Be broke now and in the future by trading stocks for vacations

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.

Send Your Kids to Money Camps this Summer!

Instead of singing the same sing song tune on how money doesn’t grow on trees send your children packing this summer to a theme camp. Chances of the kiddies hating your guts for trading in their summer vacation at Disney World for a lesson on trading stocks at some educational, economics summer camp runs fairly high, but in the long run they’ll thank you. MSN Money runs an interesting piece on how more parents are giving traditional camps that focus on fun, swimming, and archery the boot, for camps that will sing their sing song tune for them and teach their children how to get more bang for their buck. Things like passive income, leverage, the real estate business or the stock market are topics camps like The Money Camp will cover for more than 600 kids at The Money Camp this summer at its original location in Santa Barbara, Calif. Other camp locations include Calgary, Alberta; Edmonton, Alberta; Mexico City and North Carolina.

So what’s the cost of sending your youngin’s away to learn about needs, wants, and basic economics? According to the article The Money Camp starts at $260 a week for teh first child, but there are several other camps that will teach them all the same and for a lesser price. Millionaire Kids Camp has a two day summer program for $300 and others like the ones sponsored by the North Carolina Bankers Association will send 800 kids to camp courtesy of the state’s banks.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have been begging my parents to send me to a money camp. How lucky is the child that gets to go to Mexico to learn about finances? Ugh!