I Still Loathe Our Timeshare

This post was included in the Carnival of Money Stories #84: ‘Twas Two Weeks Before Christmas Edition hosted by Yes, I Am Cheap. Stop over there and see a lot of other really great posts. If you are visiting from that carnival, settle in and stay a while. If you end of following me, you might win some candy (see just under my header!). =)

You've heard me gripe about owning our timeshare before (actually, pretty recently). I continue to loathe the fact that we own it.

We had discussed taking out a Lending Club loan on it and paying it off to obtain the note and then trying to sell it back to the sales department at the resort just to get out from under it. It wasn't guaranteed to work and we were going to have to take a loss on it. But frankly, I didn't care anymore. Anything to just have it gone.

But we haven't done that yet. I was very close to clearing the whole process with Chip and making sure he was okay with doing that when he lost his job. And the loan I wanted to take out was going to increase our payment on it because it was a 3 year loan rather than the 10ish years we will currently pay on it. But then the job loss happened and we cannot currently afford a new higher bill. In fact, we're just making minimum payments until full employment is back. So that plan is on hold.

Well, two days ago I was reminded of what a pain this thing is.

We got our maintenance fee bill.

If you don't know anything about timeshares, let me enlighten you. For each year you are allowed to use it (ours is every other year) you get a bill to "cover maintenance" of the property. That makes sense actually. For upkeep and all. However, what you may not know is that we have no guarantee that it won't go up.

And it has gone up this year.

A lot.

Two months ago, we got a letter saying we needed to pay a "special assessment fee" related to a lot of stuff I won't go into here. But basically, everyone who owns a resort through our timeshare company had to pay it. One time fee.

And our maintenance fees were going up.

So...back to the original story.

Our bill arrived two days ago. For $1322.50. Let me let that sink in for you.

$1322.50

We are just getting by to make minimum payments on our regular bills right now. We certainly don't have an extra $1300 to pay these people. And if I don't pay it, it will just get interest and fees attached to it.

So today I "paid" it. Let me translate that for you.

I put it on a credit card.

I know. It sucks.

I don't want to EVER put anything on these cards again without the intent of paying it right off that very month. But I won't be paying this off this month. I can't.

We have this in our emergency fund. But I don't truly consider this an emergency. Because if we deplete our emergency fund and then run into a real emergency that we can't use our credit card on? We're up a creek without a paddle. So the cash will stay in the emergency fund. And our credit card balance will increase. For the first time in over a year, our credit card balance will be higher next month that it is this month.

And I feel like such a failure. Not because I did anything wrong right now. But because we can't afford it. And because we can't get rid of it. And because it makes me feel stupid for buying it in the first place.

I guess I know what our tax refund will be used for this upcoming year. Not paying off debt to take a chunk out of the snowball, but to pay for this stupid maintenance fee to a property that we don't use in the first place. In the meantime, it will acquire interest while sitting on this card.

Hooray.

Photo credit: BLW Photography

*Disclosure...the Lending Club link in this post is an affiliate link.