Listen, we know it’s difficult. You bought the timeshare with high hopes. You and your wife had visions of spending time in a big luxury-style hunk of real estate, even if it was only for a few weeks at a time. You haven’t used your timeshare enough while you’ve had it and you’re reluctant to let go.

But what if it’s really time to cut your losses and ditch the timeshare?

It’s actually quite simple once you start asking yourselves the right questions. To help you get started, here are just a few of those questions.

Are we still holding on to the timeshare simply because of our emotions?

Here’s an excellent tip: using your emotions is not always a great idea when it comes to the world of finance. Finance is often a world of math and logic – emotions often simply color these numbers the wrong way and distort our perception of objective reality. In other words, emotions can muddy things up. If you are thinking about ditching your timeshare, it’s probably a good idea to ask yourself if you’re only holding onto the timeshare for emotional reasons – the hope of getting more out of it – rather than addressing your actual financial needs.

Quite simply, it’s best to take a deep breath and examine things from a fresh perspective. Can you really live without the timeshare? What would you do with the money resulting from the sale?

Has this timeshare really lived up to the investment?

Timeshares can be great because they minimize the investment you need to make in order to find access to a luxurious way of living without the monstrous up-front purchase requirements. But if your timeshare hasn’t lived up even to this smaller investment, a bad investment is simply a bad investment. It may be time to get out.

A good way to determine whether or not your timeshare has lived up to the investment is to examine your own behavior. If you don’t use your timeshare even when it’s, well, time to use it, that’s something you should consider. If you spend a lot of money simply transporting yourselves to the timeshare, you may find that the investment makes less sense than simply renting a hotel.

If your timeshare hasn’t lived up to its investment, one way of earning money back is by selling it to someone who can get a lot more out of the timeshare. You get money back, others find a timeshare they enjoy; it’s really quite the win-win situation.

Can the cash be better used somewhere else?

A timeshare is a potential source of cash that might be better spent somewhere else. If you’d rather own a jet-ski than a timeshare, then owning that jet-ski can be a better investment. Especially if you’d use the jet-ski far more often than you’d use the timeshare.

Understanding how you feel about the timeshare means asking yourself whether or not you’re really happy to have money in the timeshare or if you’d rather put that money to better use somewhere else. After all, it’s your financial life. In this situation, the only one keeping you from using money the way you’d prefer is you.

When the economy’s bad, you face a predicament: the exact time you want to rid yourself of a timeshare is when other people are looking to avoid spending a lot of money. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can make for a difficult sales process.

Luckily, “knowing what you’re doing” is not far off – even if you’re completely new to the process of selling your timeshare. It just takes a few tips to get you going and find out the right tools and strategies to employ in order to find a buyer who’s, well, actually looking to buy.

If that sounds like good news, keep reading. Here are five ways to sell your time shares even during the tough times:

1. Advertise. There’s an old adage that says you have to spend money to make money. It’s often true. In this case, a small advertisement in a local classifieds section or even online can make a world of difference, generating you new potential buyers with minimal investment. If buying advertising in a tough economy worries you, you can always go the free route: advertising your timeshares for free on sites like Craigslist and eBay. It helps to know what you’re doing on these sites, but many times even an “online newbie” can do very well.
2. Market to the right people. Finding the right kind of buyer can be unique in a tough economy. Bad financial news can make real estate investors look for bargains like timeshares: suddenly, you have an entirely different type of market to cater to. Don’t limit yourself to the “usual suspects” of people who are looking to buy timeshares. Anyone who’s looking for a good bargain can potentially be a buyer.
3. Lower your demands. Sometimes, making a sales is as simply as taking less money than you’d hoped for. This isn’t the greatest news, but in a rough economy, you can’t always expect that you’ll make a boatload of money when everyone else is looking to sell, too. Changing your price is one of the easiest ways to attract potential buyers. Just don’t lower your prices too much. Find out the kind of price you can expect to make off of your timeshare and strive to keep your price competitive.
4. Go online. We’ve already recommended Craigslist and eBay as ways to find potential buyers without investing a lot of money, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to only those two sites. You can find other sites that list timeshares like classifieds and fully exploit them in order to find a buyer who’s actively looking for a timeshare like yours.
5. Persist. It’s tempting to give up trying to sell your timeshare after a week or two with no results, but you can separate yourself from the crowd who get poor results by remaining persistent. Don’t let anyone lowball you too much. Ask for a fair price and stick to your guns. If you stay persistent, you might just amaze yourself.

Are you ready to sell your timeshare? Of course you are. Now, if only you could sell off that car nobody seems to want…