My worst financial decision ever....sort of

Our former home resort, The Point at Poipu, Kauai.

Last month the Hawaiian papers published four huge pages of foreclosure notices on a time share in Kauai. Our name was on the list and I want to tell you a tale of warning. It all started with a helicopter ride.

We are in Kauai for our 25th anniversary at the Sheraton, and to save money on a flight around the island we promised to hear a time share sales promotion.  We did, we said no, they began to invite us back for a stay at a mere 100 dollars a night. In the meanwhile I had my first heart attack. Thinking I was a goner, we took them up on the deal and returned to Kauai with two of our children and one grandchild, and we loved it. The thought of trading and doing this in other resorts, the idea that all our payments for the week would apply to the sales price, and me thinking my life was almost over....well, in a moment of weakness we bought a sweet little every other year prepaid vacation so we could have "future inflation free vacations".  HA

Allow me to condense to the end of the story. Ten years later we have enjoyed five weeks of vacation for our considerable investment,  The resort changes hands three times, a rapacious crook takes over and management hikes our yearly maintenance fees to a ridiculous amount, and then decides to pass on a massive repair bill for shoddy construction from way before we ever got on the helicopter ten years ago.

Hence we are billed half of our original money just to continue our ownership, our inflation free vacation becomes enormously expensive again, and we and 500 plus other owners said, We have had enough an d we aren't going to play this game any more.  We are waiting to see if this "sham foreclosure" affects our credit ratings, or if they sic credit collectors on us.That would be the ultimate low down scum move, as he gets to sell our timeshare again to some younger suckers.  We are in a lawsuit, but this shyster gets not one more nickel of my vacation money.

Advice, save for a vacation, buy what you can afford. Do not buy into any timeshare of any kind. Run, don't walk from a company called Diamond Resorts International who wants to corner the market on the vacation industry. The other thing they cannot take away is the beautiful 5 weeks we enjoyed in Kauai, Maui, San Clemente, and New Orleans for our ten years of vacations.