The only three-way swap I endorse involves non-simultaneous exchange. To accommodate a family member who sometimes does not feel up to travel, we now strive to have exchangers here when we go away on non-home exchange vacations.
For this holiday weekend, we are headed to Cape Cod. It is a four-hour car ride, so it's not as stressful as air travel for my father, who travels with us. While we are gone, we will have home exchangers here, but not the same people whose home we will use. Instead, a couple from Florida and their three adult children will use our home. This Thanksgiving we will go to Florida to use their beach house.
Having swappers here during periods when we are using other swappers' homes might sound complicated, but I simply keep a memo in my organizer showing who will be here during which dates.
Non-simultaneous exchanges take the pressure off family members who may not want to visit the same destinations. The problems inherent to third-party exchange do not exist with non-simultaneous swaps.
The next time a swap partner writes to you offering precise exchange dates that don't work for you, suggest a non-simultaneous swap. This is especially easy if you or the exchangers have a second home.
When are non-simultaneous swaps possible if you do not have two homes? We set them up during visits to relatives, trips to see friends and our yearly cruise. Many people with no secondary residence take similar vacations and can offer their homes during several periods as well.
When you contact another family about an exchange, offering any non-simultaneous swap periods you have available shows your flexibility and consideration for their preferences. We recently received an extremely non-enticing offer: the use of a second home on the beach -- during the region's cold, snowy winter.
It would have been much kinder and more honest for the exchangers to let us know the period during which they want to use our place is not a fun time to be near the ocean. Since this is their second home they could have offered a non-simultaneous swap immediately, requesting to use our home during the December dates we are offering but considerately offering us an exchange during a temperate season (even if it was not the peak summer months).
Let's all be considerate of other exchangers. Non-simultaneous swaps are a great way to start.
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