****August, 2012!!!****

[dontthrowsand]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later

When my boyfriend lets me pick where we go again. I think he wants to pick next which will likely be Vegas for CES or somewhere all inclusive

 

[NikkiLovesWDW!]

I have a revolving "disney envelope" that I put $20/30 in each week. Even when I don't have a trip planned. Then once I book, I put the deposit on my card and pay it off. I usually have room-only reservations so I pay the balance with the cash I've been saving when we check in and usually have enough left over for spending during the trip too, depending on how long it's been since my last trip! I also usually have about $200 in disney gift cards that I either use for the balance or spending because my mom gets me a disney gift card for every occasion!

As soon as we get home, I start filling the envelope again....

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

We are always saving for our next vacation . We also travel alot for our son's sports, so we are perpertually planning to go somewhere.

My husband gets many opportunities for overtime at his job, so we take the excess from any particularly large paycheques and allocate that to a special bank account.

DH has a second, part-time job that brings in another $500 monthly. I have two additional clerical gigs (over and above my 8:30 to 4, regular-shmegular job) that net about the same. All three positions are stuff that takes up minimal amounts of time (maybe 10-15 hours tops for each of us), are easy for us to do, and really add up money wise.

We take a small additional amount from each pay (overtime or not) and put it in our vacation savings.

Any "left over" money from the current vacation gets carried over to the next. When we returned from Orlando on January 7th, we had enough money remaining from what we had budgeted for that trip to pay for our flights for this August getaway.

I love the research and planning that is necessary to secure a great deal, wherever we happen to be planning to go. Its like a sport for me. So I don't mind putting in the leg work, and we virtually always end up being able to do more than we had originally planned simply because I kept looking. The deals are out there.

 

[pigletto]

I decided to check my Southwest reservation this morning on a whim.
It went down again

So, I now have a credit of $295. Yay! Since we're thinking of another trip before the AP's run out next year, that will really help!

I'm about 250 under what I had budgeted for flights for the 5 of us

 

[jm106]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later


Anyone???

We have a vacation spot in our budget that we add to all year so its on going. Its not specifically for Disney since we love to travel to other places as well. We try to add more money when we make "extra" like a birthday gift or if I do a side job/wedding and DH works a lot of OT so we can bulk it up then. We did Disney last May and this Aug so next year wont be Disney(probably Caribbean.)

 

[litlpixie]

I have a set amount of $$ that gets automatically put in a savings acct. for vacations. Between that and my annual bonus from work, it takes care of vacation expenses. Already planning next years Spring trip and I havent even begun this Summer's trip

 

[RetroCOTfan]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later

My answer would be I start saving for the next trip when we get back. I put so much away each paycheck and then the tax refund usually pays it off.

Anyone???

We make use of the Disney Rewards Visa. First, we pay for everything we buy (even our household bills) through the card, and then pay it off every two weeks. This way we earn the points on virtually every dollar we spend, and we never pay interest.

Second, we did the math and upgraded to the Premier card, because the increase in the amount of reward points that we'll get back was more than double the cost of the annual fee. This is especially true because of the extra 5% bonus we got for the first three months of the card. We made enough extra reward points during that time period alone to pay for the annual fee for the next three years.

Finally, anything not covered by reward points we put on the card itself for the "six months no interest" deal on Disney vacation packages. This requires a little extra accounting work since we use the card so much, but luckily DW is super smart and keeps it all in line! (pretty sure I couldn't do that ) Once it's on the card, we pay on it until it's paid off.

Anyway, just by using this card we have paid for nearly half of our last trip and more than half of our upcoming one. This strategy does not work if you carry a balance on your card (as your reward savings would get eaten up by the interest you were paying), but it's worked really well for us.

 

[pigletto]

We make use of the Disney Rewards Visa. First, we pay for everything we buy (even our household bills) through the card, and then pay it off every two weeks. This way we earn the points on virtually every dollar we spend, and we never pay interest.

Second, we did the math and upgraded to the Premier card, because the increase in the amount of reward points that we'll get back was more than double the cost of the annual fee. This is especially true because of the extra 5% bonus we got for the first three months of the card. We made enough extra reward points during that time period alone to pay for the annual fee for the next three years.

Finally, anything not covered by reward points we put on the card itself for the "six months no interest" deal on Disney vacation packages. This requires a little extra accounting work since we use the card so much, but luckily DW is super smart and keeps it all in line! (pretty sure I couldn't do that ) Once it's on the card, we pay on it until it's paid off.

Anyway, just by using this card we have paid for nearly half of our last trip and more than half of our upcoming one. This strategy does not work if you carry a balance on your card (as your reward savings would get eaten up by the interest you were paying), but it's worked really well for us.

So jealous! I really wish we could get the Disney rewards Visa here!
I pay off the card every month just because I refuse to pay interest so it would work well for us. As it stands now we went with the card that provided the best rates and it gets no rewards. I feel robbed

 

[m2zjj]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later

My answer would be I start saving for the next trip when we get back. I put so much away each paycheck and then the tax refund usually pays it off.

Anyone???

This is our third trip and each one has paid for differently.

Our 1st was our honeymoon. Paid for with money we had been saving by taking money out of each paycheck and putting it into a savings account.

2nd trip we had been planning a mini vacation and had a little money saved for it when we were notified that my son had won a contest and the prize was a trip to Florida. Used the prize winnings for most of the trip and the rest was paid for with the money we had saved and a little put on a CC.

This trip is being paid for by our tax refund. DH changed jobs part way through last year and somehow they ended up taking way too much out for taxes so our trip is paid for and I didn't even have to touch our vacation fund.

 

[littlezar]

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later

My answer would be I start saving for the next trip when we get back. I put so much away each paycheck and then the tax refund usually pays it off.

Anyone???

We don't vacation regularly - it's too hard with DH's schedule. He's been deployed just over 3 of the past 5 years (different lengths of time - 13 months Iraq, 7 months ship/Med, 3 months ship/Haiti, 4 months ship/South America and 10 1/2 months ship/Med) Once we start talking about vacation, we put it on Disney Visa and pay off immediately with savings from deployment. I've also been using the Disney Visa for everything and paying it off every other week so we don't pay interest. We've got a nice chunk of rewards that will absolutely cover food in the parks and then some. I also redeemed points for a couple of Disney gift cards - think it was from the points in the Disney blu-rays?

I should add that I do travel to visit my parents/family every year once or twice but all that costs me is the gas to get there (currently 350 miles or so.)

 

[StephLS]

On every post next to the quote button there is another button that is a square with quotation marks and a plus sign on it. Click it on each post you want to quote (it will turn orange when you click it) when you have selected all the ones you want to quote click the post reply button and each quote will be in the reply box.

Thanks so much!

Can I ask the Question of the Day for Friday (even though it's Thursday evening???......

When do you start saving for your next Disney vacation?

* on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once you return

* wait for your income tax return

* put the trip on your credit card and pay for it later

My answer would be I start saving for the next trip when we get back. I put so much away each paycheck and then the tax refund usually pays it off.

Anyone???

Well I wish I could be that dedicated and save every week,or month but usually when we decide we are going then I go into a panic state and save all over the place. But with all these great suggestions I really am going to commit to a vacation account as soon I return and like someone else said that if an unusual emergency comes up then pay with that and then just continue again.

I too wish we had the Disney reward card here in Canada, boy would I ever take advantge of that!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

I knew this question would give us all a lot of ideas on saving for vacations!!! My hubby and I finally did the Southwest Visa card for points on airfare. He's in control of the card (oh, he's sooooooooo much better with financial stuff than me! ) and he's been using it for EVERYTHING!!! We are hoping for free flights again next year!!!

You all have great ideas!!!!

 

[pigletto]

One thing about the vacation account that has been really great is that even though I handle the finances, dh is a worrier. So he doesn't get much into the details but at some point he wants to know what it's all costing, only hears the final number and no matter what it is he thinks it's too high.
It was frustrating because if you don't research and do the planning you don't really know what things cost but he wasn't interested in the details.
When we developed this system we came up with a number that wouldn't freak him out, and one that I could work with that kept the expenses in check.
It's win/win and we don't get stressed about it anymore!

 

[taylor3297]

The way we save for our Disney trips is by

1. All change goes into a bank on my dresser
2. When I buying items with cash, I keep the ones and fives and put those in a hiding spot.

I have managed to save a lot of money this way.

 

[CRdisMom]

im awful....i just pay with all on a credit card. I always plan on doing the savings route but don't. We do prepay the hotel and the airfare so those are paid off by the time we get there

 

[firechick139]

OK, list is updated to here. Please take a minute to review your info and make sure it is correct.

pigletto - I must have missed your dates somehow. Could you please post them again for me?


It's hard to believe I started this thread almost a whole year ago! And now, August is almost upon us. It seemed so far away back then. It will be here before we know it!

 

[lala3291]

Hello!
I'm so sorry, I know you just updated the list, but our dates changed! We will now be in WDW at the Poly from August 1-6. My DH could not get the time off from work at the end of August.
I just moved all of my ADRs and I was shocked to get everything we wanted, including 'Ohana on August 2nd at 5:10 PM!
Have a good day everyone!

 

[StephLS]

The way we save for our Disney trips is by

1. All change goes into a bank on my dresser
2. When I buying items with cash, I keep the ones and fives and put those in a hiding spot.

I have managed to save a lot of money this way.

I am definitely going to do this, yes I promise, I promise, well I will try my best.

I have a little bit of a harder time to save since my husband does not do Disney,thus I have to get all the money for these trips. He has been a few times but does not see the point in going again. Yes we are still married, it is possible to love someone even though they don't love Disney. My two kids LOVE Disney too so that is who I go with. My husband is the active vacation guy, his trips are skiing in europe, yeck, I say to that. So we have come to an understanding: kids ski with him and Disney with me. Then of course there are family vacations together. We have been together for 30 years so I guess it is working.
So I will definietely try very hard to save weekly.

 

[StephLS]

Just curious I am going to make mousekeepers envelopes for the first time, does anybody have cute ideas?

 

[Victoriasmom98]

pigletto - I must have missed your dates somehow. Could you please post them again for me?

Oh, don't worry about having pigletto's info in there.......She changes her mind almost every day...oh, and did you hear she has her own line to Disney reservations??!

Just kidding pigletto......love ya!!!