These days, liquidity is king. What does this mean? In short, it means that liquid assets – that is, assets that are easy to convert into cash – are more desirable than anything. The reason for this is that there are so many fantastic deals going on right now, but only for those who have the cash available on hand in order to take advantage of these deals. Why are these deals suddenly so common?

Well, primarily because of the recession and the amount of foreclosed homes and seized assets (cars, boats, you name it – every kind of asset is being seized by banks from debtors who are unable to make their loan payments). As a result, now is actually a very good time to make large purchases that you were considering – not small purchases like a television, but major consumer durables such as a house, or lifestyle assets such as a boat or a sports car.  The thing is, most consumers have fallen victim to the same trap that created the recession – they spent too much, and as a result they do not have cash on hand available to purchase these consumer durables now that the prices have fallen.

One solution offered by many financial planners is to sell off old assets for liquidity. Old gold, for example, is a very apocryphal asset – it does not actually do anyone much use. There are more creative options as well, such as selling timeshares. One financial planner, when suggesting that his client sell his unused timeshare assets, was greeted with the epithet sell my timeshare?   That’s genius. The beleaguered client was in such a concern over his financial state that he had entirely forgotten that he even held ownership of a timeshare.

The answer, then, is to be creative in how you regain liquidity. Selling your timeshare is the perfect example – they are not a tangible asset, so you will most likely not notice that they are missing, particularly if you don’t go on vacation very often. And in an economic climate such as this, who goes on vacation anyway?  If selling is not a viable option the timeshare rental market continues to be strong, although you may not get as much per week as you’d like, recouping some of the yearly outlay will help balance your checkbook.