DVC Use Year: Choosing the Right One

DVC Market Team  |  January 21, 2026  |  593 views

Use Years: The Thing Nobody Explains Well

Here's something that frustrates me about how DVC gets marketed. You can read ten articles about use years and still not really understand how to pick the right one. Everyone explains what a use year is, but nobody tells you why it actually matters for your specific situation. So let me try.

Your use year is the month your annual point allocation drops into your account. Pick February, and 150 points (or whatever your contract has) show up on February 1st every year. Pick September, and they arrive September 1st. Simple concept. But the downstream effects of that decision touch every aspect of your DVC experience, from when you can book to when you'll lose points if you don't use them.

DVC has eight use years: February, March, April, June, August, September, October, and December. There's no January, May, July, or November. That's just how Disney set it up decades ago. You can't change your use year after you buy a contract, so this is a decision that sticks with you for the life of your ownership.

How Use Years Actually Work

When your use year starts, your points deposit. You have 12 months from that date to use them. If you want to save them for next year, you need to bank them at least 8 months before your use year ends. You can learn more about banking and borrowing in our detailed guide. That banking deadline is the key date most people miss.

Look at that February use year column. Points deposit February 1st, but you need to bank by June 1st. That's only four months to decide whether you're using those points or saving them for next year. If you haven't booked your annual trip by June 1st, you either bank the points or risk losing them if plans fall through.

Now look at December. Points deposit December 1st, banking deadline is April 1st. Again, four months. But here's the practical difference: if you're a summer traveler with a December use year, your points arrive six months before your trip. That's plenty of time to book. And your banking deadline (April 1st) falls right around when you'd be making summer plans anyway. If you know by April that you can't travel this summer, you bank. Clean and simple.

Matching Use Year to Your Travel Pattern

This is the part most people overthink. The basic principle is: pick a use year that deposits points 3-6 months before you typically travel. That gives you fresh points with plenty of lead time to book, and your banking deadline falls at a natural decision point.

Let me give you a real example. A family I worked with always takes their Disney trip during Thanksgiving week. They bought a contract with an April use year. On paper, that seems fine, right? Points deposit in April, trip is in November, seven months of buffer.

But here's where it went sideways. Their banking deadline was August 1st. In their first year, they decided by July that they were going in November, so they held their points. Good. But in year two, something came up in August and they couldn't go at Thanksgiving anymore. Now it was mid-August, past their banking deadline, and they had 200 points that had to be used by March 31st or they'd expire. They scrambled to book a last-minute February trip they hadn't planned for, just to avoid losing points.

If they'd bought a June or August use year instead, their banking deadline would've been October or December, which is right before their typical travel window. By then they'd know if the trip was happening or not. Better alignment means fewer "emergency" trips and fewer expired points.

What Happens with Multiple Contracts

If you buy more than one DVC contract, each one has its own use year. They don't have to match. Some members intentionally buy contracts with different use years to spread their point deposits across the calendar. A February and September contract, for example, gives you fresh points twice a year.

The upside is flexibility. You've always got some relatively fresh points in your account, which makes it easier to book trips throughout the year without constantly borrowing or banking.

The downside is complexity. You're tracking two banking deadlines, two expiration dates, and two separate point buckets. When you make a reservation, Disney pulls points from whichever contract deposits first, unless you call and specifically request they use certain points. Managing two use years is doable, but it takes more attention than a single contract.

My take? If you're buying your first contract, don't worry about a strategic multi-use-year approach. Get one contract, learn the system, and if you add a second contract later, then think about whether a different use year makes sense. Complicating things on day one is a recipe for missed deadlines.

Which Use Years Are Easiest to Find on Resale

This matters because the resale market doesn't have unlimited inventory. If you're dead set on a specific use year at a specific resort, you might wait weeks or months for the right contract to come along.

February and September are the most common use years across all resorts. Disney originally sold lots of contracts in these months, so the resale pool is larger. More supply means more options and, sometimes, slightly better prices. You can check current resale prices to see what's available right now. If you're flexible on use year, February and September give you the most choices.

December is the rarest use year. It was never one of the most popular options when Disney sold direct, so fewer contracts exist with December use years. When a December use year contract does hit the market, it sometimes carries a small premium ($2-5 per point) because of scarcity. That said, December is actually a great use year for Christmas travelers because points deposit right before the holiday season.

I wouldn't pay a big premium for a specific use year. If your ideal is March and a February shows up at a great price, take the February. The one-month difference in point deposit is rarely worth paying $5-10 more per point. Your banking deadline shifts by one month. You'll adjust.

The Banking Deadline Problem (And How to Beat It)

I keep coming back to this because it's the number-one cause of lost points in my experience. The banking deadline sneaks up on people.

Every use year has a banking deadline exactly 8 months after the use year starts (which is the same as 4 months before it ends). For a February use year, that's June 1st. For an October use year, that's June 1st too (different path, same date). The deadline is absolute. Miss it by one day and you can't bank. Disney doesn't make exceptions.

Here's my system for never missing a deadline: the day you close on your contract, set three calendar reminders. One at 30 days before the deadline. One at 14 days. One at 3 days. The 30-day reminder is your planning prompt (decide if you're traveling or banking). The 14-day reminder is your action prompt (log in and bank if needed). The 3-day reminder is your emergency backstop (in case you forgot).

Banking itself takes about two minutes. You log into the DVC member website, click on your points, select the ones you want to bank, and confirm. It's not complicated. The hard part is remembering to do it. That's a $1,000-2,000 calendar reminder.

My Honest Advice on Use Years

Here's what I tell every buyer: use year is important, but it shouldn't drive your purchase decision. It's maybe the fourth or fifth most important factor, behind resort, point count, price, and contract condition (learn more about loaded vs stripped contracts).

If you find a perfect contract at your target resort, at a good price, with the right number of points, but the use year isn't ideal? Buy it anyway. Any use year works if you understand your deadlines and plan around them. The difference between a "perfect" use year and a "not ideal" one is maybe a slightly tighter banking window or a little more borrowing. That's manageable.

What's not manageable is overpaying $3,000-5,000 for a contract at the "right" use year when a cheaper option with a different use year was available two weeks ago. I've watched buyers pass on great deals because the use year was August instead of February. If you're curious about timing purchases, patience isn't always a virtue. They waited three months, the market went up $8 per point, and they ended up paying more for a contract that wasn't as good in every other way.

Pick a use year that roughly aligns with your travel patterns. Set your banking reminders. And then stop worrying about it. Use year is a detail. Resort and point count are the decisions that actually shape your DVC experience for the next 30 years.

Borrowing Across Use Years

One thing that confuses new owners is how borrowing works in relation to your use year. You can borrow points from your next use year's allocation and use them in the current year. This is handy when you want a bigger trip than your annual points cover. But borrowed points reduce what you'll have available next year, so don't go overboard.

For a February use year owner, you can borrow your 2027 points and use them for a reservation that falls within your 2026 use year (February 1, 2026 through January 31, 2027). The borrowed points work like regular points for booking purposes. Disney doesn't tag them differently. They just come off next year's balance.

The borrowing window closes at your banking deadline. If you want to learn more about booking windows and how they interact with use years, that's worth reading too. So for February use year, you can only borrow until June 1st. After that, next year's points are locked until they deposit the following February. This means if you decide in September that you need more points for a December trip, you can't borrow. You're stuck with whatever you have left in your current allocation. That's another reason the banking deadline is such an important date on your calendar. It's the cutoff for both banking AND borrowing.

What Happens When You Buy Mid-Year

A question I get a lot: what if your contract closes in the middle of a use year? Say you buy a February use year contract and the sale closes in August. What happens to the current year's points?

It depends on the contract. If the seller already used the 2026 points, you get nothing until February 2027 when your first allocation deposits. That's a stripped contract. If the seller hasn't used them, those points transfer to you at closing. That's a loaded contract. Some contracts are partially loaded, where the seller used some points but not all.

This is one reason loaded contracts cost more per point. You're buying immediate access to points you can use right away instead of waiting months for your first allocation. I had a buyer close on a March use year contract in November. Because the contract was fully loaded, she had all her 2026 points available immediately and could book a January trip within weeks of closing. If it had been stripped, she would've waited until March 2027 for her first points. That's a four-month difference in when you can start vacationing.

When you're comparing contracts on the DVC resale market, always ask about the current year's points status. A stripped contract at $100 per point might look cheaper than a loaded one at $115, but factor in the value of those immediate points and the loaded contract could be the better deal. Do the math before you decide.