Do you incur debt to go to Disney?

[KiKi Mouse]

Wow. I wish that we could buy Disney gift cards in Canada. If a school was doing a fundraiser that would be great.
*sigh*

 

[becpee]

I have a set saving every week that comes out of my wages, straight into a savings account that is harder for me to get to.

We also plan well in advance for holidays (vacations ) as it costs us a lot just to leave this country, for us to fly anywhere overseas except New Zealand it's upwards of $1000 each so it's usually 2 years out we start planning.

We try not to go into debt for holidays but sometimes we'll overspend and as it's usually a long time before we go again we can deal with the short term debt.

 

[NancyIL]

I don't go into debt to vacation, but I also don't pay for the vacation until the bills are due. I don't mind getting a credit card bill after the vacation has ended. I'd rather keep my money in savings as long as possible and earn the little bit of interest, rather than give it to the travel provider(s) to earn interest.

 

[Gr8t Fan]

We don't go into debt to do WDW now, but we have in the past and have no regrets. Back before the credit crisis, we got tons of 0% interest CC offers in the mail, and we used Visa's $ or Mastercard's $ to fund our trips and paid them back in twelve easy installments at 0% interest. Now we simply book our trips 12 months out and pay them off before we go. We're still paying about the same $$ per month, but the trip is paid in full before we go as opposed to paying on it for 11 months after we've taken it. As long as we're not paying interest on the trip, and have the $$ in savings to cover the bill, I don't see the harm in using someone else's $.

 

[luvthemouse71]

I pay my trips off week to week. I also tryto work extra hours or take more call. I also have a change jar and hold yard sales etc.

 

[disney1990]

I have a savings account and follow the philosophy of "pay yourself first". I put money into my savings account every time I get paid. This is where my Disney money comes from -- no I will not charge vacation.

 

[NancyIL]

I have a savings account and follow the philosophy of "pay yourself first". I put money into my savings account every time I get paid. This is where my Disney money comes from -- no I will not charge vacation.

There's a difference between going into debt and "charging" a vacation. I pay for a vacation with a credit card, but the bill gets paid when it is due.

 

[HHSTigerFan]

We have in the past, but those days are past, we still have a good chunk of CC debt and are paying that down, and still will go, but won't take on any additional debt..

We now book our trips in advance, first get the room paid, then buy tickets, then starting buying Disney giftcards at Walgreens on a weekly basis..

 

[Marionnette]

Unless you are completely, 100% debt free when you vacation you are arguably using credit to vacation. Otherwise, you could use the money you are spending on vacation to pay off debt. Some people who make a big deal about "I would never go into debt to vacation" have huge car loans, etc. You are not financially better off than someone whose car is paid for, and they have little to no revolving credit balances but decide to put part of their vacation on a low-interest charge card and pay it off quickly.

Having said that, I think it would be a really bad idea to wait until you are totally debt free to vacation! People have to use common sense and look at the big picture. As a couple of PPs have mentioned, there are times that I will not pay off a credit card balance because it works better to not shift money from somewhere else that is earning more than the charge. We have worked hard and saved and fortunately have various nest eggs and funds available. There is not anything automatically bad about charging part of a vacation, the problem comes if you incur excess finance charges and/or don't have a sufficient cushion if something unexpected happened.

It's about finding the balance where you enjoy this life but do what you can to provide financial security for your family.

Totally agree with you. Its all about finding balance. I just find it curious to see how many "debt-free" vacationers we see on this board. But then someone asks if they should take a planned trip when they have encountered a financial setback and it runs 50-50, for and against. And almost every person who favors going anyway will argue that you dont know what life will bring and so the op should go and enjoy. Its that kind of live for today, "gotta have it now" mentality that has so many people in a financial hole today.

 

[Aliceacc]

We did put it on our credit card, knowing that we would pay off about half immediately and the rest when we got our tax return.So, yes, technicallly we went into debt for about six months for each of the trips.

I was facing a health crisis, and spent lots of LONG sleepless nights on the DIS researching everything I could think of. It was a whole lot more theraputic than researching breast cancer.

Sometimes you've got to break the rules to keep the big picture in mind.

 

[*Seanaci*]

We never go into debt for a Disney vacation. We plan ahead, budget, and save. When we go in 2012, it will have been 4 years since our last trip. Ideally, I'd like to go every 2 years...but going last year just wasn't possible. And even though we originally were going this year (2011), we decided to put it off for one more year (as by June of 2012, we'll have my husbands car paid off and hopefully our other 2 credit cards settled out and paid off, which means about $650 more a month to put away or use to pay off the 2012 trip).

 

[patsal]

I do not carry debt for any vacations. We budget 10% of our earnings for vacations. When we were younger and poorer that meant small daytrips and one big vacation every five years, now we are older and earn more money so that means more, longer vacations each year. It is a good amount of money and it all doesn't need to be spent on any one vacation or all in one year. The money is there in a separate account.
Seriously, after the kids were old enough not to need daycare anymore that$10,000 alone each year would buy me great vacations! I do not miss that bill!

 

[jewjubean]

I'm a bit younger than most that post on the Budget board so my answers a bit different. I am 21 and dont have much credit at all. I do "Charge" my vacations when I decide to go but I pay the card off as soon as its gone through with disney. Its just a way that I've started building my credit without hurting it.

 

[sunshineNJ]

I have charged trips on a now interest on purchases credit card and i pay a chunk each month. By the time we go it's all paid off or 90% paid. I pay for airfare in full when I book it.

 

[sunshineNJ]

I meant no interest not now interest.

 

[#1hoosierfan]

We don't go into debt for our Disney vacations or anything else for that matter. We haven't used a credit card in years (or any lines of credit except the car.) With that said, we are still paying off some credit cards that I had after my divorce and when dh was getting his MBA.

I guess we *should* pay off those cards instead of going on vacation, but we have REALLY low rates on the cards and will have them paid off next year anyway. We also fund our 401K's and the boys' college funds.

IMO, the joy of taking my boys to Disney World (heck my joy of going to Disney World ) is worth the few extra hundred dollars that we are going to pay in credit card interest.

 

[angierae]

There is no way I would go into debt for a vacation. We are planning an April 2012 trip, so we are saving up now.

Saving up for our trip is a line item in our budget, but I did not change any other financial goals to squeeze it in - I cut out other things. I bring my lunch to work - the money I was formerly spending on lunches out goes into the Disney budget. We started couponing - that gives us $20 a month or so into the Disney budget, etc etc. Also, I get about $2k a year in bonuses (before tax - after tax it's closer to 1500) that was normally spent on Christmas/back to school costs - we are now saving up for that all year long.

But yeah, it's built into our budget by cutting back on other things.

 

[cm8]

We don't, we look for deals such as RO and book when available. We pay it off right then and there using a credit card and once the bill arrives pay cash for it. That way we can get our reward points too. How anyone else does it is non of my concern.

 

[crisi]

Unless you are completely, 100% debt free when you vacation you are arguably using credit to vacation. Otherwise, you could use the money you are spending on vacation to pay off debt. Some people who make a big deal about "I would never go into debt to vacation" have huge car loans, etc. You are not financially better off than someone whose car is paid for, and they have little to no revolving credit balances but decide to put part of their vacation on a low-interest charge card and pay it off quickly.

Well....in general, I agree with you. Money is fluid. If you use money you could be using to pay down debt to vacation, you aren't helping your debt situation. But things are not necessarily simple.

I had paid off my mortgage and last summer took out a new mortgage. I bought investment property with it. I could pay off that mortgage tomorrow, but it would mean cashing out some stock that is paying 6-7% in dividends (my mortgage is at 4% and has tax advantages). Or I could sell the home, I'm not living there (my brother in law is while he recovers from cancer and finishes grad school). Or I could pay it off by taking some money out of the kids college funds. In other words, the amount of the mortgage I hold is not a significant amount of my net worth.

Now, am I no better off than someone putting their vacation on a low interest charge card who has consumer debt? I have debt at the moment, but I'm using it for leverage.

Totally agree with you. Its all about finding balance. I just find it curious to see how many "debt-free" vacationers we see on this board. But then someone asks if they should take a planned trip when they have encountered a financial setback and it runs 50-50, for and against. And almost every person who favors going anyway will argue that you dont know what life will bring and so the op should go and enjoy. Its that kind of live for today, "gotta have it now" mentality that has so many people in a financial hole today.

There are things that are "simply a bad idea" by objective standards - and those threads are seldom 50-50 - or anything close. Those are the trainwrecks of "what!!!!" And then there are "things I wouldn't be comfortable with, but its your life." One of those is taking vacations with cash when you have consumer debt - but if you've been making progress on the debt and are comfortable with it - its a balance thing. And there are quite a few "air tickets are bought, rooms paid for in cash, now financial setback occurs" where we have a lot of sunk dollars already, and a situation far from hopeless (i.e. severance check, two incomes, seems likely unemployment won't last forever).

There are two things I'm pretty sure of - one is that other people have way different comfort levels with money - most people are way more comfortable a lot closer to the edge that I am. The other is that each person's situation regarding financial hardship is unique - and deserves to get treated as such.

 

[Pigeon]

Unless you are completely, 100% debt free when you vacation you are arguably using credit to vacation. Otherwise, you could use the money you are spending on vacation to pay off debt. Some people who make a big deal about "I would never go into debt to vacation" have huge car loans, etc. You are not financially better off than someone whose car is paid for, and they have little to no revolving credit balances but decide to put part of their vacation on a low-interest charge card and pay it off quickly.

I think there is a big difference between spending money on a reasonable (quite modest in our case) car payment and a mortgage that one can comfortably handle and spending it on a vacation.

A car is a necessity for me. I need to have a reasonably reliable car in order to stay employed. I also need a place to live, and we've made quite a bit of money on our houses, with a modest mortgage. I would pay considerably more in rent for a small apartment than I do on my mortgage for my four bedroom house.

While it would be nice to have both of these things paid off, these things are necessary assets. A vacation is a completely unnecessary expense. When it's over, I have nothing tangible to show for it. It's fun, and it's relaxing, but still entirely unnecessary.

Being in debt for a vacation is in a whole different class than being in debt for a car or a house.