Using a Visitation Timeshare Calculator When Making a Parenting Time Schedule

I recently heard from a man who was involved in a custody situation. He explained that he and his former wife had gone to mediation to try and work out a parenting time schedule. In the course of mediation, they came up with a schedule that they both agreed on. He said he was ready to sign the agreement, but decided to take it home and look it over for a couple of days. Once he was home, he bought a computer program that had a visitation timeshare calculator. He put in his schedule, and he realized that the schedule he was about to sign actually gave him a lot less time with the children than it seemed. He went back to mediation with some changes in the schedule that made it a lot more fair.

Unfortunately, most parents don’t realize the importance that a visitation timeshare calculator can make for their parenting time schedule. However, many times the terms of the schedule can seem fair, but they hide extra holiday time, weekend time, and other hidden visits that significantly alter the parenting timeshare percentage. To really make a schedule fair, parents need to know the exact visitation timeshare that they have with the children.

The visitation timeshare is calculated by adding up all of the time that each parent has with the children. Then the hours can be converted to a percentage so that the parents can easily compare them. Parents can manually go through the schedule to figure out the percentage, or they can get computer programs to help them calculate it.

Knowing the visitation timeshare also benefits parents who are trying to make a shared parenting time schedule. In a shared parenting schedule, the mother and father have generally agreed to make a schedule where they each get about half of the time with the children. If the parents know the timeshare percentage as the create the schedule, they can truly make one that lets each parent have around fifty percent of the time.

In order to make sure that the parenting schedule is the right one, parents need to know everything about it. This includes knowing the visitation timeshare. By taking the time and effort to figure this out, the parents can have the peace of mind that comes from knowing the schedule is the best possible one for them and their children.

Are You an Unhappy Timeshare Vacation Owner?

You already know the horror stories of owning a timeshare vacation. Salespeople sold you with lavish promises of exotic vacations that never quite come true. They trapped you with a high pressure sales pitch for hours. You feel nickel and dimed by all the fees you have to pay to use it. You can never recoup the money you spent when you try to resell. After you’ve bought the timeshare, you can either regret the purchase doing everything you can to get rid of it or you can use it to its fullest. I’d like to open your eyes to the possibilities that you can still enjoy your purchase and hopefully make you a happy timeshare owner.

More than likely, during a vacation in your not so distance past, you were happily walking down the street or checking into your hotel, when somebody asked you, “Would you like to make $100 for 2 hours of your time?” or “How would you like free tickets to the show tonight?” You accepted the invitation and later found yourself in a room full of people who also accepted the invitation. You watched a video telling you about all the great things you can accomplish if you’ll just buy this timeshare. You then took a tour of the units, with the salesperson telling you this is the number one vacation destination in the country. Then you went back to a conference room where you spent the next few hours trying to get out of the presentation so you could get your $100 and return to your vacation. You looked at the numbers they gave you and for some reason they made financial sense to prepay all your future vacations. Then you came home and realized you’ve created a huge financial liability and start to regret the purchase. It got worse when you started researching online, finding all the horror stories people tell about their timeshare experience.

The regret really comes from the mismatch between reality and what the sales team told you. Basically, you took the sales pitch at face value. When they showed you those numbers, they presented them in the best possible light. “It’s a small maintenance fee, about $75 a month for upkeep so the resort remains a premium destination.” “The exchange fee is only $100.” “We’ll pay for the first year’s membership with the exchange company.” Realistically, it will cost me over $1000 to use my Marriott Vacation Club timeshare for one week this year. You probably realize by now that the same unit you just bought sells for half the price you paid on the resale market. You probably tried to use it, figuring you’d give it a chance and went to go trade it with one of the exchange companies. For some reason, your searches don’t bring up any of those exotic destinations they sold you on, like Hawaii. Your searches only return place like Orlando or Las Vegas. Maybe this wasn’t your experience, but I doubt you would read this article if it wasn’t close. You must remember that those salespeople are there to sell to you. They talk up all the good points and avoid the bad points.

With that kind of experience, does the number of dissatisfied timeshare owners surprise you? Some people will never get past the point of feeling they got ripped off. But what can they do, now? They could sell it on the resale market for half of what they paid for it. They could stop paying the maintenance fees and taxes, losing the rights to even use their property. They could continue to use it and feel the regret every time they paid their maintenance fee, the exchange company membership fee and the exchange fee. Or they could educate themselves learn some of the tips and methods to become a happy and successful timeshare owner.

The first step to happy timeshare vacation ownership is to consider your purchase price a sunk cost. You will never get all of that money back. This may be a painful shift in your thinking, especially if you financed it and are still making payments. If you did finance the purchase, you may want to look at alternative financing, like taking out a home equity loan on your residence to pay off the timeshare company’s note. This will at least save you some money on interest. In any case, the next step is to concentrate on making your timeshare a worthwhile investment. I’ve come to realize that even with my timeshare I do not save money on my vacations. Rather, I take better vacations for the money I spend. What do I mean by this? For my $1000, I’m not staying in a standard hotel room in the budget hotel a few blocks from the action. Instead I’m staying at a 2 bedroom condo, in the middle of the golf course next to the JW Marriott. It even comes with a kitchen. Yes, I drank the Kool-aid. Truth is you can’t be happy unless you’ve make that kind of comparison. If you only can think about how much you spend every year, then twist it around and start thinking about how much it would cost you to take that vacation on the open market. For instance, my Marriott ownership allows me to exchange for Marriott Rewards points, which I can use at Marriott’s hotels. I used this feature to stay at the Marriott Grand Flora Hotel in the heart of Rome. At nearly $400 a night, my $1000 that year was well worth the price. I can guarantee you that I would never dream of spending $3000 on a hotel room for my vacation. Many other modern timeshare companies have similar programs. You should explore these options. They might make more sense for your style of vacationing than just looking at exchanging or staying at your home resort year after year. Personally, I let my free membership with the exchange company lapse and never looked back.

If you stick with the exchange companies, you really need to understand how they work. They use secret formulas to match a timeshare trade with like for like. This means a studio unit in Boston for December will not match to a 2 bedroom unit in Hawaii in May. This ensures that when you give your unit to the timeshare company, they will only match your trade to a unit that’s similar in size and similar in quality with the unit you gave them. During my brief time as an exchanger, I figured out 2 ways you can use this to your advantage. The first: become an obsessive planner and figure out where you want to go on your vacation about a year in advance, possibly even 2 years. Reserve the best highest demand week you possibly can, such as holidays or spring break. Then place your trade request as early as you can. Keep in mind, the weaker your position, the more flexible you need to be. If you have a low-demand week, you can’t expect to get the size or date you really want. It may happen, but don’t expect it. The second way to take advantage of the like for like rule: look for the window of time when those formulas no longer apply, usually within a month or two of the unit’s check-in date. You need to be very flexible to use this method. Think what would happen if a Hawaii timeshare owner cannot use their unit next month and deposits their 2 bedroom unit. Since the check-in date on the Hawaii 2-bedroom is so soon, the formulas don’t apply and you are eligible to make this trade, no matter what kind of unit you deposited. If you are diligently searching for this kind of trade, you can increase your probability of reserving that 2-bedroom unit.

Of course you can do other things with your unit, such as renting it out, donating the week to charity or any number of uses. Unfortunately, the timeshare companies don’t spend much time teaching owners the ins and outs of using their timeshare. You need to take control and do some research to find out the many ways to properly use your timeshare. If changing your thinking and learning how to properly use your timeshare still results in failure and you’re unhappy with your timeshare. There’s really nothing you can do to make you feel good about the purchase. On the other hand, you’re now forced to take a week away from work every year. Is that really such a bad thing? I used to take a vacation every other year. Now I alternate between an annual international trip and a domestic trip. Remember you now have the privilege of taking incredible vacations for the same price you used to spend on budget traveling.

On The Fence About Owning A Timeshare? Consider These Points First

Many people have a question when thinking of buying a timeshare. Does it financially make sense or does it make sense at all to buy a timeshare? Well the answer can be both yes or no depending on who is buying and for what purpose it is being bought. In this article we will discuss why it makes sense to buy a timeshare.

The main point of timeshare ownership is exactly that: you own your vacation resort.

The question then becomes just like any question involving real estate: does it make more sense for you to rent or own?

This is not an easy question no matter what type of real estate you are thinking of purchasing. For example: If you move every year, does it make sense to buy or rent? The timeshare industry grew because many people starting realizing that they vacation in the same spot in the same year very often and the demand came up to own rather than rent. That is why this is not a small business anymore. Big hotels, resorts, and even cruises are now in this business with approximately two or three million Americans already owning units.

Timeshare math is no different than real estate math.

If you end up vacationing every week for thirty years, you can envision the payments and how they would compare. With hotels, you pay the full week rental of the hotel for thirty years. If I take a nice round number as an example, say $1000 for a week. That would be $30,000. You could also pay the same amount in monthly loan payments towards ownership, or you could pay the entire $30,000 up front and own your property. Taking into account on the renting side that the full week of rent is not protected against inflation and comparing that too ownership where only the maintenance fees are not protected against inflation, you may find the costs will be fairly close.

And now to compare the positives and negatives:

An added benefit with owning is that most of the time you will also get a nicer room plus amenities for your money than a hotel.

An additional benefit is that after you own, you only pay the small maintenance fees every year, much smaller than the cost of a full week rental in a nice hotel. So if you can think of the full rent on a hotel for thirty years being similar to a loan payment for thirty years, then after thirty years you continue to pay the full rent on a hotel where with your ownership after thirty years you only need pay the small maintenance fee.

In addition, with the possibility of being able to pass down ownership to your heirs, a third benefit is that for many years to come only a small maintenance fee needs to be paid to enjoy the vacation rental for a week each year. This is much more cost effective than having to pay the increasing costs of a full hotel rental each week every year.

This definitely makes financial sense if you take a vacation every year. If you take a vacation in the same destination each year, it definitely makes sense. If you take a vacation every year but to different destinations, then exchange programs are helpful for this but it requires more time and possibly fees to be paid for administrative expensive. If you do not take a vacation every year, it still may make sense if you want to rent your vacation to someone else that year or even just give it as a gift to a relative or friend.

Most people are familiar with real estate in terms of houses. So this comparison may be quite helpful:

To compare a home with a timeshare: it makes sense to buy it if you plan to use it for a long time. Buying a house and not using it would be a waste of money. The same can be said for a timeshare. However, one contrast is that it is common to buy a house and not use it if you plan to rent it. Many real estate owners will buy property with the intent to rent it. Renting is a bit easier of a proposition because people must live somewhere. And they will want to usually live somewhere for an extended amount of time. Vacationing on the other hand is not a requirement, so renting a timeshare means a smaller and more difficult prospect list to reach. Plus, this feat of renting needs to occur every year as vacationing is temporary versus living in a residence is more permanent. On the plus side for timeshares, vacationing can add variety as you can vacation in different destinations each year. The advantage of exchange programs is evident here versus living in a residence: it is hard to fathom doing an exchange for a few months with someone else just because you want to live somewhere else.

Still the bottom line is that if you don’t vacation often, it is probably not worth it. If you really enjoy takings vacations, it is definitely worth looking into. If you take vacations in the same spot quite often, then it really is worth looking into. And finally, some timeshare developments now offer an every other year proposal instead of every year, so if you think you may travel to Hawaii every other year, it almost doesn’t make sense not to own a timeshare in Hawaii. I use this last bit from personal experience as that was the logic we used when we purchased our Hawaii timeshare.

Hopefully this article has given you some great reasoning as far as why you would or would not own a timeshare. Feel free to contact me with any questions and good luck on your decision making!

Timeshare Telemarketing Techniques

When you’re selling Timeshare face to face on a working resort you have quite a few advantages over someone who works in a Timeshare Telemarketing department.

Firstly your client has been invited into the resort. They should have a brief idea that they are going to attend a Timeshare sales presentation. Or at least know that you will be showing them around the resort and the clients will have agreed to give you at least an hour of their time in return for some sort of gift or free lunch.

They are also on holiday and normally quite relaxed with nothing really special to do other than enjoy themselves.

Selling Timeshare over the phone is completely different.

You’re going in completely cold.

You’re invading your client’s privacy.

Unless you deal business to business you are entering their homes uninvited.

You have no way of telling if it’s a good time to call or not until you do call and they will always be too busy or have something more important to do than listen to you.

They will have been bombarded by telesales people on a daily basis trying to sell them the latest money saving telephone plan. Or the new gas or electric company that promises to save them thousands on they’re future utility bills and the bank is always trying to sell them more finance. I even had a call the other day from my electric company offering me life insurance!

The poor woman failed immediately because she had called my wife’s mobile which is the number we had put on the electricity contract, and then insisted on talking to the person on the title of the contract which is me. She would not discuss the purpose of the call with my wife.

Had she taken the time to ask a few questions first she would have found out that my wife’s number was on the contract because she deals with all the household finances, including our life insurance policies.

When my wife finally handed the phone to me in despair after trying to explain that the poor woman was better off talking to her, I promptly told her she was talking to the wrong person and cut her off!

The moral to this story is: It is very easy to say “no thanks” and hang up when someone calls you on the phone so your opening line and introduction in the first few seconds is crucial in any type of telesales.

It goes without saying that a pleasant voice and a good phone manner will help enormously in your telesales career, but there are other skills that can be learned and put into practise to improve your telephone closing percentages.

We’ll be looking deeper at those telephone skills over the next few weeks in my new section “Tips for Telesales”

So see you next week for the first part of “Tips for Telesales” that will be dedicated to opening lines and introductions to make sure they don’t hang up on you.