The First One
Well I thought I would take this chance and talk about our first big money mistake my DH and I made as a couple. We were fine when we got married ~ a month later he got a bonus from work that allowed him to pay off his credit card, pay for moving me with him (we got married in between duty stations and the military didn’t move me) and us to get an apartment.
When our now 5 year old was almost a year old, we went to this … presentation (I think that’s what they were selling it as?). We got the brochure saying we would just have to listen and then we would have a free trip to Vegas – I think we had two airline tickets and a hotel room that would be paid for. We said what the heck, why not.
You can tell where this is going. And no, we didn’t even think it was a timeshare until we got there and sat through everything. We both grew up in small, rural places where noone owned timeshares – and thus noone was marketed to.
We listened to their presentation, then we talked to just one person. We were there for so long that the next group of people were coming in to talk to their one person. We asked to talk to just each other a couple of different times. At the end, we bought it.
It was $10K. They required 10% down, which we didn’t have, but they ever so kindly offered to let us make payments on it. Well alright! That sounds just great.
We made the payments on the 10%, then started making the monthly payments. We tried to plan on where we would go and when we would go. We didn’t get very far there. Our timeshare ran on a point system so you could trade in points for a trip. We lived close to where a majority of their places were located, so we were hoping to be able to do a weekend here and there a few times a year.
Nevermind that at one point, my husband didn’t get one day off from work in 8 months. Not one. There went out weekend here, weekend there idea.
We then took out a loan from our bank (a credit union) to pay off the balance since the bank loan was a lower %. Then we started making our little bit lower payments to the bank. And we still had to pay the yearly fees, of course.
This is really long, I’ll finish tomorrow. 