Saving for Disney

[DisneyBliss7]

Starting to save for our next Disney trip! What are some tricks and tips everyone does? We have the Disney Visa for the rewards and I'm starting to purchase Disney gift cards now,(now that I know they don't expire).

 

[Disneyfan754321]

We have made a goal to save 1.00 per person per day for the park tickets , its really been working well... most of money has been made on swagbucks. .I should have done this along time ago, We are a family of 4 so we should have 1460 in a years time or 28 a week. We just got back from Disney in March and I have 300 in gift cards that I have bought 25 at a time. check out the thread Disney gift card deals as well.

 

[Marionnette]

Starting to save for our next Disney trip! What are some tricks and tips everyone does? We have the Disney Visa for the rewards and I'm starting to purchase Disney gift cards now,(now that I know they don't expire).

I purchased DVC.

But seriously, don’t do the GCs unless you have emergency money saved elsewhere and won’t need to raid the vacation fund if a water heater breaks or your car needs a major repair. It’s better to just keep the money in a separate savings account and just purchase the GCs when you need them...unless you’re like me and you know that the GCs will get used every year for DVC dues. In which case, buy the GCs whenever you get a good deal on them.

There are better rewards CCs than the Disney Visa. I have the no-fee one but I rarely use it. 1% back in the form of rewards that can only be used at Disney just isn’t worth it. You may want to check the I love Credit Cards thread for better options. We put all of our household expenses on the Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa and all of the business expenses go on the Chase Ink Visa. The rewards add up faster on those cards.

Other than that, I just do rewards programs when I can and redeem for options that can be used while in Disney. We use Rapid Rewards points from Southwest for our flights, stay in DVC villas, buy an annual pass every three years and take advantage of any DVC or AP discounts that are available to us.

 

[barkley]

There are better rewards CCs than the Disney Visa.

i agree.

i don't do allot of credit cards for rewards kind of things but i have gotten into the habit of doing all my day to day household purchases and paying for my monthly cell/direct tv on a card from my credit union. they offer tiered rewards so i set it up so grocery and walmart stores are at the top level and i get 3x on those which i let accumulate (periodically-like now they offer 5x in certain categories which i've never seen any with any of our other cards). since travel/dining out is automatically 3x as well we use it for our trips THEN turn around and when the vacation bill comes i use all the accumulated rewards to do a statement credit which lowers the overall vacation bill. i also have one through farmer's insurance (again no fee) that offers 3x on insurance products so i use it to pay for all our yearly premiums and end up being able to get a nice statement balance that i use for some expense on vacation. only reason we don't do this for gas is b/c all the stations around us offer a 5 cent per gallon discount to discourage credit card use.


newest tool to vacation save-i created a separate savings account and at the end of each month anything leftover from the household budget rolls into it.

 

[Disneyfan754321]

I do notice that people have an opinion on the Disney gift cards, for us it has worked great much better than having cash lying around. I buy most of them at discount from 5-12 % off the face value. they are good for everything Disney.. I combine them all and keep them online mydisneygiftcards.

 

[Marionnette]

Here’s the reason why I caution against sinking money from to Disney GCs unless you have adequately funded emergency savings:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americ...0-emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846

Almost 40% of American adults wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that they could quickly pay off, a Federal Reserve survey finds.

About 27% of those surveyed would need to borrow the money or sell something to come up with the $400 and an additional 12% would not be able to cover it at all, according to the Federal Reserve's 2018 report on the economic well-being of U.S. households released on Thursday.

Forty percent is a pretty large chunk of our society and probably includes some of the people who read these boards. For those to whom this doesn’t apply (myself included), buying GCs at a discount in order to fund your trips can be a good strategy. But for the 40% of Americans who are $400 away from being unable to cover an emergency, it’s a bad idea to invest in Disney gift cards instead of keeping your cash liquid.

 

[Tiggerlover91]

Starting to save for our next Disney trip! What are some tricks and tips everyone does? We have the Disney Visa for the rewards and I'm starting to purchase Disney gift cards now,(now that I know they don't expire).

I'm lucky enough where I can simply use our income tax refund for a Disney trip. We're a family of 3 who live in FL, so it's pretty easy to take about $1800 of our refund and move into savings for a Disney trip. We do the Value resorts and don't do dining, so that makes it easy. Of that $1800, $600 is spending money. Our current trip only cost us $1200. I actually pulled $150 from my paycheck from Jan-Apr to save our $600 spending money. I've got a little extra so I'm going to add to it when I get paid in 3 days and my son and I will have $700 in spending money.

I don't purchase gift cards, because since my family does the majority of our eating offsite, and don't get souvenirs till the last day in Disney Springs, I don't want to have that money "locked" onto a gift card that may or may not get spent. This year I'm doing cash. I don't want that $100 hold on my debit card as that limits what I can spend since it doesn't drop off right away. Carrying cash will actually make me more cautious about what I'm spending. I've set a limit on our spending over the 5 days. It's pretty high for the two of us, so I'm pretty sure my son and I are going to come out in the plus when we come back home with some of that spending money!

 

[bluezy]

We use our Disney Premier Visa card for *everything*. I usually have no trouble earning over $1,000/year in reward dollars. We also have a Chase Freedom card and use that for whatever is part of the 5% bonus category for that quarter (it's currently groceries and home improvement stores). There are better rewards cards out there, but we stick with the Disney Visa because that's where we like to vacation, so it works for us. We don't fly, so using an airlines reward card has no appeal to us. We also like the 10% discount on Disney Store/World of Disney purchases...that usually saves us $30-40 each trip.

I also buy discounted Disney Gift Cards (no worries...we're not part of the 40%, so it's ok for us to buy gift cards if that's what we choose to do with our money). I usually get them at BJs. I really stock up on them when the 5% bonus category on the Chase Freedom card is Warehouse Clubs. And it's even better if BJs has them on sale during that time!! I usually end up with about $2,000 in gift cards. I use that to pay off our room/package so I don't have to deal with them during the trip.

We also have a "Disney jar" that we throw loose change in. I also usually throw a $5 or $10 bill in every week or two. One year I did the thing where the first week of the year you put $1 in the jar; the second week you put $2 in the jar; third week $3; etc. I did great for about 6 months and then just got tired of trying to remember what week we were on. I've also saved every $5 bill I got throughout the week and put them in the jar. That was easier to do. There have been times that we've accumulated over $800 in that jar over a 2-year period. Now I just find it easier to throw random amounts in the jar and focus more on purchasing the discounted gift cards so we usually only accumulate a few hundred dollars.

 

[sydneysmom]

We're doing a bunch of different things.... right now we have budgeted $150 / pay period (2x monthly). that still leaves us short, since we decided to go June of 2020. We decided to stay at the Grand Floridian and do deluxe dining, so with base tix ( 6 nights) it comes to $6700. So I'm short about $2100 from our planned budget. What I've been doing is "squirreling" money each pay period. We do the Dave Ramsey envelopes, so I'm taking a total of about $75 from food shopping, dog budget, gas, entertainment (combined). basically, I'm robbing each envelope of about $15 each pay period.... we don't even miss it. SO I'm stashing that cash in an envelope.... when Kroger has the 4x fuel points, I'm go and get Disney gift cards. I'll keep the cash set aside for Disney gift card deals ( or when Target does their extra 5% for Red card members). I also got the Southwest Visa card, which gave us enough points for our flights ...... I got it ahead of our year anniversary to also get the anniversary points. Flights.... free. I also use TopCashBack for every purchase online, so I'm letting that add up to use for tips on our meals. I've got $220 saved now. Tips.... free. Anything on TopCashBack over the projected tip amount will go to spending money. (but we'll also use our envelope system for spending money)

I'm hoping Target does the extra 5% for red card members again..... I didn't take advantage of that the first time, stupidly. but that's what we do.... just squirrel and pack it away in little bits.

 

[MrsPete]

Open a savings account at a bank that's a little inconvenient for you to visit /skip the ATM card.
Agree with your spouse that this is a vacation account and cannot be touched without discussing it together.
Figure out how much you need to save from each paycheck.
Have that amount directly deposited into that account every paycheck.

Rationale: If it's "automatic", you're going to stick to it. If the money requires a special trip /is a bit of a hassle to retrieve, you're not going to dip into it for frivolous reasons.

 

[SharonZ]

I'm also not a fan of buying a ton of Disney gift cards ahead of time. If for some unanticipated reason you can't go - that money is not available for emergencies, a trip other than Disney, etc. I can easily go to a Sam's Club a couple of times to buy $500 gift cards to pay off a Disney trip as it gets closer.

 

[tink89]

We thankfully do well financially and have more than enough for emergencies, but i do think @Marionnette advise is great. If you are pinching pennies to save then maybe don't 100% jump in the GC boat. Maybe some money towards gift cards then some money towards savings. the truth is no matter what stuff always comes up and if you don't put money into gc you will never save up because you will be needing it for something else.

I have a Disney CC but don't use often since it isn't the best in rewards. What i do with it is post my referral link so that others can apply using it and last year i eared $500. This year so far i think i have earned at least $200.

What i do to save for Disney trip is SB, MP and receipt apps and CC bonuses. We went on a trip in December and i started back up with about $100 in march and began to use SB and stuff for our Oct trip and have earned about $1200.

 

[tguz]

I have a certain amount of money direct deposited into a seperate account from my regular direct deposit account that is for vacations only. With 26 pay periods a year, it adds up nicely.

 

[MickeyMouseCD524]

I put a certain amount from each paycheck aside. And on payday it automatically comes out and goes into a separate account. I supplement it with Swagbucks and CC rewards. Swagbucks is usually money for "extras" i.e. dining, excursions on the cruises, etc. And I use my CC rewards for my flights. since I can usually rack up enough points for a free flight every year.

 

[Nebraska_Disney]

We used to go every-other year, so we had time to save and plan. One thing we do to save money is stay longer when we do go. I know that sounds stupid, but when we have to pay $1200 to $1600 in airfare to get there, we make it worth our while and stay longer. Yes, we don't as frequently, but when we do, we go for 8-10 nights and get our fill.

My wife gets paid every two weeks, but we only budget for her to get 2 checks a month, so 2 times a year, we get an "extra" check. Usually a big chunk of this goes into our vacation fund. We also budget $100-$200 a month in our household budget to vacation. We use various rewards cards and pay them off each month. We do have a Southwest Visa card and have used miles to pay for trips in the past. We also will put any "extra" money we end up with towards vacations (work bonuses, tax return, consulting work I do, etc). In the end, I will also pay for a trip using gift cards, but will only go and buy them right before I need to pay it off. Last time, I went into Sam's and bought 10, $500 gift cards and the money saved by the Sam's discount was used to pay for a few meals at WDW.

Good luck !

 

[bjscheel]

We have the SW Rapid Rewards credit card. Got a few sign up bonuses, and DH has a business so he can charge quite a bit in a month. I also do e-Rewards surveys to gain more RR points. So our airfare is always covered by this. To me it's even better than cash rewards because of the flexibility. If our flights go down after purchase, we can rebook and get the difference refunded as points to use anytime.

Otherwise I have a Capital One 360 online savings account for vacations that the plan is to put 10% of my paycheck into. It's not automatic, so it doesn't always happen. But I try. We're going to be short for our upcoming non-Disney vacation so I'm going to use a payment from DH's side job to fill it out. Bonuses are another option I have used to build up the vacation fund.

Finally, we charge Disney vacations on the Disney Visa and take advantage of the 6 months no interest- paying a bit each month for 6 months out of our "regular" money, then using the vacation savings account to pay it off before the interest starts. I guess this doesn't particularly save money other than letting the vacation funds accrue interest a little longer.

 

[DisneyBliss7]

Great ideas! Maybe I will rethink purchasing too many CG.. I'll still buy some and also set money aside just to be safe.

 

[Disneyfan754321]

Not that i would sell them but if i wanted to i could sell these cards on ebay for close to what i have in them i buy them all at discount.... i paid for all my gc with swagbucks so it was mostly free anyways.

 

[Euby]

@DisneyBliss7
I use my Target Red Card for 5% off Disney Cards. But my primary way to save for Disney trips is to use the Shopkick app. So far I have earned $200 in free Disney Gift cards. I like to describe Shopkick as a scavenger hunt. There are several big name retailers (Best Buy, Target, Kroger, TJ Maxx, etc) that participate. The app gives you a list of retailers to visit. You earn kicks by entering the store, scanning certain items (with more kicks if you purchase it). You can even earn kicks shopping on-line retailers (Amazon, Groupon, Hotwire, etc).

 

[Carrie Ellis]

We have good jobs but (soon to be) 3 kids in college. So, this next trip, I am trying to fund a lot of it by extras. Plus I am finding it to be fun and kind of like a game! I am quiet addicted to it now!

I did plasma from February to May and made $1200. I used it to buy 4 Disney tickets. I plan to start again in June or July for a couple of months. I make sure I super hydrated and it takes me less than 2 hours per week to make around $90 or $100 (depending what kind of promo they offer).

Shopkicks...I am rocking it! I have figured out every way to make it work really well. Best Buy does 700-900 shopkick scans per week and I try to make sure I get those and Walmart. I am also making purchases with coupons and getting the shopkicks with it too. For example the Sargento breakfast snacks are on the 5 for 5 at Kroger and there is a .75 ecoupon. Then it qualifies for 200 SKs. I get them for my husband to take to work anyways! So far I have made 21 $25 Disney gift cards.

Swagbucks...I earn the Sams cards and purchase Disney cards.

I also use Ibotta. I have made about $100.