Debt Dumpers 2021

It may sound silly to most of you, but it's been about a week since we've eaten out more than the one planned day I had (we always eat at food truck Tuesday's at our local park to support local food trucks). Eating out has been my biggest spending bad habit the last few months and I'm really trying to cut back on that.
I tried making an actual weekly meal plan and have more or less stuck to it. I put in a grocery pick up order for tomorrow morning because honestly, I always spend extra on crap we don't need when I go in.

The girls also are getting signed up for gymnastics. My oldest will have hers paid for through her online school, but we will have to pay out of pocket for my younger one until August when she starts school, so $140 to start and then $65 a month for 3 months. Not too bad and they're both really excited, but it's something else to budget now.
 
Plugging along here. My oldest nephew gets married next month and for some reason I volunteered to make 200 cupcakes and a cutting cake! It sounded like a good idea at the time but now I'm rethinking it! LOL

This week has been terrible for eating out. I usually don't work till 5pm and this week I have worked till 5 or later everyday and by the time I get home and my husband gets home we just haven't been feeling cooking. This is not helping my budget or my waistline!

Thinking ahead to mother's day. My husband is just taking his mom to one of her favorite restaurants for dinner on their weekly get together. I am going to hang out with my mom the day before Mother's Day and then buy her lunch. On actually Mother's day my husband and I will just got to our normal Sunday breakfast place. Everything should be reasonable for pricing and our mothers really would rather just spend time with us than have gifts.
 

I was able to get Disneyland tickets today! But my wallet is currently crying from it. I've also booked a few different hotel options for our June dates and I feel like prices are definitely more expensive than pre-covid. :(
my wallet is going to be crying big time in the next 2 weeks. just bought a 3 day PH and I'm planning to upgrade my UOR ticket next week to an AP and I may end up buying a Universal Hollywood AP.
 
I was able to get Disneyland tickets today! But my wallet is currently crying from it. I've also booked a few different hotel options for our June dates and I feel like prices are definitely more expensive than pre-covid. :(

I feel like things were inexpensive and now places are realizing people want to travel and return to a more "normal" life so they are taking advantage of it with pricing!
 
I feel like things were inexpensive and now places are realizing people want to travel and return to a more "normal" life so they are taking advantage of it with pricing!
Could be! Some of our usual hotel spots that were normally around $130-150/night are now $200/night.
 
Could be! Some of our usual hotel spots that were normally around $130-150/night are now $200/night.
some of that may have to do with them being able to ask for higher rates with less rooms to go around. a good number of hotels across the street from DLR are still closed as of right now.
 
some of that may have to do with them being able to ask for higher rates with less rooms to go around. a good number of hotels across the street from DLR are still closed as of right now.

That's also a good possibility. We stayed at the BW Anaheim Inn (across from the main entrance) back in November for $130ish a night and now it's at $190/night. I'm hoping i'll be able to find a better deal between now and the end of June.
 
No update here but the front porch and sunroom addition is coming along and should finally be done in a week! I’m considering blowing part of what I was saving for a future retirement home in a 55+ community (well over a decade away still because my husband needs to hit 55 first since he’s older than me) and buying just a little DVC additional contract at a 2042 resort, just enough points to get us through the kids being so young. Definitely not the wisest decision but I don’t see us resuming our usual plans of traveling internationally once a year any time soon. I won’t be taking on debt since we would pay cash but still...it’s definitely breaking my budgeting plans.

I know that it’s fiscally not a great choice but I feel like the memories my kids will make over the next 15-20 years makes it more important to me than money. We can always work more to make more money but I can’t ever get back the time my girls are with us before they grow up and move on with their lives. I mean I know that it’s just spending money but, at the same time, how can I pass up extra trips that my girls will recall some day when they’re grown up?
 
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No update here but the front porch and sunroom addition is coming along and should finally be done in a week! I’m considering blowing part of what I was saving for a future retirement home in a 55+ community (well over a decade away still because my husband needs to hit 55 first since he’s older than me) and buying just a little DVC additional contract at a 2042 resort, just enough points to get us through the kids being so young. Definitely not the wisest decision but I don’t see is resuming our usual plans any time soon of traveling internationally once a year.I won’t be taking on debt but still...it’s definitely breaking my budgeting plans.

I know that it’s fiscally not a great choice but I feel like the memories my kids will make over the next 15-20 years makes it more important to me than money. We can always work more to make more money but I can’t ever get back the time my girls are with us before they grow up and move on with their lives. I mean I know that it’s just spending money but, at the same time, how can I pass up extra trips that my girls will recall some day when they’re grown up?


if you don't mind sharing-what are maintenance fees like these days on dvc? we owned ours outright but sold years ago b/c the fees were getting out of hand for the properties we owned (and i have to imagine with the older places like we had the costs for repairs has increased due to their age).
 
if you don't mind sharing-what are maintenance fees like these days on dvc? we owned ours outright but sold years ago b/c the fees were getting out of hand for the properties we owned (and i have to imagine with the older places like we had the costs for repairs has increased due to their age).
They start around $6.57 or with Grand Floridian currently as the lowest dues. Our two contracts are at Riviera so our fees are on the higher end at $8.38/point, except we received a credit back for $1.70/point due to having overpaid last year so that pretty much offset our dues for 2021 and made them $6.68/point this year. I think Old Key West is at $8.35 and they received a credit of $0.81/point. DVC maintenance fees are still lower than we are paying for a timeshare up at a ski area in NH that we only get to use for a week every year.
 
They start around $6.57 or with Grand Floridian currently as the lowest dues. Our two contracts are at Riviera so our fees are on the higher end at $8.38/point, except we received a credit back for $1.70/point due to having overpaid last year so that pretty much offset our dues for 2021 and made them $6.68/point this year. I think Old Key West is at $8.35 and they received a credit of $0.81/point. DVC maintenance fees are still lower than we are paying for a timeshare up at a ski area in NH that we only get to use for a week every year.

i do recall our then cpa saying how impressed she was with disney's accounting statements b/c they were the only timeshare at that time that itemized in a manner that made determining the tax deductible portion immediately apparent. we enjoyed our membership but b/c we don't live w/in reasonable proximity (now or then) to a disney property we were basically just doing BIG usage on 3 year cycles (bank, use current year, borrow from the following year). we managed to do that for an alaskan cruise (back when they contracted with other cruiselines), a 3 week wdw trip, a couple of 1 week wdw stays followed by disney cruises, and 1 single week disneyland trip. when we ran the numbers after we sold, even with the sales commission and the taxes we had to pay we were at a break even or a tad bit ahead of all we paid out.


good luck with your decision.
 
DS18 has decided on a college! And it's not the one that offered him an almost full tuition scholarship! (Lol, we are fine with it). He'll be going to the same state school where his brother goes and we have 529s to finance a good chunk and will use our paychecks to make up the difference. We really think he'll be happy there, and I'm happy that both of my "boys" (men!) will be close by - it's about an hour away. This weekend, we'll put down the deposit and officially commit.
 
I was able to get Disneyland tickets today! But my wallet is currently crying from it. I've also booked a few different hotel options for our June dates and I feel like prices are definitely more expensive than pre-covid. :(
It is opening end of April, right? Did you get APs or tickets for a few days?

DS18 has decided on a college! And it's not the one that offered him an almost full tuition scholarship! (Lol, we are fine with it). He'll be going to the same state school where his brother goes and we have 529s to finance a good chunk and will use our paychecks to make up the difference. We really think he'll be happy there, and I'm happy that both of my "boys" (men!) will be close by - it's about an hour away. This weekend, we'll put down the deposit and officially commit.
That's great!
 
It is opening end of April, right? Did you get APs or tickets for a few days?
Yes they reopen on April 30th. Disneyland is not offering AP's at the moment. They cancelled the AP program a few months back. They are supposedly going to reintroduce a new AP program, but no one knows when that will be.
 
Eating out has been my biggest spending bad habit the last few months and I'm really trying to cut back on that.

This is us. We either go out or get takeout at least 3 sometimes 4 times a week (and I'm not talking "old mcdonalds" as my kids would say). One day last week I stopped at 4 places to please everyone's interest that night. It's actually getting a little out of hand and we spend easily $300-400 extra every week on dining out or take out on top of at least 2 trips to the market every week. We went through the whole let's make a menu board phase briefly but then it got vague like "Monday- chicken" that we just gave up. We often play the "what do you want for dinner game" until 4 or 5 in the afternoon which ends in out to eat so that too is annoying. I haven't really figured out the problem other than I work from home and it's hard to pull myself away to prep a meal that everyone will eat. It's an excuse of course- we just need to snap out of it.
 





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