Thoughts on buying direct, but not the 150 points necessary for Membership Extras?

Personally, I wouldn't buy direct under 150 points unless I was certain I'd eventually have enough to total that number, if I were doing so in order to eventually be blue carded. Otherwise I'd stick to resale. That's just me. If it makes sense to do that to meet your family's needs, then by all means go for it!

It's always a struggle bus to come to these kinds of decisions! LOL

It's not a bad idea particularly if there's somewhere you were already planning on buying that needs home resort priority and is hard to find in your use year. Sometimes it's worth it to just pay for the premium for direct over waiting for a resale in your use year. Plus like you said this would let you scope out potentially new resorts and see if they're somewhere else you want to buy in at and add the other 100. The only real negative is most of the incentives occur at 150.

Overall, buying small direct contracts overtime to accumulate blue card status will cost so much more in the end. You will pay closing costs multiple times and your cost per point will be higher as the discounts usually apply beginning at 100 points or more. However on the flip side, if you needed to sell later, small contracts sell for more per point. Personally we considered your method but ultimately opted to buy when incentives were good at the 150 blue card level.

Totally depends on your family's needs and priorities. Everyone's different, there isn't a "right" answer here.

We started off with 2 resale contracts, 150 pts total. I had a similar line of thought as you did, to buy small direct contracts to 1. access newer resorts(specifically the Riviera for us) 2. slowly work towards the blue card perks. I ended up buying a 30 pt contract direct, which is what we could afford at the time.

As I prepared to buy another small contact direct (~50 pts) i priced out incentives, and ended up selling my smaller resale contract(50 pts) and bought direct at 120 points to get us to the blue card. had i not purchased the 30 pts earlier, I wouldn't have been able to do the full 150 yet. in many ways, buying the smaller direct contract is like a forced savings toward that goal, that you get to use as you work towards it. I knew i wanted to get the blue card so that we could buy the Sorcerers Pass. Newer resorts are also a priority.

All that being said- it is totally up to you! If you want to work towards perks, then buying a small contract now can help lessen the sting of pulling the trigger later down the road. If you know you want the perks, i'd say go for it. Even if you just want to ensure you can stay at Riviera, Lakeshore, etc, then it is still advantageous.

We are considering that too but for now have held off bc:

• Newer resort point charts are trending higher and higher. How many nights will 50points actually buy you?

• To that point, if you are hoping for value studios…good luck. Resale restrictions will likely make value studios very competitive down the road

• There is nothing stopping me from buying a stay cash if I realllllly wanted to stay at a new resort for a special occasion.

The only reason to do it is to eventually get that blue card. I just dont see the value of direct unless you want to buy the sorcerers pass. But who knows, maybe lakeshore lodge will change my mind 😂

IMO most of the eligible member benefits are not worth the premium. The one benefit I would value the most is the ability to use the points at any resort, and there’s no minimum point threshold for that.

Completely agree and this one is actually huge and should not be taken lightly. As time goes on, resale value should be weighed against usable resorts. If you're ok with the existing inventory before Riviera, by all means, but with every new resort the FOMO will kick in (for me at least:))