Fun ways to save for your trip?

[robndani]

Hi All! What fun ways have you saved money to help pay for your WDW trip?

Right now we are saving all of our five dollar bills and are planning on using that to pay for our dining in January (or most of it)!

Any other fun ideas?

 

[clshirk]

I wouldn't say 'fun', lol, but got a Disney visa and Spent $500 to get the free $200 Disney Gift Card. I also just went to SAMS today and bought a 3pk of Disney gift cards valued at $150 for $142 and change.

 

[DaughteroftheKing]

I like the $5 bill idea. You could do the same thing with $1 bills although of course it wouldn't net as much cash.

I'm really liking ebates for earning cash back for my online shopping. I'm getting a check this week from them. Now for me, I'm just going to put it in a savings account, but you could decide to use all of your ebates $ towards the disney vacation/souvenirs.

 

[robndani]

I'm really liking ebates for earning cash back for my online shopping. I'm getting a check this week from them. Now for me, I'm just going to put it in a savings account, but you could decide to use all of your ebates $ towards the disney vacation/souvenirs.

I love ebates! Never thought to actually USE it that way!

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

WDW is one of our budgeted trips each years. Which means that each paycheck a certain amount goes into our vacation account. We travel about 4 weeks out of the year so that is how we fund those trips (usually 3 different vacations) so nothing fun there.

However, just last year we started traveling for a long weekend over Thanksgiving and last year and this year the Thanksgiving trip will be "free". This trip doesn't come out of our regular vacation account. Last year we went to Miami for Thanksgiving night then a 3-night cruise to the Bahamas. This year we are going to San Francisco from Thurs - Mon. Saving for this trip is a little different as I don't want to take money out of our regular savings account to pay for it. Our goal is to have it cost us nothing.

What I do is put throughout the year (since we came back from the vacation last Dec 1st) is put any free money we receive into the "Thanksgiving Vacation Account". I work outside the home so I don't feel my time is worth doing swag bucks, perktv or any survey sites so nothing like that is going into the account. However, I use ebates so my Big Fat Check goes into this account. Any credit card perks go into this account. I use the Chase Freedom card for the 5% bonus categories and put that in the account and use my Venture Travel Card to purchase erase for travel expenses for that trip. If I sell something useless in our house online then that goes into this account. When I bought my contacts for the year, I got a $30 visa gift card, that money went into the thanksgiving account because I'd buy the contacts regardless of the gift card. Other rebates like that go into the account as well. I put my mileage / meal reimbursement checks from work into that account (once I subtract actual cost). That isn't a lot of money, maybe $300/yr. This trip I did an air/hotel package through Expedia which ended up being a good price. But last year we didn't do that, we used airline miles to fly to Miami for free.

When we go to San Francisco this year, our Thanksgiving account will fully fund that trip for free (airfare, hotel, all attractions and meals).

 

[Scambone]

This may sound weird but my boyfriend and I have shop kick date nights. We usually grab a cheap meal like split a sub from subway then hunt for shop kick scans around the store. It's getting us out of the house, doing a little exercise and it’s fun to find items. It beats going to the movies and sitting in a dark theater for an hour paying more to not talk to each other. We’re using our shop kick points for target gift cards that will eventually be Disney gift cards for our vacation  sometimes when we can’t get together due to work and long distance we shop kick on our own and get competitive with it

My mom and I never use our change so she has a giant water jug that she puts her change in and I have giant Mr. Potato head guy that I throw my loose change in.

 

[Marionnette]

Hi All! What fun ways have you saved money to help pay for your WDW trip?

Right now we are saving all of our five dollar bills and are planning on using that to pay for our dining in January (or most of it)!

Any other fun ideas?

Not everyone will consider this to be "fun", but I love to see how many rewards I can use toward a Disney vacation. I break it down into categories (room, tickets, transportation and food), then I try to find rewards that will pay for them.

I've gotten Target GCs through Recyclebank, Shopkicks, SwagBucks, PerkTV and MyPoints and then I convert them to Disney GCs to pay for my DVC dues and tickets. I convert my Bing Search rewards to SwagBucks so that I can get Target GCs that way.

I use SWA RR points to pay for my airfare. I earn the RR points through eRewards, e-miles, RR shopping and my SWA Visa.

If I want a free night at an airport hotel (when I'm arriving late at night and don't want to use DVC or when I have an early morning departure and don't want to waste my points), I use my HHonors points or my Choice Privileges points.

I've gotten Starbucks GCs from KelloggFamilyRewards and I've also purchased them on Groupon when there's a $5 for $10 GC deal. I recently purchased a Wolfgang Puck GC on Raise .com at a 3% discount, with another 1% back on the CC I used and 1% back on the rewards website I shopped through. I'll pay for it with money earned from ebates .com (I'm getting my next Big Fat Check early, according to an email from earlier this week).

I have the Disney Visa but don't use it much. The rewards from it will cover a meal or two but not much more. I have other CCs that are more flexible and I use them to "pay myself back" on purchases, which would include any dining or travel costs not covered by the other rewards.

I actually keep a spreadsheet that shows how close I am to covering each category for a trip. My goal is to eventually take a trip that costs me $0 OOP. I don't know if I'll ever meet it, but I'll have fun trying!

 

[robfamily]

We had a wall chart that tracked our goal. We would also forego a meal out and put the savings in the account. I enjoyed selling unwanted items on ebay. Helped declutter and got us closer to our goal.

 

[Chrelaine]

We have an old jug that I decorated with all sorts of Disney characters. Our DD is 4 and she loves putting $$ in it. Whenever we have change it goes in the jug, so does found money. We got $350 from the gov't...in the jug it goes. Birthday money and Disney gift cards go in the jug too. DD likes periodically counting it with me.

We got a SW Rapid Rewards cc and use it for all of our purchases. We used the points for our airfare.

 

[JRoyster86]

Not really fun but I always try and get an extra $5 or $10 ($20 if I'm feeling rich!) when I get asked if I want cashback at Target, the grocery store, where ever.

I'm already spending money so I don't even notice the extra cash missing. It goes straight into the Disney jar at home!

 

[sahm2two]

This is an older thread, but I thought I'd bring it back to life! We're planning on going in a year and 1/2 with next year's tax refund, this year's is going to pay off debt and then next year we finally get to do something FUN with it. But I don't want anything to "come up" that we have to use that fun money for, so I'm getting creative to save extra!

 

[lauradis]

I have been buying gift cards every week at the self check out. Save all the change and feed the machine, it has been fun for me annoying for others behind me.

 

[javeyloveschelsi]

I love ebates and am always on the hunt for deals (I was able to score a Kitchenaid Mixer Artisan series 5 qt in Ice Blue for a grand total of $38 over black friday between coupons, ebates, Kohls cash, ebates referrals, gift card, etc over black Friday). However, what I've been doing lately that I love is when I buy something at the store, I always round up to the next dollar and write that in my checkbook ledger. It doesn't seem like much and when I balance my account every week the difference is usually just a couple of dollars, but one week it was over $20, and that amount goes towards savings. I never feel that it cuts me short in my checkbook and never notice the money being gone, but those little bits add up and I'm always hoping for a large difference every week!

 

[bananasplitkids]

I've been doing Amazon mturk. So far I like it! I just started about 2 weeks ago and already have $90. I used to do viggle, but haven't done that in awhile. I'm going to try perktv and swagbacks to add on to my savings.

 

[sahm2two]

I've been doing Amazon mturk. So far I like it! I just started about 2 weeks ago and already have $90. I used to do viggle, but haven't done that in awhile. I'm going to try perktv and swagbacks to add on to my savings.

I just signed up for the amazon thing... that's new to me. Do the things you do have high dollar values? Do they take a long time? Trying to get the most from my time... of course a lot of the time I'm just sitting here watching tv (at night when the kids are sleeping), so I've been "watching" videos to earn swagbucks or playing the games on swagbucks, but this sounds like more straightfoward $$

 

[bananasplitkids]

I just signed up for the amazon thing... that's new to me. Do the things you do have high dollar values? Do they take a long time? Trying to get the most from my time... of course a lot of the time I'm just sitting here watching tv (at night when the kids are sleeping), so I've been "watching" videos to earn swagbucks or playing the games on swagbucks, but this sounds like more straightfoward $$

I just started and still getting the hang of things. I started out transcribing receipts (user 411richmond is a good one rarely rejects and approves quickly), but in the last week I have been doing more surveys. I've done some reading on reddit and the one thing they mention is for the first month to concentrate on getting you number of approvals up. The better paying surveys start opening up at 500, 1000, and 5000 approvals. The surveys I've done have ranged from 1-15 minutes. Many of the surveys have taken about a minute and have ranged from .20 - .75. I have also done some that were $1.00 and then received up to a $4 bonus. I usually only do surveys found on the HITsWorthTurkingFor community on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/HITsWorthTurkingFor/new/. The surveys posted here are the best based on the time it takes to complete them vs. how much money received. They also take into account the requester's history of accepting or rejecting jobs. However they do go fast. Here are some good threads to read for starting out http://www.mturkgrind.com/threads/your-first-1000-hits.27342/
Also this one http://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/1tjge3/over_1100_and_5000_approvals_in_my_first_month_of/

 

[KTrain15]

We do 2 liters soda bottles to put change it. I hot glued the caps on and made slits in the bottle to put the change in. I got the idea from Pinterest.

 

[sahm2two]

I just started and still getting the hang of things. I started out transcribing receipts (user 411richmond is a good one rarely rejects and approves quickly), but in the last week I have been doing more surveys. I've done some reading on reddit and the one thing they mention is for the first month to concentrate on getting you number of approvals up. The better paying surveys start opening up at 500, 1000, and 5000 approvals. The surveys I've done have ranged from 1-15 minutes. Many of the surveys have taken about a minute and have ranged from .20 - .75. I have also done some that were $1.00 and then received up to a $4 bonus. I usually only do surveys found on the HITsWorthTurkingFor community on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/HITsWorthTurkingFor/new/. The surveys posted here are the best based on the time it takes to complete them vs. how much money received. They also take into account the requester's history of accepting or rejecting jobs. However they do go fast. Here are some good threads to read for starting out http://www.mturkgrind.com/threads/your-first-1000-hits.27342/
Also this one http://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/1tjge3/over_1100_and_5000_approvals_in_my_first_month_of/

Very helpful, thank you!

 

[Divah]

My daughter found an app she has been using ( not sure if can post name for fear of advertising) but anyway you gain pts for scanning items or purchasing things and with pts earned you can get gift cards....one of the cards is for target we get those and buy the Disney cards with them from the store and can use the cards in parks and cruises....between that app and our rewards bucks we had a total of 635 dollars in cards and cash back. Paid for all our souvenirs and then some...


*edit for rewards cash back I own my own business so I use my disney rewards c.c. for all my work and business uses....I rack up the rewards for disney. My accountant does not agree with my tactics it is hard to justify business expenses on a Tinker Bell card he tells me lol but I save on trips.

 

[sahm2two]

My daughter found an app she has been using ( not sure if can post name for fear of advertising) but anyway you gain pts for scanning items or purchasing things and with pts earned you can get gift cards....one of the cards is for target we get those and buy the Disney cards with them from the store and can use the cards in parks and cruises....between that app and our rewards bucks we had a total of 635 dollars in cards and cash back. Paid for all our souvenirs and then some...


*edit for rewards cash back I own my own business so I use my disney rewards c.c. for all my work and business uses....I rack up the rewards for disney. My accountant does not agree with my tactics it is hard to justify business expenses on a Tinker Bell card he tells me lol but I save on trips.

I'm pretty sure you can say the name of the app... people talk about swagbucks all the time I'd be interested to know. I'm all about getting our souvenirs for free!