Tony Crocker":2m7jq11v said:
tseeb":2m7jq11v said:
I'm not sure I want to give Ikon an interest-free loan from mid-June 2020 before skiing in Spring or late-Fall 2021
At what interest rate would that be these days???? You're essentially betting on no price increase a year from now, which is of course possible in a slow virus reopening scenario.
You can still get 1.3% on Savings accounts if you look hard, but rates are dropping. Even the rewards checking I have has cut rate from 2.02% to 1.51% (on first $25K). It makes me wish I had bought more CA tax-free bonds a year ago as I was still seeing good quality 16 years to maturity paying 2.50-3% and now the quality is not as good and you only get 2%. A even shorter term wish would have been buying more of a Blue Chip stock 15 days ago that was paying over 7% dividend and has gone up 9% and is still paying 6.6%. (I've mostly done well buying stocks and seeing profits, but am not always good at selling.)
The renewal discount for Ikon is only for this year $599/$749/$799 for Base/Base with Aspen and Jackson/Full (without renewal is $699/$849/$999). So if I bought full now for $799 and things don't look good for traveling to Aspen in Feb, I would defer until Spring 2021, assuming you could ski Mammoth and Squaw and maybe Bachelor starting in April with the following year's pass, or following winter. It gets complicated as the upcoming season is the one where I would want to pay extra for Aspen and if I didn't go I would have $799 credits and next year's Base pass, assuming a $50 increase would be $749 (corrected as discount would most likely go away) and $50 of our deferred $ would most likely go to waste. Or to put it another way, for the price of next winters Full pass, if we defer, we would only get a Base pass the following season.
While writing this I saw Ikon has changed their terms. Instead of being able to defer an unused pass from Sept. 10 to Dec. 10, you can now defer unused pass through April 11. They have also added Adventure Assurance to try handle Covid-19 closures. See
https://www.ikonpass.com/en/adventure-assurance for details and there is also a link to examples of how the following would work.
CHOOSE ALL DESTINATIONS
If any eligible Ikon Pass destination closes due to COVID-19 for 1 day, all days or anywhere in between, between December 10, 2020 and April 11, 2021, you will receive a proportional credit based on the percentage of those days closed during that time period. Your credit will be applied automatically to any 21/22 Ikon Pass.
CHOOSE ONE ELIGIBLE DESTINATION
If the one eligible pass destination you select is closed at least 7 consecutive days or 21 total days between Dec 10, 2020 and April 11, 2021 due to COVID-19, you will receive a credit based on the percentage of those days closed during that time period. The credit can be applied to any 21/22 Ikon Pass.