Every physician should own a timeshare [PODCAST]

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“One of the biggest misconceptions about timeshares is the idea that you have to visit the same location every year. In reality, timeshare owners have access to a wide range of properties and destinations through timeshare exchange programs. This means that timeshare owners can visit a different location every year if they choose to do so.

Another common misconception is that timeshares are expensive. In fact, many timeshares can be purchased for less than $1,000 and the maintenance fees can be minimal when used correctly. For example, a timeshare owner who goes on eight weeks of vacation per year would only pay a few hundred dollars in maintenance fees per week, making it a more affordable option compared to booking a traditional vacation.

Some people also believe that timeshares are a waste of money, but many timeshare owners find that they get great value for their money. Timeshares can be a good investment for those who use them regularly and take advantage of the benefits they offer.

Overall, timeshares are not the same as traditional vacation properties and come with a number of benefits for those who use them regularly. Despite the misconceptions that exist, timeshares can be an affordable and convenient option for those looking to take regular vacations.”

Cory Fawcett is a general surgeon and the author of The Doctors Guide book series.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “Should physicians own timeshares?”

The Podcast by KevinMD is brought to you by the Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Welcome to the show. Rate and review at KevinMD.com/rate. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome back on the show Cory Fawcett. He is a general surgeon, and he’s the author of the fantastic book series, The Doctors Guide book series. His latest KevinMD article is titled “Should physicians own timeshares?” Cory, welcome back to the show. Good to see you again.

Cory Fawcett: Hey, thanks for having me back again. I enjoy working with you.

Kevin Pho: For those of you who get a chance to listen to our first episode, which was probably more than a year and a half ago, just briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Cory Fawcett: I became a general surgeon almost 30 years ago, moved back near my hometown, and practiced my whole life in that practice. By the time I was in my early 50s, I was ready to branch off and do some other things in life. I retired early, and I have spent my time since then traveling the world and teaching other doctors how to do better with their finances and have a better life in medicine.

Kevin Pho: You’ve been doing this for years now. You have, I believe, six books now to help educate doctors about personal finance, investing, and eliminating debt. Tell me about the evolution of that. Are doctors better now than when you first started out when it comes to personal finance?

Cory Fawcett: I don’t think so. I think there are not enough people out there teaching them to do it better, and so too many people are still doing it the same way.

Kevin Pho: So what’s the one thing that they could do better?

Cory Fawcett: Get rid of debt. In my debt book, one of the things that I coined was the phrase “debt-abetic neuropathy.” We go through so many years where we just borrow money and we get to defer it, so we just keep throwing it on the pile. After years of that, we don’t really feel what debt means to our life. We’re totally numb to the effects of debt. And so when that happens, somebody comes along and offers you, “You can buy this car for a few easy monthly payments,” and you just fall for it, because, hey, I can just borrow that money and throw it on the pile. You go on like that, and then pretty soon you’re under this pile of debt.

We’re reading about the horrible debts that doctors are dealing with, and much of it is self-imposed, even student loans. If you get to feeling like you can go anywhere you want and it doesn’t matter what you borrow, then you can end up in such a big hole that it’s very difficult to get out of, even with a doctor’s salary. So people get into these ruts, they watch other people make these same mistakes, and then they just keep perpetuating it. I don’t think we’re doing well enough at getting out of those kinds of things.

Kevin Pho: And when you go in and give lectures to other physicians, or you have physicians who give feedback on your book, and the first thing you say is really just to address that debt, what’s the response that you typically get from physicians?

Cory Fawcett: The biggest thing I hear is, “Oh, but it’s low-interest debt,” as if somehow that’s different. I liken this to the patient who comes in smoking 20 packs a day. You say, “Listen, you’ve got to stop smoking cigarettes,” and they come in next time and say, “Well, now I’m down to three cigarettes a day.” They think they’ve done this great thing by cutting down from high cigarette use to low cigarette use, and I say, “No, the goal was no cigarettes a day, and you’re still smoking.”

That’s the same thing with debt. In order to become wealthy, you need interest accumulating on your side of the table, not on the bank’s side of the table. You need to be an earner of interest, not a payer of interest. Too many people fall into that “yeah, but it’s low interest, so I’m not going to pay it off,” and then they just get into that same rut of “I’m just going to perpetually have debt,” and they never get out of it.

And I think those days of zero-interest or low-interest loans are coming to an end now, especially with the Federal Reserve continually raising interest rates to fight inflation. One of the silly things I hear is people saying, “Oh, now the interest rates are so high. Should I still buy a house?” And I’m thinking, what do you mean interest rates are so high? They still haven’t gotten up to where they were when I bought my house, and it was all fine then. People have just gotten so used to interest rates being artificially low that they think that’s normal, and they think this is now high interest. But I was paying 8 percent interest when I borrowed for a house, and in the late ’70s, people were paying 20 percent interest. Now people are griping that it’s four and a half percent: “What are we going to do with these high-interest payments?” They’ve got a warped sense of reality. They just got used to what it was recently, and that’s what they think it should be.

Kevin Pho: All right, so let’s talk about your latest book, and your article is titled “Should physicians own timeshares?” Of all the topics you could tackle, you decided to tackle timeshares. So tell me about the events that led up to you writing your book and article.

Cory Fawcett: I kept hearing people say wrong stuff about timeshares, because right now, if you listen to somebody talk about timeshares online, 99 percent of them are bashing timeshares. I kept listening to it over and over. I would hear somebody say something like, “Well, you get sick of going to the same place every time,” and I say, “Yeah, but that’s not true.” I mean, I’ve owned my timeshare for 30 years, and I’ve never actually stayed at the one I own in 30 years, and this guy thinks that you have to stay where you own.

I kept hearing all these mistaken things and realizing there are a lot of physicians out there, and I believe every physician should own a timeshare, but there are a lot of physicians out there who are believing these things that they’re hearing. They’re not hearing the real story, and they’re losing thousands and thousands of dollars by not knowing the truth. I finally just got fed up with hearing all this stuff and said somebody needs to write the other side of the story, so people actually hear the truth and understand that timeshares are not this horrible thing. And so I set out to do that and try to straighten the record, so doctors wouldn’t miss out on this great travel hack.

Kevin Pho: So tell me, what are some of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to timeshares?

Cory Fawcett: Well, one of them I just mentioned: that you have to go to the same place all the time. I’ve never been to the same place. There are over 4,000 timeshares in my trading group, and I’m never going to be able to go to all those places. That’s one big misconception.

The other one is that people keep telling me that they’re expensive, yet you can buy a timeshare for less than $1,000. You can get them for free. Since when is free expensive?

The other ones complain about the maintenance fees. OK, so let’s take an example of that, when you learn to use your timeshare correctly. I own one week of timeshare, and this year I went on eight weeks of timeshare vacations. I have to pay about a $700-and-something maintenance fee every year, and when you divide that by eight weeks, I’m paying less than $100 per week of vacation to have this thing. How is that expensive? The people who think that they’re expensive are the people who stay home, don’t use it, and have to pay. What if you owned a nice, expensive car that sat in your garage, and you paid insurance on it, you paid for upkeep, and you paid to store it in your garage, and yet you never drove it? That would be a total waste of money. There are so many people running around out there not using their timeshare and blaming the timeshare for it being a waste of money.

I went around asking people. One of the things I love about my book is that the last chapter was interviews of people at the swimming pool. I just went around and interviewed people and asked for their tips and tricks for timeshares, and the final question I asked every single person was, “Did you get good value for your money when you bought your timeshare?” One hundred percent of them said yes. No one sitting around the pool thought they weren’t getting good value for the timeshare. But when you listen online, no one is saying timeshares are a great value. They’re all telling you how expensive they are. And after somebody on their radio show tells you how bad timeshares are, then they tell you about this timeshare exit company that they can get you into, and you realize they’re getting paid to tell you how bad these are.

So some of these stand out so badly when people say them that it’s like hearing fingernails on the chalkboard to me, and it’s like somebody’s got to stand up and say that this is not correct.

Kevin Pho: You said earlier that every physician should own a timeshare. Why is that?

Cory Fawcett: The thing is, there’s a certain kind of person who’s best suited to own a timeshare. One of the big complaints, and the reason people don’t use it, is that the wrong people buy them, and physicians are the right people. I have a whole chapter in the book on how to determine if you’re the right person to own a timeshare.

One example is people who only have two weeks of vacation a year. If you only have two weeks of vacation in a year, you have no business buying a set vacation to be going on every year, because you’re going to use your two weeks for something particular that you need to do this year. You’re not going to have time to use your timeshare this year, and you’re going to be mad at the timeshare. But the thing is, you didn’t have the bandwidth. You didn’t have the space in your schedule to be owning a timeshare. Doctors have enough vacation time.

One of the other problems is people buy it who don’t have money to travel. They think they’re going to save money. They work at the local mill, and they want to save money on their vacations, but they can’t afford to buy four airplane tickets for their family to go to this place or someplace every year or twice a year. Physicians have the money to actually travel and go on nice vacations.

And so if you think about some of the things that caused people to think that timeshares are bad, they’re self-imposed problems. They could have been avoided. Physicians don’t tend to have those problems, and so physicians fall into the group of people who would greatly benefit from saving a lot of money by owning a timeshare.

So I think every physician should own just one timeshare. You don’t need to own multiple. I own one week of timeshare, and I’ve gone on eight weeks of timeshare vacations so far this year. Once you’re in the system, you can use all the available inventory to your advantage, but you’ve got to get in the system. If you want to go on multiple weeks, you don’t need to buy multiple weeks. You just need one, and you need to learn how to use the system. So I think it’s not “Should physicians own a timeshare?” It’s “Every physician should own a timeshare.”

Kevin Pho: So take us through a scenario. Let’s say I’m in some type of exotic location or on vacation, and I get an invitation to go to one of these timeshare lectures, these proverbial timeshare lectures, right? Tell me the questions I should be asking myself to make sure I’m the right fit for this, and tell me some of the things that I should look out for when I go to this presentation.

Cory Fawcett: Well, the first thing I’m going to tell you is don’t go to the presentation. Never, ever go to a timeshare presentation. The reason is that while you’re there, you’re going to be sold a timeshare at top dollar, a high price with their commissions involved. You want to always purchase your timeshare on the secondary market. You want to find that guy who worked at the mill and has two weeks of vacation. He was talked into the timeshare at one of those deals, and he bought one, and he shouldn’t have. A few years later, after not being able to use it, he’s now giving it away just to get out from under it. He doesn’t want it anymore. That’s the one you want to get.

I get those deals all the time. I never go to those presentations. Every time I check into a timeshare, I am accosted with “You need to come to this meeting,” and I always say, “No, I’m busy. I can’t do that.” I don’t go to the meetings. I unplug the telephone in the room so that they can’t call me and invite me to the meeting. Don’t go to the meeting.

Now, how do you tell if you’re the right person? What they will tell you, and what they determine, is that you are over 25, you are married, and you make at least $50,000 a year. That’s who they say should have a timeshare, because really, those are the people they can talk into getting one, and they can make a sale. But that’s not what you want. You want to know that you have at least three weeks of vacation available to you and that you have enough money to go to nice locations with your family every year.

You can afford, you know, a trip to Orlando, which is very expensive, and the housing isn’t the biggest cost in that trip. I recently went to a meeting in Orlando, and for me to be at the meeting at the hotel where they were having it, it was going to cost me $1,250 for the five nights. I found a timeshare a $9 Uber ride away for 199 bucks, and I stayed in a nicer place than the people at the hotel did, for a $1,000 savings. So those are the kinds of things that you should be thinking of: that you have the money, you have the time, and you like going on these kinds of vacations. If you like that, then you are a candidate. But never go to the sales presentation, because you don’t want to be talked into buying one at full price.

In fact, I did that. That’s how I got my timeshare, way back when I didn’t know what was going on. I wanted this $25 buggy ride through town for free. So I wanted this free $25 thing. I was a resident, so I went to this timeshare presentation to get my free gift, right? I was going to say no, but my wife said, “Sounds good to me. Let’s get it,” and we ended up buying the timeshare. It was the most expensive buggy ride I ever went on. I wish that someone had written a book like this for me when I was first starting out, so that I wouldn’t have paid full retail price for my timeshare. But even at full retail price, it has been a huge savings and a great bargain over the 30 years we’ve owned it. Imagine how much better it would have been if I could have gotten it for a bargain-basement price, you know, 99 percent off or something.

Kevin Pho: So tell me the process of that. You mentioned buying it from the secondary market. What are the specifics? How does one go about doing that?

Cory Fawcett: There are some brokers who specialize in these timeshare sales. An example that people hear a lot about, and they advertise a lot, is a place called RedWeek, redweek.com. That’s one example. Timeshare Users Group is another good example. What they do is they’re basically like a classified ad section for selling timeshares, because a lot of people, I mean, you get old, you’re not going to travel anymore, your kids aren’t going to be doing it, or they don’t qualify to be a good timeshare owner, and so you’re going to get rid of your timeshare. This is where you go to get rid of it. You try to sell it on the secondary market, and you’re going to sell it for close to nothing anyway, unless it’s a very expensive location. Hawaii still sells well, even on the secondary market.

Those places have a bunch of inventory for sale. You go and join their site, and then you can shop through the inventory and pick out a place that you like. The thing that you’re looking for is a place that people will want to go to. OK? If they want to go to it, it’s going to have a higher trading value for you, and you can get more value in making your trades. So, for example, you don’t want to buy a place on the Mexican Riviera in July. It’s too hot in Mexico in July. That’s not when people want to go to Mexico. They want to go to Mexico in January and February, so you buy a place there in January and February. If you’re looking at a ski resort, you want to buy a place where you’re buying it during ski season. Some places now have the point system or credits, and you’re not buying a specific week, so then that doesn’t play into it.

You also want to pick a place with a lower maintenance fee. The maintenance fee is basically dependent on the cost of living where the timeshare is. If you own a timeshare in New York City, you can guarantee that it will cost them more to keep that place up than if you own the timeshare in, you know, Boise, Idaho, where the cost of living is not nearly as high. So buy something in a place where the cost of living is less, so your maintenance fees will be lower.

And so you would then say, “OK, I’ll take this one,” and then RedWeek or TUG, or whatever group is doing the brokerage, will take care of brokering the deal and make sure that the trade happens, and you end up owning the timeshare. Then you want to contact that timeshare and make sure that they fully understand that you’re the new owner, and then you can begin trading your timeshare and enjoying it.

Kevin Pho: And when you buy it on the secondary market, are there any consumer protections in order to vet these offers, to make sure they’re legitimate or make sure they’re not scammy?

Cory Fawcett: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know if there are, because what I would do is use a business that’s been around for a long time doing this, and the two I mentioned are some of the older ones. The one who just came up, and especially don’t use one who contacted you. When somebody calls you on the phone about selling your timeshare, or contacts you on the phone about buying a timeshare, those are not the people you want to be dealing with. You want to have contacted them. And you can check with their consumer protection agency. You can see what people have complained about them, if they have any complaints.

One of the things I don’t recommend, for people who want to get rid of theirs, is to go to these timeshare exit companies. There are lots of complaints and lawsuits against these people. They take your money and don’t do anything. But when you’re brokering a sale and you’re buying it for close to nothing, it’s hard to think that there’s much downside for you as far as risk, that you got screwed out of the $1 that you paid for your timeshare. If you’re using a reputable company that’s been around for a long time and that’s trading timeshares like that for sale, I don’t think you’re going to run into such a problem.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Cory Fawcett. He’s a general surgeon, and he’s the author of The Doctors Guide book series. His latest book is a guide to loving your timeshare. Cory, what are some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Cory Fawcett: I think when it comes to getting your best vacation values, and doctors love to have vacations, and they need them, I think you need to look at timeshares. Don’t listen to the hype that has told you that they’re terrible. Find out for yourself what’s really going on, and ask somebody who’s really successfully using their timeshare how they do it and what their experience is like. Don’t listen to the people at the water cooler who are griping about it, because most of those people really don’t know how to do it right. If they knew how to do it right, they wouldn’t be griping like that. If you find out the true meaning of what it’s like to own a timeshare and what you get out of it, I think you’re going to find great success and happiness and save hundreds of thousands of dollars on vacations over your lifetime. So I would say the biggest take-home is to get the right story. Don’t listen to the rumors.

Kevin Pho: Cory, thank you so much again for coming back on the show and sharing your time and insight.

Cory Fawcett: Well, thanks for having me.

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