We had to pay out for my FIL's expenses a while back; so, I know where you are coming from on this one. First, my sympathy goes to you for the parents you lost.
If you have a car, I would get the entertainment book and use coupons from the TS restaurants offered off site. I think you can get a subscription by the month, as well and it's a smaller charge and you print your own coupons for it. You will generally need one coupon for every two adults. The site allows you to view the restaurants ahead of time. You do have to consider not getting lost trying to find the place and the effort to go in and out of Disney proper.
I think the key to cheaper TS on site for Disney without the plan is to go to the cheaper places, select cheaper entress, and go for lunch hour times which is cheaper. Doing breakfast will help, too if you want 2 TS meals a day. Boma's has a nice breakfast buffet. Another exampleof buffet: Biergarten is pretty reasonable in Epcot for lunch. You have to look at the menus and decide what's best on a budget for TS. Lunch buffets include appetizer and dessert; so, you do gain that way by going buffet on those counts. Get tap water for your drinks. You can still get the refillable mug and pay OOP for it. If you don't do buffet all the time, then stick with the entrees only and maybe, share a few desserts and/or appetizers.
A compromise is to do the basic dining plan and pay out of pocket for some of it if you choose to go to a few signature TS restaurants. As long as, you don't go signature everyday you should be money ahead over the deluxe plan. Also, the DP doesn't charge you sales tax and without it you will pay sales tax. The basic plan means you need to do a counter service meal each day. From your post it doesn't sound like you want to do CS at all. If that's the case this way won't work out too good for you. If your party can split up for eats; maybe, you and hubby can go TS with the little ones while the others do counter service. You have to decide if you can trust your 15 year olds by themselves for CS. They may get a charge out of being left alone that way. You can coodinate the times and have a meeting place after the meal, etc.
The way I remember club level at the resort (it's been a while), you have food included on the concierge level of AKL. It's available for all times of the day. We did it at AKL about 5 years ago and the food was wonderful and you really don't have to eat too heavy in the parks, if you use this service at the resort. We started and ended our day there. The drinks were wonderful and I didn't even feel like you needed to get the refillable mugs with club level. The AKL one is particularly good by comparison.
Another way is to go to a standard accomodation and with the money saved go for the deluxe plan if that's what the heart wants. We are gone from our rooms a lot; so, we've decided after many years of going that we are fine with a lesser room. You can switch to moderate or value and save even more on a resort. Of course, the dates would all have to work out for you to change. I'm not sure how easy this will be for you. If the trip is further out, you have a chance on changing to cheaper accomodations.
If you want everything on the highest level, then you'll have to charge it and pay it back later on, if you don't have funds readily available, now. Hopefully, the stimulus check is not already spent for you to help in that way.
Also, I feel this needs to be discussed by the entire family. Maybe, hubby after all that has happened financially would agree to counter service.
Good luck.
The kids and I we would eat anything. With our discount code the difference in cost of the room is not as much as it would cost to get the dining plan and down grade rooms unless we changed resorts. With 3 kids that count as adults on the meal plan I don't think they will eat all of the food and will end up sharing anyway. Thanks for the input.
