Welcome to the Timeshare Economics Forum

[BocaBum99]

Hello everyone,

My name is Jim (aka BocaBum99, Boca, BB, "the Bum") and I will be moderating this new timeshare economics forum. You can call me Boca or BB.

When I was first introduced to timesharing on my last vacation to Hawaii, I was thrilled with the concept of owning a piece of Maui. After all, I was in a great mood since I was on vacation and the Oceanfront room that I was staying in was so totally awesome and spiritually uplifting that I just had to have a piece of it. So, the $16k price of the timeshare at Embassy Vacation Resort at Kaanapali Beach seemed like a reasonable price to pay to take it home with me.

However, I started to get buyer's remorse and woke up in a cold sweat several days in a row. I felt for some reason I was getting ripped off. So, I proceeded to systematically prove, through sound financial analysis and due diligence, that indeed I was getting taken to the cleaners.

Now that I am more experienced in timesharing, I found that I learned the hard way what most timesharing experts know implicitly. You must do your due diligence before you buy. But, I've also learned that many people are unfamiliar with how to perform the right financial analysis and due diligence in buying a timeshare. So, we decided to create a forum where we could have discussions to help people do just that.

This forum is for newbies and experts alike. No question or topic is off limit. If you have a question as straight forward as how to convert my purchase into an annual monthly or yearly expense. Post it. Or, if you have a question as complex as the expected inflationary risk of points based systems, we will address it all here. The common theme of this forum will be that assessments will be based on sound financial principles.

And, remember this, a timeshare is more than a simple purchase that can be boiled down to dollars and cents (or Pound Sterling, or South African Rand, etc). The only economics that matters is the one that works for you. You can buy a timeshare simply because you love it. You don't need to justify that to anyone. In this forum, we'll simply help you figure out the real cost of that love.