Regarding exchanging: Don't assume any old timeshare will grant you a dream vacation someplace else. It isn't how it used to be. You need to own the right timeshare, and make sure the exchange you make is to your advantage.
RCI is the largest exchange company. If you are a Weeks owner, and you deposit your timeshare week with them, you'll receive a certain amount of Trade Power Units (TPU) in exchange. You can spend those TPU toward one or more exchange vacations elsewhere. Any unused TPU remain in your account for a period of time, (a couple of years), until they expire.
It can be a good thing, if you deposit the right unit and receive the right TPU, then spend it more frugally. For example, if they gave you 36 TPU for your deposit (whatever location that may be) and you found an exchange you wanted that required 10 TPU, you'd make that exchange, and have 26 TPU remaining in your account. If you later found another exchange for 12 TPU, you'd make that exchange, and have 14 TPU remaining. And if you then found a third exchange, using 14 TPU, you'd get another exchange, and have zero TPU remaining in your account until your next deposit.
So using this example, you could could get three weeks of vacations for the one week you deposited. There are other fees you'd be paying (an exchange fee for each week you got via exchange), so your use cost would be higher than just the maintenance fee on the week you deposited. But as you can see, you can stretch your vacation time into several vacations.
Having said that, if your deposit got you that same 36 TPU, and the vacation exchange you want requires 38 TPU, you wouldn't be able to make the exchange because you wouldn't have enough TPU in your account.
Don't be misled by the advertising saying you can make exchange vacations all over the world. The fine print (and often unspoken caveat) is "IF you have enough TPU, and even then IF there is an available week to exchange into." If there is no availability, it doesn't matter how many TPU you have - there will be no week available to trade. So it is not a perfect science.
Someone else will be able to explain Points to you - that's a completely different kind of timeshare animal.
Dave