Vacation clubs are being pushed as the new timeshares

RIP-OFF ALERT: Now that the timeshare industry has become a completely broken and discredited one, marketers have come up with new terminology that they hope will trick you into getting involved with these notorious money pits.

What's being called "vacation clubbing" is all the rage these days. With vacation clubbing, you buy the right to use a timeshare. Except for subtle legal differences, it's the same rip-off as it ever was. A timeshare by any other name is still a timeshare.

I got an offer in my mailbox pushing the chance to win a "free trip" if I would go hear about an exciting new vacation opportunity. If you get a similar pitch, do what I did; throw that thing in the garbage!

Some people think they will go just to get the freebies being offered, and they say, "There's no way I'm ever going to buy anything." But the reality is people so often say that, yet when they get to wherever it is they're going, they end up buying more often than not. (And the advertised freebies almost always aren't what they seem to be anyway.)

I've gotten calls from people where they say they were promised free airline tickets or a free stay and it always came with more gotchas than they thought possible. Remember, if you have to do something in order to get something, you didn't win anything. There is no free lunch.