Increasing points

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

My wife and I own two time shares in Kauai, HI.

One is the Point at Poipu (2BR/odd yrs, deeded with Club/Club Select, owner for five years) and the other is an RCI affiliated property, Lawai Beach Resort (1BR/odd yrs, owner for 16 years).

We recently were invited to attend a weekend getaway where we received a fairly intense sales meeting They tried to convince us to buy more points, convert to the Trust and pay an additional $650 to give the responsibility of our RCI property to DRI. Their selling points were reduced yearly maintenance fees as well as maintenance fee increase protection. They also talked about point price protection which wasn't enough to sway us either.

We were not willing to let our RCI property go and when you factored that in, our yearly maintenance costs would rise ~50%. It didn't make sense for us especially if you factored in losing our deeded ownership in HI. Our current ownership is just about right for our needs. We often need to borrow from next years points, but I think that is a common requirement when you own every other year.

After attending the sales meeting I did some searching on the internet and found this forum, the yahoo group and TUG. I wish I knew about these sites years ago.

We may want to increase our ownership at some point in the future, but we want to do it on our schedule and when we can best take advantage of it.

1) What is the best way to increase points? What can we expect to pay?
2) Is buying from another owner trying to drop their property a wise choice?
3) When does it make sense to drop a deed for a trust membership? I don't see the benefit in our situation.

We have been extremely happy with our Club membership and have made some outstanding trades over the past 5 years both within the Club and through II.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Joe

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

Well, Joe, ya come to the right place.

I don't have time right now to get into some detailed.

I will say, though, that before you do anything be sure you know the ins and outs of the DRI system and what will work best for you. That's an individual decision, so the only thing to do is to know what your options are, what the advantages, disadvantages, and costs are for each option, and what the best strategy is to implement those options.

******

To start I suggest that you just start reading various threads in this forum. I say that for two reasons.

First is that you are far from the first person to arrive with those questions. So there is a lot of discussion of those issues here already.

Second, if you start that way you will likely find that there are nuances and options available that you didn't realize. Which means that if you do a little background first you will be in a position to ask questions about things that you didn't even know existed.

After you've poked around a bit ask questions; usually the best option is to post in the thread where you saw the issue discussed. That makes it easier for us to respond. Plus it keeps information consolidated, which makes it easier to identify and track.

[dale7 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dale7]

I would read this thread if you want to buy after market points.

http://www.timeshareforums.com/forum...sion-info.html

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

Trog, Thanks for the advice. I have taken the past several days to read nearly every post here. What a wealth of info!

Dale, thanks for pointing me to the sticky post also. At the time, I didn't understand that post but now I do.

I'm only left with a couple more questions:

1) Is it public knowledge about the percentage ownership in a resort? (i.e. private owners, club owners, trust owners, etc.)

2) Are those of you that have 50,000 points or more in retirement? I'm still working with three children and I couldn't fathom using that many points at the moment. For those of you that owned before retirement, how did you find your needs changing after you retired?

Thanks,

Joe

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

2) Are those of you that have 50,000 points or more in retirement? I'm still working with three children and I couldn't fathom using that many points at the moment.

I have three adult children and currently have 23,000 points. Anywhere else in the world and I don't think the kids would want to vacation with the parents but Kauai is different so we ended up with kids + friends and use two rooms. So while I don't have 50K points I could see it happening in the next few years especially if we end up with grandkids. I'm probably 20 years away from retirement.