and here we are, with our 10th anniversary looming. we've bought 3 houses in that time (and now can recently say sold two of them!) we've had 4 kids. we've just recently (well, within the last two years) paid off our wedding (even though both sets of our parents paid for a bulk of it!) and honeymoon and oodles of credit card debt. and that goal of making it to hawaii has just been hanging there....seemingly out of reach as our lives, and the expenditures that go with it, have been priority.
but last night....i booked our trip to hawaii (well, our lodging anyway!) and i'm beside myself with excitement that a goal we set for our lives 10 years ago is going to happen.
and it's because of a timeshare. silly, but true. when i was growing up, my parents owned a timeshare with the Marriott Vacation Club. their 'home' resort is in florida, but we traveled all over...hilton head, various resorts around orlando, california. given my parents' work schedules, we could always squeeze in that spring break trip to somewhere 'exotic' - which was just about anywhere but big rapids as far as i was concerned! growing up with that experience made me place quite a bit of value on it - particularly since we have been able to travel with our family and my parents in recent years on these timeshare condo trips.
in march 07 jason and i took the plunge and bought one ourselves - on an every-other-year plan, knowing that with jason's work schedule that we might not be able to guarantee an 'exotic' week-long vacation every year (seeing how we would only get about 25% of our rite aid vacation requests approved, and could only ask a few months in advance at best, we were taking a risk!) we bought into an excellent family resort - Horizons by Marriott.
with our purchase, we got a bonus week, which we are using to take jason's parents and our family down to orlando and disney world around christmas this year. and, by luck, we ended up with another week through an exchange (with a small fee associated)...and this is the week we had 'designated' for hawaii.i've been searching for months through our exchange system waiting for hawaii. waiting. searching. hoping. i had come to the conclusion that people who buy hawaiian resort timeshares don't exchange them to go elsewhere and so i should look into hotels for our 10th anniversary trip. yeah right. remember why we didn't go for our honeymoon? the same problem was now staring me in the face again - there was simply no way we could afford to go without 'free' lodging.
and then last night. there was a week available. not on the island that was our first choice. and not necessarily our first choice of week to go but we've made it work, and for our 10th anniversary trip (in september as opposed to july) we'll be staying here....all thanks to our timeshare!
since we bought our 'unit', we have 3 weeks of vacation planned...one we've already taken, and two to go. those three weeks are already pretty much valued at what we bought the timeshare for in the first place, and we get to go to hawaii for our 10th anniversary, which to me, is almost priceless. yes, we'll still have maintenance fees, but that's like buying 2 nights at one of these condos and getting 5 free.
financial experts will tell you to never buy a timeshare because it's not an 'investment' - our timeshare's monetary value will not grow. it has, however, already proven itself to be an incredible decision we made to ensure regular family vacations to exotic locales that are affordable. that, to me, is a true investment.
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