Chapter 6
Over Forty Uses for a Timeshare

This chap­ter pro­vides you with ideas for using your time­share. A time­share is a valu­able asset, but only if you use it. For­tu­nate­ly, there plen­ty of ways to put it to good use.

Exchange

Exchange your time­share week for anoth­er time­share week at anoth­er resort. Read Chap­ter 8 on exchang­ing. The idea here is that you can even plan it so you nev­er have to go to your own resort timeshare.

Com­ment: I owned a time­share for ten years, vis­it­ed it once, and exchanged it each year for nine of those ten years.

Vacation Near Home

You don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to go far away. Vaca­tion near home. Save the trav­el expense. Be close to your fam­i­ly and job (or busi­ness) but still have a place where you can go, relax, and get away from it all. If there’s a time­share resort near you, check it out.

Com­ment: There’s a time­share resort in Napa 20 min­utes from my house in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Every time I sug­gest we do an exchange with our Col­orado time­share week, my wife wants to go to Napa for a week.

The Big City

Some of the more pop­u­lar cities have time­share hotels. You don’t have to go to a ski town, beach, or golf resort. You can vis­it a time­share in a city and make the city your play­ground. Plan ahead, though. City time­shares tend to be quite popular.

Retirement Benefits

If you’re retired, you’ve hit the jack­pot. You can max­i­mize your vaca­tion dol­lars by tak­ing your vaca­tions in low sea­son. Many resorts have great weath­er and inter­est­ing activ­i­ties in the spring, fall, and win­ter when most fam­i­lies don’t trav­el because the kids are in school. That means you can buy time­shares at such resorts for lit­tle mon­ey or exchange into such resorts with a min­i­mum of exchange pow­er because it’s low season.

If a time­share resort has a point sys­tem, it makes it very easy to take advan­tage of low sea­son weeks with­out using many points.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the exchange orga­ni­za­tions sell time­share weeks at rock bot­tom prices in the low sea­son. You can get some real good deals. I’ve seen prices as low as $249 for a week’s stay. That’s $36/night, cheap­er than Motel 6 (which should be named Motel 70 today). But you have to own at least one time­share to belong to an exchange organization.

In oth­er words, you can stretch your time­share ben­e­fits con­sid­er­ably in the off season.

Commitment

If you buy a time­share, you’re com­mit­ted. You’re com­mit­ted to take at least a week’s vaca­tion each year or to spend a lot of time try­ing to rent or give away the time­share week. This can be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for workaholics.

A worka­holic usu­al­ly can’t take the time to rent or give away a time­share. He or she can’t depend on the resort to rent it either. And no one wants to pay the annu­al main­te­nance fee and get noth­ing in return. The only choice left is to take a vaca­tion. And that’s the healthy choice.

Have a prob­lem with a worka­holic spouse? This com­mit­ment might be a good way to ensure an annu­al vaca­tion together.

Make a com­mit­ment to men­tal health and vis­it a time­share once a year.

Half and Half

Who says a hus­band and wife have to take a vaca­tion togeth­er? They can be togeth­er with­out tak­ing vaca­tions togeth­er. For instance, sup­pose you like to play golf but your spouse doesn’t. You can go to a time­share golf resort and play for a week while she works on her lap­top. She can relax a lit­tle but still get more done than she can at the office.

For the next out­ing, you go to a time­share ten­nis resort where she plays ten­nis all week while you work on your laptop.

Beats stay­ing home and going to the office.

Family Reunion

Time­shares can make great fam­i­ly reunions. First, you have to have a fam­i­ly that want to meet each year. Then each fam­i­ly can buy a time­share to enable all the fam­i­lies to meet in the same place at the same week each year.

Anoth­er vari­a­tion is one fam­i­ly mem­ber owns a time­share and buys addi­tion­al time­shares to accom­mo­date addi­tion­al fam­i­ly mem­bers. This seems to work only if the addi­tion­al fam­i­ly mem­bers agreed to pay the annu­al main­te­nance well in advance. With­out a finan­cial com­mit­ment, it’s too easy for the addi­tion­al fam­i­ly mem­bers to can­cel (often at the last minute) leav­ing you with excess time­share weeks.

Com­ment: I’ve done this. I rec­om­mend that you test this idea ini­tial­ly by rent­ing the excess time­share weeks required rather than buy­ing the time­shares. If the idea works out and the fam­i­ly enjoys being togeth­er at a resort, you can pur­chase time­shares to make the annu­al event more permanent.

Theme Vacationing

Many peo­ple like theme vaca­tions. For instance, a golfer may want to play golf every day on vaca­tion. A time­share will enable this vaca­tion theme with low­er costs and larg­er accom­mo­da­tions than stay­ing at a resort hotel.

You might even pur­sue theme goals. For instance, a ski­er may make it a goal to ski at all the major west­ern ski areas over the next 20 years, one year (one resort) at a time. Exchang­ing time­share weeks makes this pos­si­ble. How about vis­it­ing a vari­ety of nation­al parks?

Short-term

Many time­share resorts oper­ate on the point sys­tem today. You don’t get a week. You get points equiv­a­lent to a week. Instead of using your points for a week, you can use them for short­er stays. Some resorts even allow you to use points for just one night.

The exchange orga­ni­za­tions also pro­vide you the oppor­tu­ni­ty for short­er stays.

If you can’t take a week’s vaca­tion in a par­tic­u­lar year, at least use your points for short­er stays.

Business Retreat

A busi­ness can hold a time­share retreat each year in the off-sea­son for key employ­ees at a low cost with nice accom­mo­da­tions. In oth­er words, you can get a good deal for your busi­ness. Resorts are not as busy in low-sea­son thus mak­ing a retreat less expen­sive, more relax­ing, and per­haps more pri­vate than dur­ing the high season.

Business Rewards

If you own a busi­ness, you might con­sid­er using time­shares for employ­ee or cus­tomer incen­tives. Each year you will award time­share weeks to the employ­ees or customers.

Guest Room

Always go for the largest suite (the most bed­rooms), if you have a choice. That gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to invite friends and fam­i­ly to stay with you. If you had a sec­ond home, you would invite friends and fam­i­ly to vis­it. Why not at a time­share too?

Extended Vacation

No one says you have to stay a week. You can stay two weeks or three. You just need an extra time­share or two. If you like a place and want to spend more time there every year to savor the local cul­ture and activ­i­ties, an extend­ed time­share stay makes an eco­nom­i­cal choice.

Com­ment: I’ve often used this idea.

Second Home

This is the super-extend­ed vaca­tion idea, one I use myself. I spend six or sev­en time­share weeks every sum­mer in the same place.

Com­ment: Every sum­mer I get the insane idea that I might like to buy a sum­mer home in this place. Since I would prob­a­bly use a sec­ond home only for eight weeks at most in the sum­mer (and no weeks the remain­der of the year), the time­share strat­e­gy gives me almost the same ben­e­fits. But when I com­pare the costs, the time­share is so much cheap­er and so much less trou­ble that I rein in my insan­i­ty and for­go the bur­den of oper­at­ing an extra home. Read Chap­ter 9 for spe­cif­ic details on this idea.

Same Old Place

There’s no ques­tion that many peo­ple buy a time­share, use it a few years, get tired of it, and aren’t sure what to do with it. But that isn’t every­one. There are plen­ty of places that you might be delight­ed to vis­it every year indef­i­nite­ly. Nothing’s wrong with that. And if you do even­tu­al­ly want to go some­where else, you can always exchange.

Join a Club

If you go to the same time­share resort each year, get involved local­ly. This idea is espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant if you stay for more than a week. Join a local club. Meet new local friends. Have fun with local peo­ple doing what you like to do. That makes your time­share a home away from home.

Local clubs are typ­i­cal­ly inex­pen­sive to join and pro­vide ongo­ing activ­i­ties for mem­bers such as pho­tog­ra­phy, ski­ing, hik­ing, boat­ing, snow­mo­bil­ing, rid­ing, fish­ing, or non-out­door recre­ation­al activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, there are local social clubs or even book clubs that may serve your pur­pos­es. Sched­ule your time­share week(s) so that you can attend a month­ly meeting.

Besides pro­vid­ing you with new friends, a club may offer activ­i­ties and events at a nom­i­nal cost for which you would oth­er­wise pay a sub­stan­tial fee. For instance, recent­ly I went on a one-day pho­tog­ra­phy field trip with a local pho­tog­ra­phy club that cost me only gas mon­ey. A sim­i­lar trip offered by a local guide cost $250/person/day with a two-per­son minimum.

Low-Season Family Vacation

Why leave all the low sea­son fun to the retirees? But how do you trav­el when you have kids in school? Take them out of school. Many schools with advanced plan­ning will enable you to home school your kids tem­porar­i­ly dur­ing fam­i­ly trav­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly with today’s easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion via email and the inter­net. Have them do their school work the first thing in the morn­ing each day before begin­ning the day’s recre­ation­al activ­i­ties. Kids can fin­ish school work quick­ly with­out distractions.

At the schools that take a dim view of such extracur­ric­u­lar vaca­tions, present the pro­posed vaca­tion as an edu­ca­tion­al jour­ney. For exam­ple, list all the his­tor­i­cal sites and muse­ums you intend to visit.

Use the Kitchen

Eat­ing out every day is expen­sive and often not as healthy as you might pre­fer. Most time­shares have a kitchen, which pro­vides you with alternatives.

A kitchen enables you to get some basics at the local super­mar­ket and pre­pare sim­ple con­ti­nen­tal break­fasts for the morn­ings and bag lunch­es for the day’s activ­i­ties. This is not a lot of trou­ble and is less expen­sive and time-con­sum­ing than eat­ing in restaurants.

At night a kitchen enables a com­fort­able place to enjoy inex­pen­sive fast food (e.g., piz­za) sup­ple­ment­ed by stuff from the supermarket—just like at home. And you can enjoy a $10 bot­tle of wine from the store rather than drink­ing the same wine at $35 per bot­tle in a restaurant.

Or you can go in anoth­er direc­tion. Per­haps at home you nev­er have the time to pre­pare those gourmet meals that you’d like to try. At a resort con­do you final­ly have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spend some time cook­ing, and you make that part of your vaca­tion experience.

For many peo­ple, a time­share kitchen is liv­ing as nor­mal. Eat out a few times because you’re on vaca­tion, but oth­er­wise use the kitchen because it’s less expen­sive or because there aren’t many good restau­rants in the vicinity.

And what about a par­ty? It’s easy to have a good par­ty with a kitchen.

Trade Shows and Conventions

Need to attend a trade show, con­ven­tion, or nation­al meet­ing annu­al­ly? Some major cities have time­share resorts. And resort towns are a pop­u­lar place for meet­ings. Trade into such a time­share for the week of the event. Live in a suite instead of a hotel room. Throw a party.

Professional Education

Need to upgrade your pro­fes­sion­al skills. Many pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions give cours­es and sem­i­nars around the coun­try for their mem­bers to learn skills and even gain cred­its toward pro­fes­sion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. In addi­tion, there are many com­mer­cial train­ing offer­ings around the coun­try, which do the same. Final­ly, many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties offer pro­fes­sion­al train­ing cours­es and sem­i­nars for work­ing folks too. Typ­i­cal­ly such cours­es and sem­i­nars are from one to five days long, and they sel­dom include room and board.

Use a time­share as a res­i­dence for pro­fes­sion­al train­ing. A time­share con­do pro­vides you with a less expen­sive and more com­fort­able res­i­dence for your train­ing with the capa­bil­i­ty via the kitchen to eat health­ily. And you can throw a par­ty for fel­low par­tic­i­pants too.

Kids’ Education

Your kids may have sports camps or oth­er edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams away from home. Use a time­share for a res­i­dence if such train­ing does not include liv­ing accommodations.

Family Retreat

Just like the busi­ness retreat, start an annu­al fam­i­ly retreat. Unlike a vaca­tion, a retreat has a spe­cif­ic agen­da. It might be spir­i­tu­al, life plan­ning, goal set­ting, or the like in a relaxed resort setting.

Gift

A gift doesn’t have to be a phys­i­cal object. It can be time (i.e., a week at a time­share resort). It’s an expen­sive gift and not for every­one, but it’s a nice gift for the right per­son or family.

Now if you have points (instead of a set week), you can make small­er gifts of two or three days each. It’s less expen­sive per gift and more gifts to give away.

Home Expansion

Need more room in your sec­ond home for addi­tion­al rel­a­tives in your fam­i­ly? Instead of a cost­ly addi­tion to your sec­ond home, buy a time­share to accom­mo­date your fam­i­ly mem­bers or oth­er guests. A time­share week or two might be the least expen­sive way to ensure a hap­py visit.

If your sec­ond home con­sists of time­share weeks (read Chap­ter 9), buy­ing addi­tion­al time­shares to accom­mo­date fam­i­ly and guests makes a nat­ur­al expan­sion of your sec­ond home.

Trade

Use your time­share weeks or your time­share itself to trade for real estate or per­son­al prop­er­ty. Read Chap­ter 5 for details.

Learn a Language

No bet­ter way to learn a lan­guage than to be there (e.g., France). Trade into sev­er­al weeks at a for­eign time­share resort, and make it a point not to speak Eng­lish while you’re there. Many for­eign time­shares accom­mo­date in-coun­try vaca­tion­ers; and such time­share own­ers don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly speak Eng­lish. Thus, you can stay at the resort, get involved in resort activ­i­ties, and find peo­ple with whom to talk in the local language.

Even in a place like Mex­i­co where most time­share own­ers are Amer­i­cans, you can still stay away from the time­share resort most of the day and night and spend time with locals who don’t speak Eng­lish. In order to keep in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peo­ple for the pur­pose of learn­ing the lan­guage, you need to get involved in activ­i­ties with the local people.

Seasonal Job

Can you get a sea­son­al job at a resort? If so, time­shares might be your least expen­sive source of decent hous­ing for your fam­i­ly. Read Chap­ter 9.

House Exchange

Peo­ple trade hous­es, con­do­mini­ums, and apart­ments pri­vate­ly or through var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions. Trade your time­share for the use of some­one else’s house, con­do, or apart­ment. You’re won’t be lim­it­ed to the places where time­share resorts exist. You can go world­wide any­where that some­one will accept your trade. Find an orga­ni­za­tion that facil­i­tates such trades.

Property Exchange

Trade your time­share week with some­one else for the use of some­thing for a spe­cif­ic peri­od. That some­thing could be a boat, RV, air­plane, SUV, ATV, pre­paid vaca­tion pack­age, cot­tage, fish­ing rights, sports event tick­ets, music fes­ti­val sub­scrip­tion, or whatever.

Creative Planning

You like it rough and your spouse likes to lie lazi­ly in the lap of lux­u­ry by the pool. You both want to see the USA. One way to do that would be to set up a chain of week­long time­share vis­its one or two weeks apart across that part of the USA you want to vis­it. You car camp and rough it for a week or two, and then you stay at a nice time­share resort for a week. Repeat until you cov­er that por­tion of the US that you want to see dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar sea­son. One of the ben­e­fits of being able to exchange time­shares is that it enables cre­ative trav­el­ing plans like this.

Permanent Residence

This is a crazy idea but not one that’s nec­es­sar­i­ly only for crazy peo­ple. Live per­ma­nent­ly in a timeshare(s). There’s a whole chap­ter on this idea should you be inclined to seek more infor­ma­tion. Read Chap­ter 10. It’s prob­a­bly less expen­sive than you imagine.

Flexibility

Some exchange ser­vices and resorts offer point sys­tems. They not only pro­vide you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay in a time­share resort for short­er peri­ods (e.g., week­ends) but also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to game the sys­tem. Depend­ing on how much time you’re will­ing to spend, gam­ming the sys­tem can reward you with addi­tion­al ben­e­fits at no greater expense.

Club Retreat

Using time­shares as a busi­ness retreat makes a lot of sense and is cov­ered in anoth­er sec­tion. How about using a time­share for a get­away meet­ing or retreat for one of your mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tions. Maybe the board of direc­tors of your club or non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion would like to have a meet­ing out of town to dis­cuss strat­e­gy for the year. Your time­share offers them an inex­pen­sive way to hold a meet­ing. You get paid some­thing which helps you pay your annu­al main­te­nance, and the orga­ni­za­tion has a nice place to meet at a nice resort loca­tion and at a low cost.

The mem­bers of the board of direc­tors or exec­u­tive com­mit­tee can stay in local motels and use your time­share con­do­mini­um as a place to meet casu­al­ly and keep costs under con­trol by prepar­ing lunch­es and din­ners in the kitchen.

Working Vacation

A time­share enables a great work­ing vaca­tion. It’s more like a home than a resort hotel room. You can live just like you do at home tak­ing advan­tage of the kitchen and the extra space com­pared to a hotel room. And if you can get some work done, you can stay longer.

Of course, this assumes you’re an office work­er or a home office work­er, and it usu­al­ly requires an inter­net con­nec­tion. (Almost all time­shares have inter­net service.)

Com­ment: This is my pri­ma­ry use of time­shares. I would rather stay two weeks and get in 20 hours of work a week than stay one week and do no work at all. I have a small fold­ing table (I’m fussy about the right table height for easy typ­ing), a small fold­ing wood­en chair, and a cush­ion that I take with me if I dri­ve. If I fly, I’ve been known to buy a suit­able inex­pen­sive table (the right height) local­ly on which to work, and I leave it behind when I go home

Most years I use my time­shares as a sum­mer home, stay for six or sev­en weeks, and get about 20 hours of work done every week while enjoy­ing a relaxed resort life. I keep my table, chair, com­put­er print­er, and recre­ation­al equip­ment in a local stor­age unit.

Visit Relatives

You want to vis­it rel­a­tives each year but you don’t want to com­mit your full vaca­tion to doing so. Get a time­share at a resort far enough away to make a dai­ly vis­it imprac­ti­cal but close enough to vis­it once.

Events

Like to attend the same event each year? Get a time­share. Prob­a­bly a fixed week isn’t going to be appro­pri­ate. Might not work out, par­tic­u­lar­ly where the event is sched­uled for a dif­fer­ent time or place each year. A time­share based on points, how­ev­er, will give you flex­i­bil­i­ty in sched­ul­ing your time­share week exact­ly when and where the event takes place.

Holiday Get Together

One way time­shares are used a lot is for Christ­mas and oth­er hol­i­day fam­i­ly get-togeth­ers. For this priv­i­lege you will pay a pre­mi­um for a fixed-week time­share. With a time­share float or time­share points, you will have to make a reser­va­tion as soon as the reser­va­tion peri­od opens, but even then there is no guar­an­tee. In fact, some time­share orga­ni­za­tions will not allow you to reserve cer­tain hol­i­days in con­sec­u­tive years.

Thus, while this may be a good idea, it’s not always an eas­i­ly obtain­able arrange­ment unless you have the mon­ey to buy a fixed-week timeshare.

Destination Wedding

Des­ti­na­tions wed­dings (wed­dings out­side the bride’s and groom’s locale) can be inex­pen­sive because most guests pay their own way to get there and stay there. It tends to lim­it the num­ber of guests who show up thus sav­ing expense. Use your time­share resort as the des­ti­na­tion. A resort pro­vides a pleas­ant ambiance for a wedding.

Forego

Some resort devel­op­ers will allow you to forego using your time­share one year and roll over your use to the next year. This is typ­i­cal­ly an avail­able option for point sys­tems. Thus, you can miss your week one year and take two weeks in the fol­low­ing year. Inquire at the resort devel­op­er as to what sort of rollover pro­gram is available.

Com­ment: I had to do this one year when I endured an extend­ed peri­od of med­ical treat­ment at home. I rolled over sev­er­al weeks until the next year. Very convenient.

Facilities

Some time­shares have facil­i­ties such as golf cours­es, ten­nis courts, large swim­ming pools, and beach­es. The best and most inex­pen­sive means of gain­ing access to such facil­i­ties in cer­tain loca­tions may be to own a timeshare.

If your goal is to use a cer­tain type of facil­i­ty, find a time­share that has it. If you’re not at the facil­i­ty (e.g., golf course), it’s not con­ve­nient, and you may not even be able to get access to it.

Rent

Although I don’t rec­om­mend you buy a time­share to rent your week every year, rent­ing it in a year when you can’t use it is per­fect­ly log­i­cal and pos­si­bly reward­ing. Read Chap­ter 4.

AirBnB

Offer your time­share for rent through AirBnB.com. Mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide have rent­ed their flats (apart­ments), cab­ins, hous­es, time­share weeks, oth­er res­i­dences, and even rooms suc­cess­ful­ly through AirBnB.com. Go to the web­site (https://www.airbnb.com) and get details on how you can do the same.

Leave It

Leav­ing a time­share to an heir is a lit­tle tricky. You need to make sure the heir wants it. If they’re unwill­ing to pay the year­ly main­te­nance, you will do them a favor by get­ting rid of it before you croak. So, if you get to the point where you can’t use your time­share any longer before you croak, offer it to your heirs. If they don’t want it, you can oth­er­wise dis­pose of it.

Use Points for Travel

Anoth­er ben­e­fit worth con­sid­er­ing is the affil­i­a­tion with trav­el orga­ni­za­tions that the resort devel­op­er has estab­lished. You may be able to use points to defray the cost for affil­i­ate hotels and motels, cruise ships, air­lines, rental cars, and the like. The deals you receive might not be as good as you can get by pay­ing cash, but some­times they are bet­ter. It’s cer­tain­ly worth look­ing into what’s avail­able to you.

Travel Abroad

In Amer­i­ca we tend to think of time­shares being in the US and in near­by Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the Caribbean. And we can exchange to go to almost any of the famil­iar resort locales in these places. But there are time­shares all over the world, and most belong to an exchange orga­ni­za­tion. That means that you can poten­tial­ly trade your time­share week for anoth­er time­share week almost any­where on the globe. Thus, your time­share may be your tick­et to an inex­pen­sive for­eign vacation.

Pay Your Maintenance

Some resort devel­op­ers will allow you to use your time­share week (points) to pay your main­te­nance fee. You lose the use of the time­share week for that year, but you’re giv­en cred­it for a cer­tain amount toward pay­ing your annu­al main­te­nance fee. The cred­it doesn’t pay the main­te­nance fee in full, but it reduces it significantly.

Summary

I can’t think of it all. Hope­ful­ly, this chap­ter will inspire you to come up with your own ideas that will help you make your time­share more ben­e­fi­cial to you.