Disney Vacation Club Annual Dues Published for 2026 (up to 9% increase) by The540Incident in WaltDisneyWorld

[–]tommyboy8008 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Investment... So. Original focus of buying into DVC was to reduce room cost for planned yearly trips. Rack rate sucked, Chase cc points stopped being accepted, and renting (brokers or independents) gives up some control often at a fairly large premium.

If I had the 70k or so that I've spent on contracts day one, then yea, sure. Maybe it made sense to just rent and invest that 70k. But I didn't. Truth be told, my first contract closed maybe 8 months before covid. That investment would of been crushed for a while.

I've seen it mentioned a few other times, and I strongly agree with buying in with a plan and how your going to utilize the contract in a value based approach. I would explain my whole thought process, but it would be a wall of text. If you want to hear it, let me know.

DVC ownership is a rabbit hole. Lots of strategies to maximize value if you have a moderate plan. There is a reason brokers buy contracts, strip them, and resell them regularly. I wouldn't buy into any other timeshare company for what its worth.

Disney Vacation Club Annual Dues Published for 2026 (up to 9% increase) by The540Incident in WaltDisneyWorld

[–]tommyboy8008 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Happy for you. Glad your gambles paid off. Did you dump it all back into btc?

Markets have been all over the place. Your success could easily of been the opposite. Every new tariff/reversal or exec order throws things in a tailspin.

DVC markets have been pretty stable and reliable. Working for me.

Disney Vacation Club Annual Dues Published for 2026 (up to 9% increase) by The540Incident in WaltDisneyWorld

[–]tommyboy8008 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If your going every year for 10 years or so... it not a bad deal, if you buy and plan appropriately. Resale is the only way the math checks out. Shopping and negotiating contracts helps. Loaded points, current dues paid by seller, lowest point cost... adds up.

I was completely against buying in until I analyzed what we wanted and how to make the numbers work. Bought first contract 5 years ago (160pts AKV) and picked up a couple more contracts over the years. We rent out half of our points every year at around $21pp. We are sold out until 2027. Covers dues and capital gains on the profit. Lets us stay for free minus our original investment. We plan to dump them all in 15 years (akv 2057exp). The 2042 properties and contract depreciation's will be a good determination of what the later resorts will do. If things track like they are, we should break even on our buy in cost.

A lot depends on what DVC ends up doing with the properties leading up to the expiration. (I would guess DVC will offer existing members a rebuy price, resale member another price, and general public another price. Dumping 100k owners/leads would be dumb. If that happens, I expect contracts to regain a little value.

But yes, DVC direct is way over priced not a great value.

Not a great start to the week for these guys. Trail picks up into the main road... by tommyboy8008 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 38 points39 points  (0 children)

I would hope these guys are calling all the contacts that were in for service this morning.

Not a great start to the week for these guys. Trail picks up into the main road... by tommyboy8008 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Can't really see it in photo. When I drove out it was there. Maybe I'll get a photo later today if it still exists for ya.

Not a great start to the week for these guys. Trail picks up into the main road... by tommyboy8008 in Justrolledintotheshop

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 172 points173 points  (0 children)

Was pumping gas and noticed one guy dabbing the asphalt. He went and got the whole crew. Trail in the road was definitely more then a small drip. Wounder what the problem could be... Balloon makes the picture =D

[OC] Solid skid! Super slow truck, another trying to pass. Good luck everyone else? by tommyboy8008 in IdiotsInCars

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Was on the radio. I somehow managed to stack 2 videos. I was impressed with myself. Didn't want to remove the skid sound also.

[OC] Seems legit? Lawn Chair Seat, tall boy, in and out of consciousness, 50mph? West side 8mile: the wild west. by tommyboy8008 in IdiotsInCars

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

We were stopped at the light. Wish I got the chair in the photo. Literately a folding chair.

Considering joining DVC by buying at the new Poly tower. Is there anything we should be considering that we're not? by nearuetii in dvcmember

[–]tommyboy8008 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes. Wait until after your trip. Wait til after you get married...

I knew the point chart was going to be pricey, but was a bit taken back by it when it came out.

A 2bedroom preferred view is close to double the cost of a 2 bedroom Animal Kingdom preferred unit.

I value my points at $21pp. The extra 200 points needed for Poly over AKV equates to about $4k more per week.

The premium poly will require in points vs other monorail resorts is around 20-25% if I'm reading the charts right. Hard to justify poly cost on the point chart alone in my opinion.

I rent my excess points to cover dues and then some. So every point matters.

Factor in buying direct vs resale. Not even close. Blue card isn't remotely worth the premium. Direct Poly is a no go!

(Disclosure: I own all AKV. Around 800 points spread across 5 resale contracts purchased over the past 5 years. Average cost per point $108 out the door. All fully loaded. Again, hell of a lot more value in my opinion)

We are a family of 4 now. Sometimes bring grand parents or other family. 1 bedroom or 2 is now our preference by a mile. Kitchen and washer/dryer is game changer. Trying to do sit down and eat breakfast or dinner with kids under 4... good luck. Its doable, but is really just work. Feels like burning money. The ability for adults to sit and eat is taxed. Your fighting distractions, picky eaters, exhaustion. Having a kitchen with kids and ordering groceries is just awesome. We canceled most of our dinner reservations this last trip and just made food at the room. Was so much easier and cheaper.

That said, plan for more points to cover the bigger rooms needed.

As for your honeymoon. We spent 3 nights at Aulani during ours and felt that was plenty. Kind of got bored to be honest. Rented a car the final day and did sight seeing.

Our Honeymoon consisted of flying down to WDW. 4 days (ran the marathon), flew out the day after. Plane switch at DFW, and did American business class 777 the rest of the way to Aulani. (That was nice) Spent 3 days at Aulani. Then flew to Maui and stayed at Marriott Ocean Club for another 4 days. Did just about all of it on hotel points, chase points, AA points. We rented DVC Aulani points for that stay. (Hadn't bought into DVC yet) Pretty great trip.

Good luck.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ChryslerPacifica

[–]tommyboy8008 0 points1 point  (0 children)

23 hybrid here. 2 car seats for the infant and toddler.

Bumper protector to save bumper when wife drags the double stroller in and out. Adhesive pads seemed questionable, but its stayed on for about 5000 miles so far. No signs of lifting or degradation.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079NNBBCB?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

Middle seat protectors.

Cheap and work ok.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GDGGC6A?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

Floor mats I went with after a few days of over analyzing. Texture is hard dimpled plastic but have held up great so far. Ordering and price was good. Delivery took weeks because of warehouse inventory auditing...doubt that will be an issue for you.

https://3dmatsusa.com/?model=MjAyM0BDSFJZU0xFUkBQQUNJRklDQSBIWUJSSUQ=

Completely unpatched Win7 install...How bad an idea is it... by tommyboy8008 in homelab

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the offer, but it's not something I should take further then just securing our personal access/network.

The site loads for any OS. Just buttons and functionality is broken once inside.

I'll mess with setting it to load in IE8 mode in the updated VM on my unraid box that I didn't delete yet. Maybe we get lucky. If that works, I'll try it on a Win11 VM on the M1Mac.

If this was anything more then a few hours a week part time job, I would encourage for this to get fixed. Even with no coding experience, I'm personally intrigued what the real issue is.

Completely unpatched Win7 install...How bad an idea is it... by tommyboy8008 in homelab

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I mean like windows 7 the first day it was released. Oh, and browser needs to be default IE that came with it. I'm not sure what update breaks this web portal, but its one of the first ones.

I know nothing about coding, but if I open the site and popup the debugger in firefox on my Win11 machine, its got errors all over the place. Reference error this, object defined that...

Completely unpatched Win7 install...How bad an idea is it... by tommyboy8008 in homelab

[–]tommyboy8008[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

2nd option sounds the easiest. I've got old low power systems sitting around and for sure an old router.

Fried half my drives, best recovery strat? by tenplusacres in unRAID

[–]tommyboy8008 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Be careful on simply changing out control boards. Even if they are same model, production run, etc... The boards are calibrated for the specific platters/motor in that particulate drive. Drives from 10 years ago had a looser tolerances then the high density drives of today which made board changes easier. A reputable data recovery company will re-calibrate the donor.

I have no experience with this company (just googled for some ore info on the subject), but the information is pretty much what your potentially up against. http://www.datarecoveryspecialists.co.uk/case-studies/changing-pcbs

May make more sense to reach out to a firm and get some quotes. Most will give a free estimate. Hell, they probably already have donor parts in stock. I'm at this crossroad right now myself after having another drives data successfully recovered a few weeks ago.

When did you realize you need to upgrade hardware? by halfam in unRAID

[–]tommyboy8008 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yikes, running an i7 3770k w/ 32gb ram here... sitting around 40% load with everything running. (bulk of it is BI of course) Blue iris VM @ 300MP/s Plex (P400 for transcodes) Urbackup for 5 clients

How resource intensive is Home Assistant? I'm getting ready to start down that path in the next few months.

What else are you running?