Suppose you want to go on vacation but you also want to be able to pay your bills. What do you do? Well, you could mortgage your financial future by paying for your trip with stocks that you own. I’m not suggesting cashing out your stocks, making yourself liquid and then purchasing the trip. I mean actually paying for your vacation with stocks. Nonsense? Well, according to a New York Times article, one tropical resort chain will allow you to do just that.
Elite Island Resorts, a chain of luxury hotels with locations throughout the Caribbean, will accept payments in stock for vacations booked by January 31, 2008. And the really interesting part? They’ll value the stock at its July 1, 2008 closing price. Since that’s before the market went further south than Elite Island Resorts’ locations, you do stand to gain in the short-term if you elect to take them up on their offer.
Now, before you go ahead and call your broker, keep in mind that these are luxury resorts, so you’ll need to trade in more than one share of your worthless Citigroup stock. And they cap the amount of stock value that you can use at $5,000. They selected close to 100 applicable stocks for the promotion and feature some major names whose stock prices should, hopefully, bounce back in the future. That said, when they do increase again, would you rather have those in your portfolio or some vacation photos on your mantle?
So how much is a sanity break worth to you? Your kid’s college fund? Your ability to afford renewing your magazine subscriptions? Because you may want to consider hanging onto those stocks and being the one that reaps the benefits of an economic upswing rather than letting some luxury hotel chain increase their net worth.
As for me, I prefer to stay liquid. All of my money is tied up in whiskey.