Dumb Money Choice: My Timeshare Story

When I think about all the bad money choices I made in my early years, one thing comes to mind quickly.  (Why I didn’t write about it until now, I don’t know.)  See, we got caught up in the wonderful world of timeshares.  And we knew better, even back then.

What happened?

The Timeshare Company Pounces

I have a theory.  It involves timeshare companies monitoring home purchases and making pitches to new homeowners.  After all, the person or persons who became homeowners for the first time certainly will want to take vacations, right?  Well, if not, that was how I remember it happening with us.

We became first-time homeowners not too long after we were married (thanks to my basically winning the down payment).  The offers came in soon afterward, and one of them came from a company named (redacted*).  You’ve probably seen the spiel: come down to hear a presentation, and they’ll give you a weekend getaway to someplace (I want to say it was Las Vegas for us, or at least that Vegas was one of the choices).  And we went for the same reason so many others have done: we wanted the trip.  We certainly didn’t intend to purchase anything.

The Hard Sell

(Disclaimer:  The following, and the preceding, are from my memory.  Since this happened well over a decade and a half ago, some details may be hazy.)

My lovely young wife and I made the 90-minute trip to the nearest (redacted) resort to get our trip.  First, of course, we had to sit through the presentation.  Keep in mind that we intended to buy absolutely nothing.

The sunset (possibly from the general resort location) was obviously part of the hard sell.  Photo by Chris Smith from Pexels.

The (redacted) representatives went into their discussion of the different resorts.  We weren’t terribly impressed by those, as I recall.  So far, so good.

Where we wavered, unfortunately, was when they explained how they had agreements with other properties, so that, if we chose not to use our annual week at one of their resorts, we could exchange it for a week at places which might be more appealing to us.  Hmmm, one or both of us thought, sounds interesting.

That would have been the time to run.  We weren’t thinking clearly.

Why Was a Timeshare a Bad Choice?

Getting a timeshare is a lousy idea.  There are lots of sites that go into lots of details as to why.  (For example, check out Larry Ludwig over at Investor Junkie.)  Suffice it to say that you are throwing a lot of money away just to have a share in this lovely property that you can use one week a year.  And that’s assuming you can get a slot in said property for the week you want.

But there was a more obvious reason, for us, why a timeshare wouldn’t have worked for us at the time.  I mean, it should have occurred to us at the time…what had we done during almost all our vacations prior to then?

We were visiting family.  Of course.

I didn’t have a lot of vacation time back then.  (I still don’t.)  That being the case, we weren’t going to be using a timeshare much, since we wanted to see both our families.

We Tried To Run

It’s one thing to know that you’re going to get a hard sell when you walk into one of these presentations.  Knowing that didn’t prepare us for just how hard a sell it would be.  We raised objections, and they were ready for every one.  (In retrospect, it should have been obvious that they would be.)

We played what we thought was our trump card:  we couldn’t afford the down payment (which, at the time, was very true).  They had the perfect answer (for them…not so much for us).   We could make small payments every month toward the down payment, and then we could decide!  (You know, after we had paid for almost a year!)

And then they convinced us it would be worth it.  Because they prey on naive twentysomethings.  (And the trip to Las Vegas, or wherever it was, sounded good.)

Escaping With Almost Nothing

Dave Ramsey speaks a lot of paying “stupid tax”.  Even before we had even heard of Mr. Ramsey, I think we knew we had done that by signing up for this agreement.  Maybe it was just that we got home and our heads cleared.  Whatever it was, we knew, fairly quickly, that we wanted out.

Thankfully, we were only on the “pay a little every month for ten months” plan that the (redacted) reps threw out as a last resort.  And so, ten months and $700 later, we said we were done.  No amount of hard selling was going to budge us this time.  We were done.

Except that we weren’t quite done.

One of the things (redacted) had thrown at us to get us to sign up for the installments-of-stupidity plan was a weekend at the same resort where we had endured the hard sell session.  If memory serves, they eventually reminded us of this, so we figured we would go ahead and go down there.  We also had to go down there to get the vouchers for the Vegas (or wherever) trip.

By then, our family of two had become a family of three, so we loaded the baby in the car seat and drove 90 minutes (again) to the resort.

Finishing Up With Them

Honestly, it wasn’t a bad resort.  The suite was a little small, but it was cozy enough.  The amenities weren’t bad, either: there was a swimming pool and (if I remember correctly) a mini-golf course.  The area was nice enough, too; it was located near a fairly nice lake.

Of course, we didn’t expect things to go completely smoothly; after all, we were also intending to get vouchers to a trip that was rightfully ours, and we weren’t intending to give them any more money.  As it turned out, things went worse than we intended; no one was there in their office to give us any vouchers for anything.

So, in all, we spent $700 on one weekend at a nice (but not $700 nice) resort, and we never did get our Vegas trip.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Being well out of my twenties now, I don’t know that these timeshare companies are still preying on first-time homebuyers, but I can only imagine that they are.  If you happen to be one of the lucky people to get such a solicitation, do yourself a favor:  shred it.

* I’m telling the truth as best as I remember it, but I’d rather not take the legal risk of naming the company here.