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Re: Marriott Vacation Club point system (by Steve F.):

We didn't get Desert Springs to go there 17 years in a row, that was not the goal or intent. It's just turned out we love to go there. However, we go many other places. We've been to Chile, Argentina, lots of Caribbean islands including Aruba, Australia, Hawaii (3 different islands), Spain, Mexico, many states, etc. All on our initial purchase of Desert Springs with lockoff and II, including a bunch of getaways. By simply checking every few days for trades, etc., we have been able to go many places than "were not possible". We were told, for example, we could not possibly have exchanged a lockoff for 2 BR MVCI at Ko-Olina, yet, we did. etc. The rewards points, we pile up via Marriott (and now Starwood) rewards cards, and, the initial 250K or so they gave us, and, by *always* attending the presentations any Marriott we go to to get more free points. So, maint for Desert Springs is or was around 1300, we have a small number of MVCI points (and will now be executive next year) which means II is mostly "free", I think we are paying just over 2K per year for all fees. We definitely get more than 2K value out of it. But YMMV. I think the more you put into it and "game" or use to your advantage the different pieces, the more you can get out of it. We're just that way. We have also recently purchased cheaply some MVCI destinations points from a person and got them past ROFR. Whether or not that turns out worth it, we will see, however, I've gone through the charts and there are so many inexpensive places we can go with those that we like, and, can use the trades to get into more expensive places and not use points.