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We are now full time timesharing

Mike&Edie

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Hi, Edie and I are off on a fairly grand adventure. We are traveling from timeshare to timeshare, full time. We are keeping detailed accounts and publishing them on our blog as we can. We go from place to place in our Prius, stay for a week, adventure around the local sites and move on. We rented our house out, put all our stuff in storage and hope to be on the road for 2 to 5 years. We've started on the west coast and early this fall will move across the US to the east coast. Next year we hope to take a repositioning cruise to Europe and tour over there, timeshare to timeshare. We hope to return to the South Pacific and Hawaii as well on this adventure. We would appreciate any suggestions and tips as we are fairly new to this and learning as we go. We belong to RCI and are buying mostly last calls and specials. We sometimes buy on Ebay. We are negotiating for a Worldmark membership off resale. Your thoughts would be appreciated. We are mostly booked up through December 22 of this year, ending up in Florida. We are in Snowbird Utah as we write this, safe travels, Mike & Edie
 

vacationhopeful

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Welcome to TUG!:wave:

Hope you have been hanging around reading for a few years - if not, Ron & Joan have been our regular Tuggers posting for 3+ years now about their adventures in Fulltime timesharing.

Looking forward to some of your adventures!:banana:
 

stmartinfan

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Would you provide a link to your blog? It would be fun to read about your experience.
 

bastroum

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My wife and I are doing something similar. I guess you could call it a hybrid version of full time. We sold our house and bought a 2-bedroom condo in Las Vegas. We travel somewhere every month, however, we return to Las Vegas between trips. We have been doing this since November 2012 and are currently in Palm Desert CA. It's really been fun but as you can imagine it takes a lot of planning.

Good Luck on your adventure.
 

Mike&Edie

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Edie has followed TUG for years and joined last year. We have read Ron and Joan's blog and enjoy it, got our inspiration to blog about it from them. Our site is: www.fulltimetimeshare.com It shows up on Bing and Yahoo, but not google yet. It is very much a work in progress.

We looked at buying in Las Vegas, the real estate is so attractive right now, but we really want to do extended travel far from home.
 

Carol C

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Ron and Joan are indeed our resident experts, and frequent posters to TUG who frequent TUG meetups. Many of us have had the pleasure of getting to know Joan and Ron over the years. Before that, Ray Harper ("Rides with Ray") was our quasi-fulltimesharer. I miss his postings and miss him alot. Anyway, it's great to have more folks onboard who're taking time to share stories. Hope to meet ya one day! :wave:
 

ronparise

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Wow...week to week

There was a thread hear some time ago that explored the cheapest way to timeshare full time, and RCIs Last Calls were discussed at length, but the week to week nature of that turned me off.

Worldmark however, I think would work well. With Worldmark you can make long term reservations....30,60, 90 days or more; as many nights as you have credits, and mf is inexpensive and if you were to follow the blue season (the Desert in the summer time and the Pacific Northwest in the winter) you could get by real cheap. The problem for many is that Worldmark Credits are not cheap to buy. But you can rent one time use credits from other owners, for not much more than mf

Ill be following your blog
 

bastroum

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We can't do week to week either. We go for a minimum of 2 weeks and our longest stint was 7 weeks before going home to Las Vegas.
 

pranas

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Looking forward to reading your blog.
 

Mike&Edie

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Carol C, we would be delighted to meet you at a tug get together. How do we find out when and where?

Ron, we have read many of your articles and enjoy your insights. I guess we are skirting on the blue-white seasons, though the weather has been spectacular out west this year. Lots of sunshine and not much rain, though I always worry about that. We are on a well at our home on the California coast and I really like having running water at the house.

Week to week is kind of work, and Edie asked me if I minded. I reflected for a minute and found that I was looking forward to the next change. We are booked for a couple of weeks in a couple of places, only for the opportunity to see family traveling from afar to Las Vegas, and Lake Tahoe, but other than that the new normal is change every week. Because we have booked so far in advance it removes the option of lingering comfortably in one place. Edie says the best in not worrying about deep cleaning.
 
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Dori

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Enjoy your most excellent adventure! We will all enjoy reading about where you go and how you like it.

Dori
 

sue1947

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We belong to RCI and are buying mostly last calls and specials. We sometimes buy on Ebay. We are negotiating for a Worldmark membership off resale. Your thoughts would be appreciated. We are mostly booked up through December 22 of this year, ending up in Florida. We are in Snowbird Utah as we write this, safe travels, Mike & Edie

With Worldmark, you can belong to both II and RCI (as well as the other smaller exchange companies). The advantage with II is their XYZ program which gives you a second week for just the cost of the exchange fee. The second week is from a limited selection of overbuilt areas, but it's a heck of a deal. I've used it twice at the Lawrence Welk in Escondido in January, once at Ridge Tahoe in October and Sunchaser in Fairmont Hot Springs in BC in May. A week in a 2 BR for $174 can't be beat.
In addition, II has deposit first for WM which allows you to deposit a low season week's worth of credits and upgrade to a better season or size. There is risk in that you have no control over which resort you are given to trade (dog vs gem) but you can also get some good deals in off season locations. WM is a great trader. For info on Worldmark, see www.wmowners.com/forum.

Sue
 

blr666

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Since you guys are staying at timeshares, can you also write a little bit about the timeshares. Your impressions, stay again or not. Thanks. I am looking forward to reading about your adventure.
 

Mike&Edie

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Edie here, trying to reply. To Dori, thanks. We sure are having fun with it. We'd appreciate any ideas and tricks that you all use to get the most bang for our buck. Tips like Sue1947 wrote about. Thanks. We're hoping our Worldmark comes through soon. BLR666-we hope we are writing what everyone would like to read about each resorts, :banana:but if you have other areas you'd like us to write about, feel free to ask. We're trying to check out the facilities, checkin, checkout, laundry facilities, internet, what activities they have, any extra goodies, etc. Plus, the bonus is we have a memory of our grand adventure to look back on.
 

susieq

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Thanks!! Looking forward to reading all about your exciting adventures ~ I've even bookmarked it!! Thanks for letting us all travel vicariously through you! Enjoy all your adventures, and continue to tell us all about them ~ and the occasional picture would be great too. :whoopie:
 

mjm1

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Mike and Edie, have a great time. Look forward to hearing about it. We have a Prius too and know that will help you travel economically but still in comfort.

Mike
 

Mike&Edie

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Suieq Thanks for the comments. The pictures are a real challenge. Edie is the official photographer and she uses a Cannon EOS DSLR, so every picture has to be scaled down quite a bit. I am putting pictures in and will make a concerted effort this afternoon and hope to catch up to the blog within the next couple of days. We are off to a Tai Chi class, then a water exercise class, then we want to hit the tram to the mountain top. The sky is clear and the views should be spectacular. Then work on the blog. Edie will input some costs this afternoon too.

mjm1, Our Prius has been so good, we want to buy a new one but there is absolutely nothing wrong with this one. I kind of want to put 300,000 miles on it. We are a little over halfway there. Hope you are enjoying yours as much as we enjoy ours.
 

ronparise

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we want to buy a new one but there is absolutely nothing wrong with this one. I kind of want to put 300,000 miles on it. We are a little over halfway there. Hope you are enjoying yours as much as we enjoy ours.


Ive got the same goal for another Toyota product, a 2001 Avalon and Im just over halfway there too.

Sounds like the Prius could be the subject of another blog as you timeshare your way to 300000 miles.

Do you have a favorite mechanic, and is there a timeshare nearby??
 

geoand

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Suieq Thanks for the comments. The pictures are a real challenge. Edie is the official photographer and she uses a Cannon EOS DSLR, so every picture has to be scaled down quite a bit.

This really shouldn't be a problem. There are several inexpensive photo software programs that can scale individual or groups of photos for email, blogs, web sites, etc. Load them, select ones you want to export to any particular site and tell the software what type of site the photo or photos will be posted.
 

Mike&Edie

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Ron, no favorite mechanic, I always take it to a dealer, because it is a hybrid I've always been nervous about the local mechanic really knowing what they were doing with it. All it has needed is routine service, except for when a tree branch, laying in wait on a rural Oregon road, went through the front end taking out the radiator, a/c and front grill. Took it to a Toyota dealer for repairs. Good luck with your Avalon, those are so roomy!

geoand
I'll look for the software, would you know some of the names? Thanks,
Mike
 

cgeidl

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A wonderful idea!!

I like the idea of your adventure and plan to read your blogs. Two to five years seems like a long time. We once did a year traveling in Europe in a 16 foot long trailer and stayed in timeshares, and villas, about half the time. Also sold everything and started a US RV trip for we didn't know how long an ended after almost a year. We met people who had done this for 10 to 20 years.
We met lots of friendly acquaintances but missed having friends close by and built a house when the year ended.
Have a great time and remember when you wake up where you are. When you don't remember it may be time to try he next adventure.
 

Carol C

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Carol C, we would be delighted to meet you at a tug get together. How do we find out when and where?

TUG gatherings can be spontaneous or well planned, and they do tend to be in resort locales where a critical mass of TUGgers might be at any given time. I've gone to meetups of TUGgers in Hilton Head and Orlando. Toronto TUGgers meetup regularly in Canada. Also TUGgers have met up in the Cancun area. Hint hint...you too can organize a TUG meetup during your trips. Where might you be going that you think there could be other timesharers around in the same resort area at same time you've chosen to vacation? Voila...a TUG gathering in the making! :banana:
 

Mike&Edie

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:) Two to five years is a long time, but we're almost into a year already and we've only touched the surface of things to see and do. If we get tired, bored, sick, whatever, I'm sure we'll head back to California but...right now we want to experience it all while we can. We are still wanting to do this is Europe for several months, and trying to figure out how to do this in the South Pacific/Hawaii. Also, it's kind of fun seeing what we can get and where we can go. Again, any and all ideas are appreciated on how to do this better, cheaper, etc.
 

geoand

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geoand
I'll look for the software, would you know some of the names? Thanks,
Mike

We use both Aperture (mac only) and photoshop. There several photoshop's made by Adobe and one is under $150.

geo
 
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