An old friend I used to travel with is now settling down into homeownership and blah blah blah now he's talking about us buying into a timeshare together (this would be in Baja Cali) and it sounds nice but I don't know. Why am I skeptical here? Why can't I stop thinking of that South Park episode? Has anyone timeshared before? Thoughts?

I would say be very, very careful about what you might be getting into. A lot of people, I've heard, really regret buying into timeshares. It's the same vacation over and over again, and how do you know you'll like it that much if you've never even stayed there once already? There are fees and taxes all over the place and when you sell -- that is, if you can sell it -- you're going to take a loss. In the worst situations, you can't even give them away -- and I mean that literally, you can't give them away without still staying responsible for fees and taxes, and what's the point of that? In the very worst of cases there's a company called Timeshare Relief that you can pay to take it off your hands once and for all -- and that's the best you can do when you're stuck in that bad of a timeshare trap. Maybe this deal your friend is talking about is one of the good ones. But read all the fine print and see it in person before you sign anything, to be sure that you're not getting stuck with the worst of them.

Really really bad investment! Everyone I know who has bought into a timeshare has regretted it. They are impossible to resell also.