benefit you absolutely have to have, consider how you would feel if they changed it, or took it away. The last time they made a major change to VIP was back in 2012 when they changed the levels. Existing VIPs were grandfathered in at their current levels. They are not raising the point levels this time, but are making changes. Supposed existing VIPs will keep what they have. We are hearing they are taking away the unlimited housekeeping credits benefit from the new program. I am not sure if that’s for all levels or just the lower one. Either way, existing VIPs will retain that benefit. So if you’re only considering Silver, get on that before the changes, so you can at least keep that one. It’s nice not to have to track those. I would wait until the changes are announced though, before buying. Make sure you buy direct from corporate and not at the resorts.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

talkamotta

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There are people on tugs that timeshare full time. I have read their blogs. They are good. Full timesharing isnt for me. I would try going for a month or months at a time. Four weeks for me is a good time but I could do it 6 times a year. Four 3 weeks works best one for each season. I'm looking to add more short one weekers in between. Know that when you buy extra points or weeks...You get to keep them, even if you don't want them.
 

55plus

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We timeshared for a little over 6 months after we sold/closed on our house. We built a new house and it wasn't going to be ready for 6 months so we hit the road. It gave us a chance to visit the New England area Wyndham resorts and the east coast resorts before arriving in Florida for the winter. Loved it, but to quote Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home."
 

ecwinch

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We timeshared for a little over 6 months after we sold/closed on our house. We built a new house and it wasn't going to be ready for 6 months so we hit the road. It gave us a chance to visit the New England area Wyndham resorts and the east coast resorts before arriving in Florida for the winter. Loved it, but to quote Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home."

I think most of the bloggers who have gone the “full time” route usually settle down after a year or two, going for a mostly timeshare but still keeping a home of some sort. For that reason.
 

55plus

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I think most of the bloggers who have gone the “full time” route usually settle down after a year or two, going for a mostly timeshare but still keeping a home of some sort. For that reason.
Like Dorothy said, "There's no place like home."
 

dgalati

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Like Dorothy said, "There's no place like home."
Keep in mind if you run out of points to use you can always rent from a VIP usually for less then owning and paying maintenance fees.
 

ecwinch

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Keep in mind if you run out of points to use you can always rent from a VIP usually for less then owning and paying maintenance fees.

Would you mind just putting the “Rent from a VIP” in your signature line to reduce the number of repeative posts?

Because repeating the same post over and over again is the behavior of a troll. And we are approaching the point where your repeative posts will be deleted.
 

jberndt10

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We will have a permanent home up here in the frozen tundra. I guess I really didn’t mean full time, I meant winter months.
 

ronandjoan

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We were full time in timeshares for 7 full years, (see BLOG) Platinum with Wyndham plus 12 other weeks owned at other timeshares. Those other weeks allowed us to successfully fill in any time we couldn’t get with Wyndham , especially by depositing them in exchange companies ( especially Platinum Interchange which gives you two or three weeks for a deposited week) or the bonus weeks from Telemark.

But Wyndham has changed their Platinum benefits so that we can’t get all the upgrades and discounts we used to. So you might want to wait for a while before buying more points from the developer and just fill in with RCI Last Call and Extra Vacations like Mike and Edie did when they went full time for a couple of years. Or use DAE, SFX or PI bonus weeks.

However, you say you are really only looking at 6 months out, not full-time. We are doing that now... we wanted to be closer to the grandchildren for longer times, so we are based near Seattle now, but still timeshare for 6-7 months per year.


A thread about our full time experience with lots of conversations. I’ve written several articles for the magazine Timesharing Today, including “Full-Time Timesharing”, “Winning the Timeshare Game” and “Buy a Timeshare and See the World .” Working in one for them now about Legacy resorts ( which Wyn is not but we are beginning to like them the best.)


https://tugbbs.com/forums/index.php...-full-time-in-timeshares.222589/#post-1722976
 

talkamotta

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We spend about 5 months in Florida over the winter. We are VIP Platinum so we basically double our points in Florida in the winter. Our ownership dates back to the early '90s when the point system was new and points were cheap. Our ownership cost around $30K and it paid for itself many times over. You need to factor in the cost and how many years you'll use it. Since point usages in Florida during winter are less than spring and summer you maybe better buying the amount of resell points you'll need instead of forking over a hundred plus thousand dollars. Do the math.
So many people don't factor in the total cost of the week. It's just not the mfs and/or trading fees. You need to include the original cost of your points or resorts. You need to run your own numbers. I have 41k worldmark points and 8 point/weeks resorts, I have $18k invested in the original purchase all but the first one is on the secondary market. My co-worker bought 7 Marriott from Marriott and he has over $250k invested (not to mention interest, etc) I paid cash for mine. Ron and Joan are hero's in the timeshare world they have spent countless hours learning and teaching others. There are many others.....live and learn. We all made mistakes and had to make adjustments. Good luck
 

Baby Jane

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So many people don't factor in the total cost of the week. It's just not the mfs and/or trading fees. You need to include the original cost of your points or resorts. You need to run your own numbers. I have 41k worldmark points and 8 point/weeks resorts, I have $18k invested in the original purchase all but the first one is on the secondary market. My co-worker bought 7 Marriott from Marriott and he has over $250k invested (not to mention interest, etc) I paid cash for mine. Ron and Joan are hero's in the timeshare world they have spent countless hours learning and teaching others. There are many others.....live and learn. We all made mistakes and had to make adjustments. Good luck
Some of us started as Fairfield and even though our last points buy which took us to platinum was a little steep I did work out our full investment and average cost per night (some are discounted and or upgraded) We are about at break even point so the next 10 to 15 years are good even if we don’t get as many discounts once they add new level.
 
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