[QUOTE=rochel;16571373]I personally haven't known anyone who has been happy with their timeshare purchase. The in-house electronic bulletin board where I work always has numerous timeshare weeks for sale in Hawaii, Mexico, etc, so if I wanted to go that way it would be pretty easy and cheap to do so.

QUOTE]

We have been happy with ours - and believe me I was a skeptic. Mr. umbjk had started buying points with HGVC, and we have since added many more points. Depending on how we use points (season, hotel, studio, 1 BR...), we have the points for anywhere from 20 nights at a Cat 7 to over three months in a HGVC property.

Let me be the first to acknowledge - on a purely financial basis, we might be able to do the same thing for less - but as have others have pointed out there are other benefits including:
- Ability to take many vacations to wonderful (and varied) spots every year. We are lucky in that we have many legacy airline points, SW RR options and CP, which further facilitates this.
- Ability to book a condo with a kitchen when we want. Saves on food and calories. And, frankly, I don't want to have to get up, get dressed, and scrounge up breakfast every morning - even in an Exec Lounge. We stayed two weeks in Hawaii last year, set-up was perfect.
- Mr. umbjk and I have somewhat different approaches to spending money - which had made it difficult to agree on what to book. He'd be happy booking a $50 a night dump when he's looking at prices, and I'll splurge on a high end property. He enjoys staying at the high end, though, so now that we have the points, it is much easier to agree on what to book. This benefit in particular is worth really big bucks, at least to me.
- Again, I acknowledge the pure financial calculation can look bad, but we have bought direct from Hilton and have been happy with those benefits. We have diamond status "for life", don't pay any booking, change, or roll-over fees, and have acquired an additional 2.5-3.0 million in HHonors bonus points - most of which we have used for Cat 7's, so figure that has been worth at least $20k.
- We view this as pre-paying for our retirement travel -first year will be an around the world trip, and subsequent years will include extended stays in Palm Desert, Vegas, Florida...
- We have enough points to do everything we want - so that I don't have to obsess over promotions, where I stay on business travel, and the like.

I think the advantages really kicked in when we acquired a lot of points - I'm not sure I would recommend one week per year, to be honest. But, if you are able to add points/weeks and build a nice bank over time, you can find yourself taking many more, and possibly nicer, vacations.