Vacation Changes Needed

It’s been a bit since I wrote last. We have been travelling and spending the holiday season with our kids in two different states. We’ve been driving because we have stuff to deliver, but I’m looking forward to the day of flying and being picked up. Driving 1500 miles one-way is starting to take it’s toll on our backs. Not to mention the expense of hotels along the route, many times three days travel each way. We’d reduce the amount of time we were gone from our own house and also how Lucy has to stay in a kennel. Kennels have become pet resorts, and the modern pricing reflects it. Each trip can add three thousand to as much as six thousand, depending on how spend-happy we get. A couple of trips in a year and you’re paying for it the rest of the year, if not into the next. We’ve been retired now for over five years, and outside of two trips, we’ve gone to the same places we ‘ve going to for over fifteen years. The only advantage to this, in recent years, is seeing our kids and grandkids by inviting them along for the vacation. What we haven’t done is to take one trip we talked about before retiring in search of checking off visiting all of the National Parks in the United States. I’ll never complain about seeing our kids, but it does make me wonder how much we’d have seen them had we chosen to live in an RV full-time. The hope is that we do get to spend more time in the camper in the upcoming years.

We are starting to have discussions about selling the timeshares. Looking at the current costs for points, the hope is to get what we paid for them. That would be about one-third of the cost someone would pay now for the same amount of points. We’ll see, I’m sure Marriott will offer pennies, but they also want the old weeks owner properties back into their inventory. The good thing, we get to see what they’ll offer and decide at that point. Tahoe may be sold in 2025 after our trip, but Hawaii will have to wait until after the planned trip in 2026. The problem is these days the maintenance fees have now exceeded, or at best are now the same costs as what you could do the trip for. The other notion is to rent our week every year to cover the maintenance costs, which looks like we might even pocket enough for a nice steak dinner each year. I’m not crying about things as we’ve had many years of fun and great times seeing Hawaii and Lake Tahoe, but it does make you wonder did we make a good decision years ago when buying into the timeshare world. In the end, we will still own a few thousand points each year that can be used to visit any of the inventory properties in Marriott inventory including all Wynmark and Sheraton vacation properties.

We are both talking about using the camper more and it’s something we really enjoy. We had some much-needed maintenance done to the roof this year and adding the second a/c unit, it makes it plausible to think about southern locations during the Summer and not head for the North portion of this country. Our dream was to spend a two weeks to a month at each National Park and truly explore them. Some, this would be overkill time, but others like Yellowstone would only be scratching the surface since Teton National Park is right there too. Glacier NP isn’t far up the road either. True adventure seeing things we haven’t seen with the dog and bird in tow. The biggest thing for us to consider is changing how we take vacations and for them to be about us first.

All of this leads to freeing up time and money for real estate investments. We’ve long looked at two locations for nightly rental houses in areas that have a decent market value for rental due to being a sought-after vacation place. In turn, we’d also get to use these properties for our own use yearly. We’ve tip-toed into the rental market, although we still have a lot to learn, we are encouraged to increase further into the waters. Time will certainly be telling the right or wrong, but for now we are moving forward.

The reason I mention real estate investing is the fact that when you go to those much-dreaded timeshare presentations, and God knows we’ve been to our fair share of them, the theme they always push is that you are investing in your future vacations. The problem is the only one making money off it is, of course, the Timeshare company. So, its time to reverse the role and be the company owning properties for others vacation needs.

I think Jen and I are in the same place when it comes to how we are seeing the whole vacation stuff, we love to travel, we just want to have more control how, why, and when. Right now, we feel a little of control and every January just drives home the point of negativity in timeshare ownership. Nearing the end of our remodeling, we are thinking more about adventure and utilizing the camper more and more. Mostly, we just need change and to see things and places never seen and do it while we can.