What are your timeshare plans when you retire

[Marti Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Marti]

Your Retirement Check is in the Bank - Have Fun

If your house is paid for - On Average

$1,200. per month from Social Security will get you 4
Timeshare weeks using RCI AFVC/GeTravelOp at $299.

That way you can retire and live in a timeshare year round.
Use you spouses retirement check to pay the bills & buy food.

[1950bing Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close 1950bing]

The best thing I have done for retirement is unload a costly t/s. No more ever increasing fees of which I got nothing more than I did the previous year. I can put all that money toward a vacation on my own terms and time.

[rklein01 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close rklein01]

I'd agree that timeshares are a good, cheap substitute for a second home.

Even the cheapest second home has to cost at least $1,500/m to carry the purchase price, plus $500/m for taxes, maintenance and insurance.

[wanderer8844 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wanderer8844]

3 weeks around Christmas in Hawaii, sometimes the Carribean.
A couple of weeks in spring or fall in Las Vegas
All summer traveling the country and Alaska in our 5th wheel.
Rest of the time at home planning our next trips.

[rkdrdh Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close rkdrdh]

I am hoping by retirement time I will be a complete minimalist so we can travel from ts to ts before we decide where to plant ourselves. I would like to sell everything & be a gypsy for a while. A year or 2 maybe.

But.....the thought of selling my crystal makes me Maybe someday I will grow tired of it (and the work it takes to keep it all sparkling).

"Sometimes I wish I was back in my crash pad days, before I knew what cash flow meant".....Jimmy Buffett

Regina

[farscape Member Find all posts View Profile Close farscape]

Retirement

Retirement is still at least 5 years away. However, I plan to use my WorldMark membership for most of my drive to locations while using my timeshares to trade into more exotic locations like Australia.

[cmb Member Find all posts View Profile Close cmb]

Working on it...

Right now we have approximately 12+ weeks of TS to use depending on how we use it. We have less than a year (I hope) and then we'll figure out how we want to use them. Right now we spend 2 wks in Maui, 2-4 weeks in SoCal, many quick getaways to the coast (WM credits) and a week or two in TBD locations - Florida, Las Vegas (Mimi - no way could I spend 3 weeks in Vegas - my money only lasts about 3 days!) - I wish we had it all planned since we are close, but I think we'll just need to see what we want to do when the time comes.

[Pstreet1 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pstreet1]

We wound up purchasing in Mexico, just south of San Diego, and find that we love it so much we aren't using our timeshares much any more. I always resisted the "buy where you love to go" approach because I'd never found a place I actually wanted to return to again and again. Now, it seems we've found the place. At this point, we're timesharing in Europe a little and contemplating whether to keep the weeks we have.

[talkamotta Member Find all posts View Profile Close talkamotta]

My hero (I dont know her name) but she told us on TUGs how she was able to make 4 months of timesharing work for her. She used extra vacations, her own trades, etc. She went from New York all the way down to Florida and back.

I want to be able to do that. It sounds like I might have some competition with all the other baby boomers. I live in Utah, so I would take 2 or 3 weeks (stop for a week in Vegas to see the parents) to drive across the southern part of the country and then spend 1 or 2 months in Florida and the South. By that time I think it would be safe to go back along the northern part of the country. We would be driving. I have 2 kids and thier families living in Florida and my at least 6 grandchildren. So if I miss a week I will become a burden on them for a couple of days each.

I thought seriously about buying in Florida, kind of want to participate in my grandchildren's lives but they come to Utah in the summer. So I think they will have enough of me. Besides I will have grandchildren in Utah, too. And what happens if the kids in Florida move out of Florida.
Housing is so high in Florida, it would cut into my savings too much and the headache of another house and maintenance. I dont really want to take on more responsibilty was kind of thinking retirement was my change to be free.

Our world and families are changing. I just know I hate the way my body feels in the cold weather. So whether part of the winter is in Florida, Hawaii or Mexico, Im hoping January at least wont be in Utah.

[JuneB Member Find all posts View Profile Close JuneB]

I think I have posted something similar on another thread here, but if you have not actually retired yet you may not want to stock up on more TS for retirement.

We have been retired for almost 8 years and we're getting tired of being gone so much, never thought that would happen.

We have 10 TS counting our 2 DVC contracts that consist of about 5 weeks if we wanted to stay at DW in a studio. If we bank our 8 weeks that are with II we get an A/C which gives us another 8 weeks. Plus we rent on Sanibel for another 4-10 weeks.

We have already cut down on renting and sold one TS and have another for sale.

I still like my vacations but I miss being home. I think we are going to start taking shorter trips and not staying so long.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

I am retired and we now find that timesharing doesn't really fit into our travel plans anymore. I currently have 19 weeks banked with SFX and am having a great deal of difficulty in using them up. We are doing a lot of traveling but not timeshare. We have booked a super train tour on the Rocky Mountaineer for this August plus we plan to do some train tours across the country.

We have no need to get away from where we live as we love it here. We bought our new home here as our retirement home and made it into our private resort. Actually we only moved 45 miles from where we lived. We take many short 3-4 day trips around California plus several longer ones to other destinations but timesharing doesn't fit into our plans. We aren't interested in the Condo type accommodations anymore preferring the amenities and service of luxury hotels. The Grand Mayan resorts definitely meet our desires for luxury and service but we have been everywhere that we wanted. We will probably do one more return stay at the Grand Mayan - Riviera Maya to see some of things we missed the first time. We do have a couple more timeshare trips planned and then will probably sell our timeshares. We have been timesharing for 20 years and have no complaints about it. We aways get our exchanges we want. It is just that timesharing no longer suits our preferences.

[penguinpower Member Find all posts View Profile Close penguinpower]

We have traveled a lot but have not yet found that perfect place. We always thought we'd buy a retirement home but never fell in love with an area enough to want to do it. Timeshares really appeal to us right now. We hope to spend three to four months in a warm climate during our retirement, which can happen at any time now, depending on when all our ducks get into their row! We figure that after a couple of years of resort living, we might find the place where we want to settle--or we might decide to continue being winter nomads.

We have a good amount of Fairfield/Wyndham points, which we figured would be the nucleus of our retirement travel plans. We also recently purchased an additional 308k FF that is RTU and will expire when my DH is 79--by then, I don't think we'll be traveling as much so it will just conveniently go away. We never book directly through FF but exchange through RCI, so those 308k points can give us as many as 11 weeks if we are flexible about unit size and where we want to stay. If we split up all our FF points into 28k weeks, we could travel six months of the year for a very reasonable cost. But chances are we will want to deposit some bigger chunks to get some better trades from time to time. Besides, I don't think we want to travel half the year!

We also have a Mayan Palace package that will give us four weeks a year with the Vacation Faire option.

All of our purchases have been resale, and we have less invested in them than the downpayment I put on my last car.

Friends of ours recently bought a second home in a small river community. They use it during the summer; it's virtually impossible to reach during the winter months. When we vacationed together at the Mayan Palace a couple of months ago, my friend admitted she hated the extra work and responsibility and expenses of the second home. I think I would, too. I am eager to try the timeshare alternative. If we don't like it--we could give these timeshares away and still have gotten more than our money's worth from them.

[BoardGirl Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BoardGirl]

Fun Thread!

Retirement is too far away to plan yet, unless my singer/songerwriter husband sells a song to an up-and-coming star, or, like someone else said, we hit the lottery! I'm actually not sure that I ever will retire, as being old and poor is one of my top fears. We will never be wealthy so will just continue to sock away what we can and hope to keep major financial disasters at bay. Airfare will continue to be an expensive hurdle, so drive-to trips are the focus.

Given that so much can change in a couple decades, I'm just going to continue to add BG points. If I ever wanted to, I could turn in the points as a down payment to live in one of their communities, but I'm not sure I'm a ritzy neighborhood kind of gal. I'd prefer to leave the ownership to my stepdaughter or nephews so that they can see the world. Right now, we have in our will to split the deeds between my brother and stepdaughter.

We live in Indiana and I'm not sure we'll ever move since we both have deep roots here. Plus, I admit it: I like the change of seasons. If we were to move, it would be the mountains of NC (not second home, we will never have 2 homes). FL is too hot and humid for us to be a better choice than staying in Indiana! I want easy access to mountains and beaches, and seasons.

We want to see the world and will continue to go where we've never been, unlikely to go the same place twice (except BG properties). Using what we own, Bonus Time, exchanging, Last Calls, rentals, ... all are on the table.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

If your house is paid for - On Average

$1,200. per month from Social Security will get you 4
Timeshare weeks using RCI AFVC/GeTravelOp at $299.

That way you can retire and live in a timeshare year round.
Use you spouses retirement check to pay the bills & buy food.

I am going to do this one year. Not sure which year. I have to wait until my youngest is in college and my wife has to agree. Hmm. That is 13 years away. Timesharing will be very different in 13 years. Maybe it won't be possible then since exchange fees will be about $1000 per week. It would be fun to try, though.

[eal Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close eal]

My DH and I plan to retire at the end of June 2008. We will stay at home for most of the summer, with a one-week trip to Meadow Lake in Montana in July and a trip to Snowater in Washington in August. Then in October we are off on a 10-week trip to Big Sky, Park City, Kingman AZ (to visit friends), then flying from Las Vegas to Kauai for 5 weeks in Poipu. We will come home for Christmas (for about 3 weeks) and then fly to Costa Rica for 4 weeks. Then it is back to AZ, with a few days in Kingman, then 3 weeks in Sedona and 4 weeks in Scottsdale to enjoy Cactus baseball season. We will start the drive home in early April. Except for those few days with the Kingman friends in November and February will be timesharing the whole time.

We won't be able to do a trip like this every year, but I plan to make the most of my timeshare portfolio in the coming years.