Well PIC to VIP doesn't make economical sense to get VIP Gold for a little under 30k for a typical household where both parents work full time and their kids are in school. I personally can't leave 150+ kids without a teacher because I want to go on vacation during the school year. My husband can't just be on vacation all the time as a Net Admin where 5 minutes of downtime at his job can cost the company $50,000. As a teacher, I can see how behind a kid gets when they're on vacation for a week. It only makes sense if you're older/can work remote/don't have kids.
In theory agreed, if you cannot use what you purchase, then it's probably not wise to purchase it. This is why so many timeshare owners have a negative viewpoint of timesharing in fact, as they either financially overextend themselves, or they aren't a good match for the timesharing lifestyle IME. There's nothing worse than buying something and continuously paying for something you can't use right? That said, it's also pretty easy to rent your Wyndham owned points to cover MFs, so if you foresee that you will want to vacation a LOT later in life, it
may be worth paying less now especially if you have the income to support such a purchase, which most folks won't have later in life as their earning potential declines as they approach retirement age. We plan to vacation a LOT as we approach retirement age, we may even timeshare full time for a good part of the year, as we love the timeshare lifestyle quite frankly.
In this respect, I think some people don't see the forest through the trees with respect to spending money on timesharing. The longer you own a timeshare and use it, the more cost effective it becomes as you drive down the sum total of money spent across an ever increasing number of vacations taken. For us, the decision was an easy one to make as our youngest child was almost 19 when we bought last year. Our kids are all in college and are young adults. Your definition of vacation assumes you are taking time away from work to use timesharing. We use 10-12 weekend stays at timeshare locations that requires us to use almost no vacation time. I've got 5 weeks of vacation at my job, can work remotely at will, and while my wife only has two weeks vacation right now, she is a nurse and works shift work so it is fairly easy for her to swap shifts with other nurses to free up Fridays or Mondays for us to take long weekend trips together. We then take 1-2 weeks of full vacations each year based upon her available vacation time at present. She will cross five years of employment with her current company and earns an extra week of vacation, which further increases our vacation options starting next year.
Again, I've always said that our use case doesn't match up with most other timeshare owners from what I've observed. We often want to vacation when others don't, at resorts when others don't. I'm very introverted and have zero desire to vacation when everyone else does, at the same demand resorts and areas that everyone else does during prime season. As a result, we can book 75-80% of our timeshare reservations in the discount window, and we usually receive free room upgrades to boot. We are still VIPP through Sept 2020, so for us this means 50% off points for most of our reservations. Now if I could just figure out a way to obtain permanent VIPP on the cheap.