[2008] Fulltime timesharing?

[ronandjoan]

When the time came, he and my Aunt did just that: Bought a super fancy RV, sold their home, and hit the road for a 12 month vacation, the first of many they had planned. Three months later Ernie came down with a mysterious illness that turned out to be leukemia, and within another three months he died.

Life is short - eat dessert first.

Dave

So sorry to hear about your uncle after all their plans. Yes, we know that the exit strategy is the most important... e.g. esp with possible health issues clouding our travel.

We thought we had a plan, now we are having to change it, and we DON'T KNOW!!!! we like SO MANY places!

Thanks for all the good and useful postings!

 

[wegottago]

I would like to know when you travel to several TS's are you always mtg new people or do you get lonely? Is it hard not having your 'regular' friends around? Also, you and your DH must get along great if you spend that much time together especially if you don't know anyone at these TS's?

Sounds like great fun and I admire you. I remember 30 years ago (it seems like yesterday!) I had a good job, relationship of 4 years that wasn't going anywhere, and just a simple easy life. I wanted more. I gave it all up to go backpacking thru Europe for several months. I talked to a lot of people about it before making a decision. I didn't listen to the naysayers but used the support of those who said go for it. It was the greatest time of my life and even though I went alone I was never alone unless I wanted to be as I met so many people to travel with. Even got a new boyfriend out of it. Now, I want to do it with my kids someday and/or live in Europe for awhile when I retire.

Good Luck and have fun and stay healthy!

 

[ronandjoan]

The timesharing thing would be orders of magnitude worse as you would be constantly uprooting yourself. It may sound like fun in the beginning but as you get older it will be not so much fun.

Well, I have to admit, when we can stay in the same place/unit for multiple weeks, it is really nice! For example, in January we will be 5 weeks in St Augustine (at TAS). We were 6 weeks in Telemark (WI) this summer, only 3 of them were in the same unit, but we still loved being there that long.

Yes, packing/moving day is not fun....because we are so sad to be leaving!
.

 

[ronandjoan]

I love this thread!

We hope to do between 50% to 75% timesharing. In preparation, we've purchased a little dump of a house a couple of miles from where we live--we currently use it as storage for our business, but it's ready to live in once it's emptied out. We'll sell our big house here and use the dumpy little house as home base during the summer months and the Christmas holidays. We own it free and clear, the taxes are quite low, and the utilities can be shut off when we're away making it a very affordable home base. One vehicle can always be in the garage in case we have to make an emergency trip home.
.

This would be ideal. One problem we are having is that we do not have a place to go back to like a home base where we could have our things spread out to easily find items we need to simply live with. We have a storage unit in Springfield OH (where most of our things are packed away in carefully labeled boxes!) - we sold all the furniture except for family heirloom antiques -
and another storage unit in Seattle because we come here so often (we are here now) and we stay in our son's condo, but we can't leave our everyday living stuff out since he rents it when we are not here (and sometimes when we ARE here so need to move to a motel for a few days! - but they get a good rent for it), so we need to go to the storeroom for each visit and bring out our Rubbermaid bins with everyday living items.

We have a car here which we leave in the condo parking lot, and a van on the east coast (full of the TS living items) which we leave at friends' houses for extended periods- or just at the airport, if it 's just for a week.

So, our problem now is REMEMBERING exactly what is where!!!!

 

[ronandjoan]

We are currently wrapping up Week 2 of a 23-week vacation/sabbatical staying in timeshares. I would be feeling pretty ripped off if I didn't have 21 more weeks to go!

Looks like you are out at much as Ray was!

I feel the same way ... we don't want to leave a place since we like it so well, but we know there are more great places in the future to look forward to. And the same with the weather - okay, it was COLDER almost EVERYWHERE last year, but warmth is in the future - at least in Mexico!

 

[malyons]

We stayed at Tortuga Beach Club last week and met a gentleman who was also full time timesharing......He said he owned 51 weeks, most of which were in FL, and just spent the year travelling from unit to unit and a week with family. Had 17 consecutive weeks in Daytona for a "home base" and otherwise seemed to group weeks together in parts of the state as much as possible (was currently on 1 week in Tortuga and then off for 2 more on Sanibel at another resort). I'm a long ways off of retirement, but found the whole idea fascinating....just wanted to let you know there's more full-timers out there!

 

[ronandjoan]

I have updated my BLOG as of the end of September, but the BEST is yet to come - we finally...... got to....FLORIDA and warm weather! - well, I mean HOT weather - unseasonably hot, after all.

http://ronandjoanjourney.blogspot.com/

 

[djpotts50]

Full-timing

I have read blogs about people full-timing in timeshares, in RVs, and on cruise ships! Since the wife and I like all three types of living (travel), we plan on doing all three. I will be 50 and my wife will be 47 when we retire!!!

We have purchased a 45 ft. Newmar Essex luxury RV with 4 slides as our primary condo on wheels and set up residence in a state with no state taxes to stretch our retirement dollars to the max. We even set up a Retirement Asset Holding Company in Missoula, MT and named it D & D World Travels, LLC (named after me and my wife - Don & Deb) which protects our RV, tow vehicle, and toys from personal lawsuits - just didn't want to ever take any chances that one law suit could wipe out our retirement assets.

We also can live in timeshares for 16 weeks per year without using bonus time or renting additional credits. We own large memberships with both WorldMark and Great Links Resorts.

We also plan on doing 3 to 4 cruises per year. We travel a lot taking advantages of last minute specials and off-season values. We love cruising with Carnival, Norwegian, Holland America, Princess, and others.

We will hit the road fully retired some time between Aug 2010 and May 2011, so it will be here before we know it. We will keep up a travel blog of our adventures which will also include overseas timeshare trips and overseas cruises. The timeshare weeks and cruise trips will give us some out of the RV time, but frankly we went for the largest RV made to help eleviate that closed in feeling that smaller RVs can give a person after some time on the road.

Life is too short to just settle on one way to see the world. Heck, if I had grown up near the sea, I am sure I would also be looking at buying a yacht and cruise the oceans for several years. I did investigate the condo cruise lines, but thought the costs for a two to four year around the world cruise was not as cost effective.

I love reading about people traveling full-time and get tons of ideas from others.

Here is our RV if you are interested in seeing it.

http://www.yourrvhome.com/FLASH/020709_04_essex.html

:whoopie: Sergeant Major

 

[djpotts50]

Full-timing

Some friends have asked me what would a person do living full-time in an RV. Some thoughts are to travel throughout the USA and Canada and see everything possible.

We do belong to a few different lifetime RV clubs and a few different lifetime campground memberships. Each of the RV clubs have annual Rallys and the option to take several Caravans per year. RV Rallys are an annual gathering of club members. Rallys usually last from 4 days up to a week. Rallys tend to have lots of potlucks, seminars, live entertainment, day trips, and much more. It is a great way to meet old friends and make new friends while living full-time on the road. For those wondering what a Caravan is, it is where a group of RVs (say 10 to 15) group together with a caravan leader and travel as a group to places like Alaska, the Maritimes, etc. Caravans tend to last for a week or more to as much as a couple of months. It can be alot of fun traveling in a small group for both comaraderie and safety.

The campground memberships are a lot like timeshares in themselves and allow us to live in each campground for up to 2 to 3 weeks at a time for free or at a cost of $10 per day, depending on which membership we are utilizing. Most campground memberships have club houses, pools, laundromats, jacuzzis, saunas, hot tubs, horse stables, tennis courts, basketball courts, golf courses, lakes (fishing and boat rentals) and lots of other amenities like you would find at your nicer timeshares.

I can't imagine ever getting tired or traveling in our RV; especially with the breaks from RVing by staying in timeshares and going on cruises. Life should be looking really good as long as we eat healthy foods, exercise daily, and try to stay as healthy as possible. Quality of life is as important to us as quantity of life!!!

:whoopie: Sergeant Major

 

[ronandjoan]

A Great PLan

You have such a great plan, congratulations on having those options and also to be able to retire at such a young age.

Sounds like you will have SO MUCH FUN!!!!

We all pray for good health!!!

 

[julienjay]

Where are you at these days? Just curious!

 

[krmlaw]

planning for retirement ...

DH and I are still young (44 and 31), but starting to plan for retirement.

We are debating buying a condo in FLL, or trying to do the winter commute with TS/cruises.

Not sure which ... we will only be "going south" for part of the year (the colder months in NY)

 

[love2travelguy]

Fulltime timesharing book

You need to write a book on the expierence and how you did it ! That's cool stuff , Good Luck

I second that comment. I'm intrigued.

 

[jennstall]

More and more I've been thinking about doing something like this myself. Originally I had the idea of getting a conversion van to travel with, something like a RoadTrek or a Sportsmobile. I was thinking about using the conversion van for overnights where I was between timeshares or for when traveling to places that don't have any timeshares.

But the more I think about the cost of doing that, the more I wonder if simply sticking to timeshares full-time would be more cost effective, with the occasional hotel or motel stays thrown in when necessary.

If I did full-time I would probably only do it for a couple of years. I'm in my mid-40s now and at some point I would like to own my own place, but for now I just want to travel. So if instead of spending tens of thousands on a Conversion Van, if I just put that towards my timeshare costs, it might prove to be more cost effective.

What I'd like to do is hash out the most economical way to achieve what I want - say, for example, keeping my accommodation costs to $2K or less per month. Right now, during winter I spend less than that to remain in the Southeast all winter so I figured it was do-able the rest of the year as well. I use a lot of Last Call rentals on RCI in addition to the points I own.

Currently, I own DVC, Wyndham and Royal Holiday. I'm thinking that if I augmented what I already own with Worldmark and, maybe, RCI points, then that might give me the flexibility to take advantage of their various "last call" type of transactions where weeks use less points the closer they are booked to the travel date.

I don't have VIP with Wyndham and I have no intention of sinking that kind of money into them, but maybe picking up additional Wyndham points just for depositing to RCI might be worthwhile too. Of course, one option which occurred to me is taking them up on their Discovery program option at some point. Since that program is good for a few years (right??), that might be just all the time I need as a VIP.

And for the RCI points, I know there's someone running a temporary rental membership for RCI Points, right? One of my big issues is that I don't want to be stuck with too many timeshares once I decide to scale back my traveling.

Do any of you have any thoughts on this? I was thinking about starting a new thread for the purposes of hashing out what would be the most efficient way to full-time, but since we are already discussing full-timing here I didn't want to duplicate the topic.

 

[kjt]

Day Dreaming

I've been having a fun lunch today, just day-dreaming. I had never thought about time-sharing full time before, but here are my thoughts...

My retirement dream would be to get an apartment wherever my daughter ends up (she's still in high school now). We only have 1 child, so my home is wherever she is. I'm afraid she's going to end up in Texas - she LOVES Texas (nothing against Texas, except the huge bugs and heat and snakes). We'd keep the apartment full-time. It would be our storage place / place to keep our extra car / our "home" and place to go for holidays, etc.

3 months of the year I'd like to rent a house in a different part of the world each time (California / Florida / Europe / Caribbean). This would avoid the feeling of hating to leave so often, every week or so. This would allow us to meet new people, learn different cultures, etc. and be a place for our friends and family to come visit also. Perfect!!

We just have 5000 points HGVC, but if we used the points as studios over non-peak times that would spread out to 3 weeks, so that would be additional vacations for us during off-season.

The reason this is ideal is that this will give us a place to go to as we get elderly, where we would already have our primary doctors, etc. Also, as we pass away, my daughter will only have to worry about what to do with the 1 week timeshare (give it away, for all I care if she doesn't want anything to do with it).

My parents passed away (my mother had parkinsons and dimentia, so I'm preparing myself that this may be my fate) and it was heartbreaking to have to figure out what to do with their beautiful house and their HGVC timeshare (which has been an absolute nightmare - more than I can say).

OK - now I have to let my husband know of our plans!

 

[ronandjoan]

I don't have VIP with Wyndham and I have no intention of sinking that kind of money into them, but maybe picking up additional Wyndham points just for depositing to RCI might be worthwhile too. Of course, one option which occurred to me is taking them up on their Discovery program option at some point. Since that program is good for a few years (right??), that might be just all the time I need as a VIP.

Jennstall
Advice, do NOT do the Discovery progam with Wyndham, it is not cost efective. Instead, buy some points on eBay.

 

[ronandjoan]

Guess I've been off this THREAD for too long - what does the [2008] mean?

Where does the time go?

We are still "out there" and starting to repeat visitations since some we have fixed weeks (e.g. St Augustine and now Villa Dela Palmar in PV), some we love so much to own (e.g. Telemark) and others we just enjoy returning to, like right now we are three weeks at Vacation Village at Bonaventure. I wanted to update my BLOG and in doing that have all the new pics on Snapfish, but that task has gotten beyond me for the moment, working on the pics.

We have been to some very nice places since I last updated. I'll get busy.

I also need to answer people's questions that have been posted here.

 

[ronandjoan]

My retirement dream would be to get an apartment wherever my daughter ends up (she's still in high school now). It would be our storage place / place to keep our extra car / our "home" and place to go for holidays, etc.
:

That would be very practical - it is great that you are planning ahead now. We may start renting our son's condo full time in Seattle so we'll have a place to go back to and not have to unpack everything from the storage unit to just "live" for a week or two.

Which means, that then, we would not be called full-time timesharers any more!

 

[ronandjoan]

3 months of the year I'd like to rent a house in a different part of the world each time (California / Florida / Europe / Caribbean). This would avoid the feeling of hating to leave so often, every week or so. This would allow us to meet new people, learn different cultures, etc. and be a place for our friends and family to come visit also. Perfect!!

This would be IDEAL! We never like to spend just one week at a new place anyway, and then when we like a place so well, even the 3 weeks we are staying at several places this year is not enough!

 

[ronandjoan]

Where are you at these days? Just curious!

In January we were at St Augustine (TAS) for 5 weeks. We went immediately to Puerto Vallarta via Seattle, (stayed one night in a motel close to the airport to use their shuttle) and stayed at Torre Vallarta through Platinum Interchange, which was wonderful, and then our 2 fixed weeks at Villa del Palmar. Flew back to Seattle to visit my mother and the family and get her taxes ready for her accountant, for 9 days and then flew back to Daytona where we had left our car with a friend and drove here to Vacation Village at Bonaventure in Weston FL. We’re here for 3 weeks and my MIL and BIL will be here tomorrow for a week (from Little Rock.) My husband will do his mother’s taxes for her then. Right after they leave, we are flying to DC for 2 nights in order to be at the finals for the National Trumpet Competition, guessing/betting that our granddaughter will place in the final three – they do not announce it until Sat afternoon and that would be too late to plan, last year she won 1st place, then we’ll fly back to FLL and finish out our last week here. Then to 2 nights at Wyndham Cypress Palms to get a better air fare by leaving FL on Tuesday.

Then we return to Seattle (timing for that is my dad’s birthday – he’ll be 93) as well as to visit my mother and do our taxes. Hmmmm, sure do spend a lot of time on taxes at this time of year, huh? And of course, we have to carry all that paperwork….not the least hardest part is remembering where everything is – is it in the van on the East coast, in the storeroom in Seattle or the storeroom in Ohio. Oh yes, Make a List, I used to be good at that, but the lists I have sometimes get changed as I find another handy spot in the WRONG plastic Rubbermaid bin at the last minutes of packing up!

We return to Daytona for 3 weeks in April at the Tropic Sun Towers, and then start our trek north, staying at the Wyndham Plantation near Atlanta for 3 nights, 3 nights at the new Wyndham Smokies Lodge near Knoxville, (another BIL) then back to Ohio, staying with a friend while I write a report for the high school there, go to doctor appointments and start moving some of our stuff from the storeroom there to our son’s new house in Springfield IL.

Then to Seattle for a couple of days before flying to PHX to stay at the Scottsdale Camelback resort from Platinum Interchange for a week to visit my niece and also to see our grandson compete in the International Tuba competition in Tucson. Back to Seattle and may be going to DC again for my husband’s military reunion – no firm date for that yet, though, maybe June 9 – back to Seattle, kids have a concert too, then to Hawaii for 6 weeks starting June 18.

And so it goes, There’s more of the same,….through next Feb!

 

[a1000monkeys]

What a great thread. Lots of great ideas. Retirement is still far away for us, at least 18-20 years. In the meantime we'll vacation as much as work and the school schedule allows.

I envision keeping our home or maybe a smaller condo nearby and travelling 4-6 months a year. The weather is mild year-round here but I'd still rather spend my winters in Hawaii.

 

[ronandjoan]

Amen to that! We are looking for WARM!

and having trouble finding it....

 

[RDB]

...

Here is our RV if you are interested in seeing it. ...

NICE!!!
What do you do with the RV while you TS or cruise?

 

[ace2000]

NICE!!!
What do you do with the RV while you TS or cruise?

Very nice RV!

 

[glypnirsgirl]

Bumping this thread

Hi Joan - Saw that you had updated your blog. Just encouraging you to update this thread too at your leisure.

elaine