The Intersection of FIRE and Disney

[RamblingMad]

Hi all. New to this thread, but definitely not new to the FIRE concept! How do you balance Disney trips/family fun with your savings?

I budget out my trips. The reality is that some trips require a certain level of health and physical fitness. I anticipate these being more difficult to do when I'm older, so I'm doing them now. I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru when I was 35, and it was hard on my knees then. You don't want to miss these opportunities while you're still young. Trekking the Camino in Spain is also on my list. I work, so that I can do these trips. They make me super happy.

As for Disney, I stay off property now. I did stay on property during the Great Recession. I follow Buffett here. Spend/Invest when others are fearful. WDW and DL was a ghost town during the recession. I was able to stay at the Disneyland Hotel for $150 a night during the recession. And park tickets were less than $40 a day. I'm going to Disneyland this fall for Halloween, and I'll be staying off property.

Another way to save money is camping trips to National Parks. These are super affordable.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Hi all. New to this thread, but definitely not new to the FIRE concept! How do you balance Disney trips/family fun with your savings?

We're in a pretty good financial spot; debt free, cars and student loans paid off, 30/28 with a toddler and immediate plans to try for a second child. We left the military two weeks ago; I just started a new job and DH is starting to job search. He's a software engineer, and we live in an area with lots of defense contractors, so we don't anticipate him having too hard a time. We're renting our current house as we feel out the new city, but will most likely purchase something in the next two years. We recently had some larger expenses than planned as we moved and tried to buy civilian business casual wardrobes, but we're normally pretty good with living in a budget and maxing out tax-advantaged savings, as well as contributing to a few index funds.

Our last family trip (other than to visit family) was pre-baby, three years ago. We're debating when to take DD on her first Disney vacation. On the one hand, the more we save now, the better our future lives will be. On the other hand, she's only young enough to believe in magic once. I'm trying to justify a trip over Thanksgiving. Wouldn't normally go over a holiday, but with new jobs, we'll both be a bit low on vacation time. I'm not trying to make this a discussion on the best age to take kids to Disney which has been discussed ad nauseam, but how do you work the financial balance?

This group here was primarily born out of a group of us that are credit card churners (see the “I Love Credit Cards” thread here on the DIS). We discovered that many of us churning cards for free travel were also chasing FIRE.

So to answer your question, a bunch of us on the thread aren’t paying anything for our trips to Disney. I recently took a trip that rack rate w/ flights and foot would’ve cost $8,500+ and it cost us nothing due to the rewards programs and points we have.

Many of us also like to travel to other locations and can do that free too.

 

[georgina]

I still have a hard time in my mind reconciling the idea of 'free travel'. I have points, but whether I am spending $1000 cash or using $1000 worth of points, it is still money to me. I am very conscious of the value of those points I am using. If something is expensive to me, even though I use rewards, it is no less expensive in my thinking. I just can't quite break out of that cost consciousness!

 

[pillow]

I still have a hard time in my mind reconciling the idea of 'free travel'. I have points, but whether I am spending $1000 cash or using $1000 worth of points, it is still money to me. I am very conscious of the value of those points I am using. If something is expensive to me, even though I use rewards, it is no less expensive in my thinking. I just can't quite break out of that cost consciousness!

This is a good point, and one that many forget I think. If one earns 80,000 UR points from a sign-on bonus, those points could be cashed in for $800. Obviously those points are worth more on travel, but we're giving up $800 in cash to use the 80k UR. Thats not free! They may have been earned for almost nothing, but there is still opportunity cost to consider when deciding how to use them. Its less of an issue with Marriott points for example - where I know I can't get cash for them.

I don't think I've ever taken a completely free vacation on points. My points make travel significantly cheaper, but there are always things we can't use points for. For 10 days in Costa Rica, we spent a total of $2k for the 4 of us (including flights, food, etc). Without points, we probably would have spent about $6-$7k. So what I've found is that our normal travel budget gets split between multiple trips. We're not really saving money, but we get to travel more and stretch the budget. Pretty awesome!

 

[RamblingMad]

I still have a hard time in my mind reconciling the idea of 'free travel'. I have points, but whether I am spending $1000 cash or using $1000 worth of points, it is still money to me. I am very conscious of the value of those points I am using. If something is expensive to me, even though I use rewards, it is no less expensive in my thinking. I just can't quite break out of that cost consciousness!

I do too. I have an Amazon Prime Chase Visa card. It gives me cash back on my purchases, and I have no fees for international transactions. That saved me a lot of money when I was traveling a lot abroad last year. I usually use the cash back to pay down my balances, rather than for trips. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from that credit card thread.

 

[amalone1013]

So what I've found is that our normal travel budget gets split between multiple trips. We're not really saving money, but we get to travel more and stretch the budget. Pretty awesome!

This is my train of thought too I dont want to give up travel... but now I get to go even more!

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I still have a hard time in my mind reconciling the idea of 'free travel'. I have points, but whether I am spending $1000 cash or using $1000 worth of points, it is still money to me. I am very conscious of the value of those points I am using. If something is expensive to me, even though I use rewards, it is no less expensive in my thinking. I just can't quite break out of that cost consciousness!

This is a good point, and one that many forget I think. If one earns 80,000 UR points from a sign-on bonus, those points could be cashed in for $800. Obviously those points are worth more on travel, but we're giving up $800 in cash to use the 80k UR. Thats not free! They may have been earned for almost nothing, but there is still opportunity cost to consider when deciding how to use them. Its less of an issue with Marriott points for example - where I know I can't get cash for them.

I don't think I've ever taken a completely free vacation on points. My points make travel significantly cheaper, but there are always things we can't use points for. For 10 days in Costa Rica, we spent a total of $2k for the 4 of us (including flights, food, etc). Without points, we probably would have spent about $6-$7k. So what I've found is that our normal travel budget gets split between multiple trips. We're not really saving money, but we get to travel more and stretch the budget. Pretty awesome!

WARNING - super nerdy & LONG/detailed credit card churning comment forthcoming:

There's a lot of mental accounting to this - and I think it's best for everybody to figure it out for themselves, but I am fine with somebody who wants to attribute all their CC churning earnings to offsetting travel costs. Here's some thoughts (some of which are a bit over the top to illustrate how extreme you could be about it):

• How should I account for my Southwest Rapid Rewards Points? They were obviously earned to use on flights. BUT, if I want to take a 35%+ haircut on their value I could redeem them for Target Gift cards. Does that mean when I use 50,000 SW pts, that I'm giving up $500 for Target for $740 in travel? Or do I have to take the $500 in Target GCs and convert that into actual cash saying I sold the GCs on raise.com and got $400 for them? So I've given up $400 in cash for $740 in flights?
• Of course, the same could be said for American Airlines miles, Marriott Points, Hilton Points, etc. - all of which can be converted into some sort of "cash-like" item (gift card or product from shopping portal) and then ultimately converted into actual cash by selling said item.
• So if I want to truly use my points for travel, would I then avoid bonuses like URs and Cash Back so that I don't have to "penalize" myself by calling them travel vs. potential cash? Or should I force myself to cash out URs and NOT attribute them to travel because they have that "cash" value.
• Then there's the mental aspect of churning in general. Would I spend hours a day here helping others, researching loopholes, and honing my "churning craft" if the goal were simply additional cash. I'd venture to say that I would not spend hours and hours on this hobby if the return weren't travel and creating memories with my children and family.
• So if that's the case, then since I'm earning somewhere between 15% and 40% back on all purchases by participating in this game, should I call everything above 2% excess (because the 2% is what i'd earn if I just abandoned churning and went with a Citi Double Cash?). So now I put a 2% "non-churner cash back" tax on all my redemptions that I have to cover to make sure I appropriately account for "what I would have earned" as a normal person.
• If instead of having a churning hobby, I mowed lawns all summer to pay for a vacation, how would I treat that money? I guess I technically still would have to account for the opportunity cost of say using $1,000 made that way towards a trip. But I wouldn't mow lawns to retire early...
• And then there's those Annual Fees and how you account for those. I make sure ALL of my AFs are assigned to a trip as a cost and they have to be offset as well. That is money spent on travel in my book - I know some folks like to "mentally account" for those differently too.

Of course, much of what I just said was pretty ridiculous. But you could really argue that any position on this is reasonable. I'm personally ok with somebody attributing ALL of their churning related activities to offsetting travel costs. It's definitely simpler than the "2% non-churning cashback tax" I referenced earlier.

So yes, I took a trip to Disney that with no discounts or churning efforts would cost $8,491.99. I offset that with the following:

• $920.73 in savings from taking advantage of Disney Room Only discounts
• $254.78 from my wife's SW companion pass
• $436.20 from SW points redeemed (29,775 pts)
• $240.03 in SW credits from rebooking cash flights
• $10.83 from a gifted SW LUV voucher (from a friend here on the DIS)
• $1,450 in Disney Rewards from the Disney Visa cards (all support clicks through r/churning and DoC)
• $50 Disney Gift Card promo from my travel agent
• $40 Disney Gift Card promo from DVC phone tour
• $125 in Disney Gift Card gifted from family for Christmas
• $205.70 from selling an AA gift card on Raise.com
• $773.71 in AMEX MRs redeemed for gift cards to purchase a new dishwasher (that I would've purchased anyways so I mentally accounted for it towards Disney)
• $542.84 in CashBack from my AMEX Blue Cash card (primarily from Disney Gift Cards purchased and an upgrade bonus)
• $566.92 in Misc Disney Gift Card savings primarily in the form of Fuel Perks (this is the actual value of the fuel redeemed) This is also where I offset the credit card AFs I paid just as a misc category
• $2,875.25 in CashBack from Citi Thank You Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards programs

Add it all up = FREE trip! And Yes - I am so crazy that I keep track of all of this and reconcile it all to the penny...

I'm not going to argue that if somebody took the position in their own accounting that this wasn't free, they were wrong. That's ok too. But travel and primarily Disney World is why I do all of this credit card churning and deal searching. IF travel wasn't the goal that $8,491.99 would probably be more like $500 cash in my pocket from a 2% card.

 

[alryan]

I am finding that surprisingly I do view those points as free. My accounting is not nearly as detailed as @SouthFayetteFan I generally just apply the annual fees and any other fees I paid to get those points. I don't think I would have signed up for 5 cards in the past year if I was just going to put that money into our general budget. Those points were earned for the sole purpose of making our vacation dollars stretch as far as they can, either more vacations, or experiences that we wouldn't have done. So even though I'm still going to try and get the best deal with those points, there may be times that they get spent on things that I wouldn't necessarily pay for with real money..but then to me that's the whole point. Case in point, we went to SeaWorld in March and I say to my DH, "should we splurge and get the all day dining?" And he says, "What do you mean splurge, isn't this all on points?!" So we got the dining, something we probably wouldn't have done if we were paying outright.

 

[pillow]

WARNING - super nerdy & LONG/detailed credit card churning comment forthcoming:

There's a lot of mental accounting to this - and I think it's best for everybody to figure it out for themselves, but I am fine with somebody who wants to attribute all their CC churning earnings to offsetting travel costs. Here's some thoughts (some of which are a bit over the top to illustrate how extreme you could be about it):

• How should I account for my Southwest Rapid Rewards Points? They were obviously earned to use on flights. BUT, if I want to take a 35%+ haircut on their value I could redeem them for Target Gift cards. Does that mean when I use 50,000 SW pts, that I'm giving up $500 for Target for $740 in travel? Or do I have to take the $500 in Target GCs and convert that into actual cash saying I sold the GCs on raise.com and got $400 for them? So I've given up $400 in cash for $740 in flights?
• Of course, the same could be said for American Airlines miles, Marriott Points, Hilton Points, etc. - all of which can be converted into some sort of "cash-like" item (gift card or product from shopping portal) and then ultimately converted into actual cash by selling said item.
• So if I want to truly use my points for travel, would I then avoid bonuses like URs and Cash Back so that I don't have to "penalize" myself by calling them travel vs. potential cash? Or should I force myself to cash out URs and NOT attribute them to travel because they have that "cash" value.
• Then there's the mental aspect of churning in general. Would I spend hours a day here helping others, researching loopholes, and honing my "churning craft" if the goal were simply additional cash. I'd venture to say that I would not spend hours and hours on this hobby if the return weren't travel and creating memories with my children and family.
• So if that's the case, then since I'm earning somewhere between 15% and 40% back on all purchases by participating in this game, should I call everything above 2% excess (because the 2% is what i'd earn if I just abandoned churning and went with a Citi Double Cash?). So now I put a 2% "non-churner cash back" tax on all my redemptions that I have to cover to make sure I appropriately account for "what I would have earned" as a normal person.
• If instead of having a churning hobby, I mowed lawns all summer to pay for a vacation, how would I treat that money? I guess I technically still would have to account for the opportunity cost of say using $1,000 made that way towards a trip. But I wouldn't mow lawns to retire early...
• And then there's those Annual Fees and how you account for those. I make sure ALL of my AFs are assigned to a trip as a cost and they have to be offset as well. That is money spent on travel in my book - I know some folks like to "mentally account" for those differently too.

Of course, much of what I just said was pretty ridiculous. But you could really argue that any position on this is reasonable. I'm personally ok with somebody attributing ALL of their churning related activities to offsetting travel costs. It's definitely simpler than the "2% non-churning cashback tax" I referenced earlier.

So yes, I took a trip to Disney that with no discounts or churning efforts would cost $8,491.99. I offset that with the following:

• $920.73 in savings from taking advantage of Disney Room Only discounts
• $254.78 from my wife's SW companion pass
• $436.20 from SW points redeemed (29,775 pts)
• $240.03 in SW credits from rebooking cash flights
• $10.83 from a gifted SW LUV voucher (from a friend here on the DIS)
• $1,450 in Disney Rewards from the Disney Visa cards (all support clicks through r/churning and DoC)
• $50 Disney Gift Card promo from my travel agent
• $40 Disney Gift Card promo from DVC phone tour
• $125 in Disney Gift Card gifted from family for Christmas
• $205.70 from selling an AA gift card on Raise.com
• $773.71 in AMEX MRs redeemed for gift cards to purchase a new dishwasher (that I would've purchased anyways so I mentally accounted for it towards Disney)
• $542.84 in CashBack from my AMEX Blue Cash card (primarily from Disney Gift Cards purchased and an upgrade bonus)
• $566.92 in Misc Disney Gift Card savings primarily in the form of Fuel Perks (this is the actual value of the fuel redeemed) This is also where I offset the credit card AFs I paid just as a misc category
• $2,875.25 in CashBack from Citi Thank You Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards programs

Add it all up = FREE trip! And Yes - I am so crazy that I keep track of all of this and reconcile it all to the penny...

I'm not going to argue that if somebody took the position in their own accounting that this wasn't free, they were wrong. That's ok too. But travel and primarily Disney World is why I do all of this credit card churning and deal searching. IF travel wasn't the goal that $8,491.99 would probably be more like $500 cash in my pocket from a 2% card.

Wow that's a lot to unwrap - lol. I like nerdy. This is an interesting discussion, and heres the thing . . . I don't think your bullet points are ridiculous. I actually agree with most of them. And the answer to your first bullet point is absolutely yes! You absolutely are "paying" $400 for your flight. Please don't get me wrong . . . I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I just think its important to know (at least for me) what my opportunity cost is and to make decisions accordingly. I will 100% use my Southwest miles for flights if the redemption is good (however, if I found I could book a flight for less than the $400 with another airline, I might go that route).

I mentally view UR points like I would view a cash gift from my mother. It was free to earn, but I still have to decide how to spend it. Its money sitting in my pocket, and if I use it for a trip (even if its a good deal), that is most certainly an expense to me.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Wow that's a lot to unwrap - lol. I like nerdy. This is an interesting discussion, and heres the thing . . . I don't think your bullet points are ridiculous. I actually agree with most of them. And the answer to your first bullet point is absolutely yes! You absolutely are "paying" $400 for your flight. Please don't get me wrong . . . I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I just think its important to know (at least for me) what my opportunity cost is and to make decisions accordingly. I will 100% use my Southwest miles for flights if the redemption is good (however, if I found I could book a flight for less than the $400 with another airline, I might go that route).

I mentally view UR points like I would view a cash gift from my mother. It was free to earn, but I still have to decide how to spend it. Its money sitting in my pocket, and if I use it for a trip (even if its a good deal), that is most certainly an expense to me.

And that’s where I’m cool with everybody doing their own mental accounting (you aren’t wrong and I’m not right, but we’re both ok) If you want to call that paying $400 that’s great as long as I can call it flying for free. What’s probably most important is that somebody understands and is consistent with how they account for it. (And doesn’t ignore any real costs incurred to earn those points - ie AFs paid).

For my part, I don’t view URs as income, I view them as a rebate that I can choose to assign (ie offset) an expense as I see fit. All I know is I took $37,908.58 worth of free travel over the past 4 years and I’m cool with my accounting system for all of it

I also won’t be applying the 2% non-churner cashback tax anytime soon...LOL (I thought that was probably the funniest thing I suggested).

 

[pillow]

And that’s where I’m cool with everybody doing their own mental accounting (you aren’t wrong and I’m not right, but we’re both ok) If you want to call that paying $400 that’s great as long as I can call it flying for free. What’s probably most important is that somebody understands and is consistent with how they account for it. (And doesn’t ignore any real costs incurred to earn those points - ie AFs paid).

For my part, I don’t view URs as income, I view them as a rebate that I can choose to assign (ie offset) an expense as I see fit. All I know is I took $37,908.58 worth of free travel over the past 4 years and I’m cool with my accounting system for all of it

Yep - all good.

And thats A LOT of travel!!

 

[QueenIsabella]

Okay, first off--good job tracking all your points, etc., SFF!

To those newer to FIRE thinking--the kind of planing/saving that SFF is talking about takes a while to work up to. Don't be discouraged by seeing her fabulous numbers and thinking, "I couldn't do that!" Start small, enjoy some success/savings, try some more.

In my case, I don't do all that, for various reasons. But, I do have a couple rewards credit cards that help me out. I'm currently at Universal with 4 other family members. We saved $2100 on this trip by using my AAA credit card rewards. In addition, we have ~$1500 in disney rewards that we'll be spending at Disney Springs--getting DH that Lego Death Star he's always wanted, and shopping/dining. I realize this isn't very "budget", but we don't live like this every day. The money I used to pay off this trip will then earn more rewards which will reduce the price of next year's trip--a 12-night Baltic cruise for 6 with a couple extra days in Amsterdam.

I probably should mention, one thing we talked about a lot when we inherited from my MIL--her big money "spends" were education and travel. So, we make those two things a priority in our spending. We save on other things (meals in, boring cars, cheap clothes) so that we can splurge on trips. Someone else might have different priorities--that's perfectly fine.

 

[Budzooka]

I prefer to look at everything must be balanced. If all you are doing is saving and not enjoying life along the way, you are missing out. If you only live in the moment and don’t plan for tomorrow, there are going to be struggles.

We splurge on vacations, but use credit card rewards to offset much of that cost. It’s important to me that my kids get to see different places and different things. We try to balance that by living in a modest home and cars. We have thought about upgrading our home, but have decided to stay put for awhile longer with the much lower payment.

Both of my parents died at younger ages (47 and 65), so I make a conscious effort to make sure we enjoy some moments while still focusing on savings and retirement.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

FYI... @QueenIsabella

<== NOT a her

 

[1st*toright]

I just don't understand why is it so hard for people, I don't care if you want to aim for a refund or not, you don't want to do the math, whatever, but it has nothing to do with what you owed the government! It's just whether you over or underpaid during the year...

Ok I'm done. It's been a long Friday already.

Late to the party, but right there with you. I was super cranky to get my ridiculous refund this year - I had overwithheld on a stock option grant, so basically had to wait 9 months to get money that was mine. I would have been even crankier if I'd known that I would owe in 2019. Did you apply the overpayment to 2019, or are you already withholding for the new number?

I ended up worse off in aggregate because of the SALT cap. It more than offset my monthly increase due to the rate change. I compare effective tax rates year over year.

Yep- its all about ETR for me - our income has fluctuated a bunch in the last few years for various reasons, so ETR is really the only way I can compare how the tax code affects us.

 

[amalone1013]

Late to the party, but right there with you. I was super cranky to get my ridiculous refund this year - I had overwithheld on a stock option grant, so basically had to wait 9 months to get money that was mine. I would have been even crankier if I'd known that I would owe in 2019. Did you apply the overpayment to 2019, or are you already withholding for the new number?

I'm attempting to withhold for the new number... I figure I'm going to keep needing to re-run the numbers and adjust anyways.

 

[1st*toright]

I'm attempting to withhold for the new number... I figure I'm going to keep needing to re-run the numbers and adjust anyways.

Yeah- the commission income thing must keep you on your toes with that stuff!

I am finding that surprisingly I do view those points as free. My accounting is not nearly as detailed as @SouthFayetteFan I generally just apply the annual fees and any other fees I paid to get those points. I don't think I would have signed up for 5 cards in the past year if I was just going to put that money into our general budget. Those points were earned for the sole purpose of making our vacation dollars stretch as far as they can, either more vacations, or experiences that we wouldn't have done. So even though I'm still going to try and get the best deal with those points, there may be times that they get spent on things that I wouldn't necessarily pay for with real money..but then to me that's the whole point. Case in point, we went to SeaWorld in March and I say to my DH, "should we splurge and get the all day dining?" And he says, "What do you mean splurge, isn't this all on points?!" So we got the dining, something we probably wouldn't have done if we were paying outright.

I also find it easier to use points for stuff that isn't a great value - like paying points for a hotel room when I wouldn't spend the $$$ for the same room. Or taking a short trip and burning a bunch of miles when I wouldn't be willing to do it for cash. For me, that's kind of the point. We are spending about the same amount on travel as we otherwise would, just doing a lot more of it for our $$!

 

[amalone1013]

Yeah- the commission income thing must keep you on your toes with that stuff!

Yeah. I thought my OT was bad enough to deal with, because in the past few years I've varied between 45%-68% additional salary in OT pay. Now I get to add DHs commission in, AND this year will be super crazy for that. And currently I'm on track to earn an additional 33% over my base salary, but that will go up as we work weekends or people take vacation. I need to run some calcs and show DH what it would look like if we bump his 401k up just a tad more to max it out: like taxes owed doing that vs not doing it, how it effects his regular paycheck... etc.

 

[ski_mom]

I've been thinking about something and figured this group may have an opinion about it.

DH and I have a HSA account that we've maxed out for the past two years (our company switched to a qualifying plan last year). We can pay for our medical expenses without using the money in the account, so is it better to leave the money in the HSA account to build up for retirement, or should be go ahead and withdraw the money and add it to our regular savings since we have plenty of expenses that qualify for the withdrawal?

If it matters, I'm 48 and DH is 54, so we're obviously not in the RE part of the FIRE plan, but I like to be as smart with our money as possible, and I'm just not sure which way to go with this account (or if it really matters in the long run). At this point, our tentative plan is that we will both retire around the same time when I turn 56. That is when I will have the maximum number of years in our pension plan at work. DH loves his job and really has no desire to retire before that point. I also love my job, but I also want us to be able to enjoy retirement, so am looking forward to the flexibility of being retired!

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I've been thinking about something and figured this group may have an opinion about it.

DH and I have a HSA account that we've maxed out for the past two years (our company switched to a qualifying plan last year). We can pay for our medical expenses without using the money in the account, so is it better to leave the money in the HSA account to build up for retirement, or should be go ahead and withdraw the money and add it to our regular savings since we have plenty of expenses that qualify for the withdrawal?

If it matters, I'm 48 and DH is 54, so we're obviously not in the RE part of the FIRE plan, but I like to be as smart with our money as possible, and I'm just not sure which way to go with this account (or if it really matters in the long run). At this point, our tentative plan is that we will both retire around the same time when I turn 56. That is when I will have the maximum number of years in our pension plan at work. DH loves his job and really has no desire to retire before that point. I also love my job, but I also want us to be able to enjoy retirement, so am looking forward to the flexibility of being retired!

This is a really tough one to give good advice on. I think people can tell you what they are doing, and why they are doing it...but to tell you what to do, I would really question that advice. It's just a very personal decision that can be driven by the math, or by the psychology, or by your relative health, or numerous other factors I probably can't think of. And, as you point out, it's also possible that it won't even matter to you in the long run (in your particular situation).

What I'm doing is taking those reimbursements immediately. Our HSA is growing faster than we could possibly spend it at this point. It's hard to explain exactly why I'm doing that, other than to say, I've thought about it a ton and think that's the best way for my family to proceed. You are at a different age than I am (that's a super nice way of saying you're slightly older than me ) so that's a factor I probably can't get my head around.

All that said, it's good to think about this and come up with a strategy. I'd just really hesitate to fully trust somebody that suggests that their way IS the right way on this one. Unless they 100% knew your situation and asked dozens of questions, that advice is not personalized to you