How do you afford 1-2 trips per year (not just DVC)

[edk35]

For us it is a bit of this and a touch of that as far as making it happen. We live in a smaller than I would like home but I am not willing to over extend ourselves to have the home I wish we had. We live modestly I guess. I am not the type of person that needs new furniture and the newest gadget. My husband is the full time worker and he goes above and beyond that hours wise and makes a great living, but I also work parttime.We feel vacations are important to our family and Disney is important.
Last year was our first DVC year so we had lots of developer points to use. I do know that after this trip in July and our stay in Nov. (at CBR not on points) we will not be going as often....more like once a year. We bought our first AP's last Aug. and used them for that 8 night stay, then we went back in Nov. for another 8, then in Jan. for less than a week, but we stayed at SOG on cash. Now we are going on our longggggggggg trip of 14 nights at OKW AND BCV. Those same AP's covered 4 trips and we have some old Magic Your Way passes to use this Nov.

We are starting to realize like someone else posted, that because we go often we don't need to spend a ton anymore on Disney things. My kids used to go hog wild with pins...now they get a couple each trip. Even they are realizing that we will always be coming back. I know that if it came down to my kids going to college and my disney fix....we would cut back. I want my kid to be able to have great vacation memories SO FAR SO GOOD MAKING THAT A REALITY.

 

[Longhairbear]

We set aside money for airfare for 2 trips to WDW, from CA. We book 11 months out at our home resort for one trip, and at 7 for the second trip at the other resorts. Then we book as early as possible our airfare, to get the cheapest price. When we have a one bedroom, we cook/make almost every meal in the kitchen, saving a lot of money. We don't buy souvenirs as much as we used to. We use ME, and don't rent a car. We save on park tickets by having an annual pass. Our loan on our DVC is paid off, and we have reached the break even point, cost wise. As a result, we are spending far less than we did back when we booked Disney hotel rooms, even when factoring in the annual dues.
The money saved from being DVC owners, goes to non DVC weekend trips over the course of the year. So we are actually vacationing more, on less money than we did years ago.

 

[eliza61]

I think there are several considerations.

This board has a WIDE variety of income levels. There are people like me who are single and make a decent income so we have more "disposable" income (or did before I got laid off last week LOL!). There are several posters who appear to be "older" and maybe they have good incomes, paid off houses etc. So when you look it's not always comparing apples and oranges.

I also traveled a lot on business and could often "hook" a Disney trip on if I was heading to the FL area.
!)

Ouch! Sorry about the layoff CarolA, hope all works out well. Your post always seem upbeat and friendly to me so I'm sure this is your personality also, I think those attributes go a long way nowadays.

Op,
I agree with the others, for my family (late 40's with 2 teens ) It's a combo of things. We've been trying hard to get away from giving the kids more "stuff" and trying to "do" things together such as travel. So we compromise alot, last November the kids wanted to do disney for Xmas, we made sure they understood that a trip meant absolutely no gifts. No ipods, no psp's, no cell phones NADA!

Next year, we might not be so lucky. Honorable son #1 starts college in '09 (if the little cretin would make up his mind ) so we'll have college tuition breathing down our necks.
We are pretty blessed also that we have 2 decent salaries but still some years financially it's easier than others. My car is 10 years old so I know sooner or later I'll have to replace it, which means a car note.

 

[garydeb]

We afford WDW a couple times of year because we don't drive new cars, don't get the newest gadgets, and have an older home. We also don't buy something just to keep up with the Jones per say. When we think about buying something expensive we say to each other is this item worth more than going to WDW this year. We have gone to WDW so much that when we go we don't have to eat at TS. We usually have a car to go to the groceystore and eat off propery. I usually have gift card from the holidays to red lobster, chilis and such.. We get AP's with our Disney visa rewards. We live a frugal lifestyle to go the WDW but that just the way we like it right now.

-Debbie

 

[edk35]

Ouch! Sorry about the layoff CarolA, hope all works out well. Your post always seem upbeat and friendly to me so I'm sure this is your personality also, I think those attributes go a long way nowadays.

Op,
I agree with the others, for my family (late 40's with 2 teens ) It's a combo of things. We've been trying hard to get away from giving the kids more "stuff" and trying to "do" things together such as travel. So we compromise alot, last November the kids wanted to do disney for Xmas, we made sure they understood that a trip meant absolutely no gifts. No ipods, no psp's, no cell phones NADA!

Next year, we might not be so lucky. Honorable son #1 starts college in '09 (if the little cretin would make up his mind ) so we'll have college tuition breathing down our necks.
We are pretty blessed also that we have 2 decent salaries but still some years financially it's easier than others. My car is 10 years old so I know sooner or later I'll have to replace it, which means a car note.

We also have a dd starting college fall of 09 so that will cut us back on multiple trips each year....as well. I tell the kids too....when we travel liike this they can't expect these elaborate b'day gifts and such anymore.

 

[patsal]

Dh and I were very poor when we were growing up. Our parents did no vacations with us. When DH and I got married right out of college we were very poor, lots of loans and very little else. We worked very hard and made a nice little home for ourselves, after saving up we bought a house and started a family, we continued to work hard and then relocated to where we wanted to live. We worked even harder, did our reserach, bought a house just before it went into foreclosure and decided to slowly remodel and redecorate it--we fondly nicknamed our home Disco House for it's metallic wallpaper, avacado rugs and shag upstairs carpeting, not to mention our wonderful harvest gold appliances and countertops, who could ever forget the dark panalled family room--I'm shuddering! We still have some of the last impressions of that --the shag carpet in two of the upstairs bedrooms. The key is living within (or below) our means, not buying every gadget that is out there and having the vacation as a priority for our family to get together and recharge. As others have said, my luck is spelled work. The first year we had a salary of $29,000 and spent $290 on vacation , each year when DH got a raise we would allocate 1% of that to vacation funding, once we got to 10% of our combined total income we stopped adding to that and left it at saving 10% of total combined income for vactions. We use that money to pay for DVC, Dues, transportation to WDW , tickets and grocery money and then if there is $$ leftover restuarants--for the past five years we've worked hard enought that I no longer need to cook when we are on vacation. We worked to save up for a cruise vaction last April, I am working extra to add a cruise vacation to July 2009's usual 2 week vacation making it nearly a 3 week vacation--DS will be a SR after that and I doubt he'll ant to go on vacation with us as he will need to worry more about himself. I learned that I could do my full time job, take on students who have home study for $28 and hour, take classes and get paid more $$ so I do all of that. Boy I am lucky--lucky that I learned hard work can get you things that you want!

 

[dianeschlicht]

For us, DVC is a guarantee we will go on vacation. We tend to optimize costs by getting an AP and using it for 3-4 trips in 365 days. Then we will take some months off (maybe even an entire year off) before we start the process over again. Vacations are a priority for us, so we just budget for them and try to get the best deals we can on airfares. If it gets close and we don't have decent airfares, we could choose to drive. While that might be time consuming, it is likely to be cheaper than paying for 3-5 airfares.

 

[pilferk]

For us, it's just a matter of priorities. We do take a trip to Disney every year, and we aren't too budget-conscious about it.

On the other hand, there are other things we don't do. For example, we don't buy new cars until we have to---we just salvaged a 15 year old car that had been driven into the ground. Between the two of us, we buy one new car every 6-8 years or so. As another example, we bought a much smaller house than the bank told us "we could afford", because we really didn't need to live in a big brick house with the two story foyer and modern everything in the suburbs. Our older, smaller, less-posh house closer in town suits us just fine.

Exactly.

We make other "sacrifices"....or, rather, we just don't spend our money on other "stuff". We don't have huge TV's all over the house, we don't drive new cars, we don't have a huge house, we don't eat out all that much, we don't go out to the movies all that much......we budget to be able to afford Disney every year.

Because, for us, that one week family vacation is more important than the stuff we decide NOT to do.

And we do "budget" on our trip: AP's to cover 2 trips, we drive rather than fly (there are 5 of us...even with gas prices what they are, it's cheaper for us to drive), we either do the DDP or the DDE (depending on what makes more sense that trip), and we don't go crazy on souvenirs and the like while down there.

 

[miste76]

We just make it happen. This means rarely eating out and watching what we spend on an everyday basis.
I am a a professional in the health care field but my husband doesn't earn an income outside of the office. I also do some contract work for extra $$$ on Sat, Sun or Monday (when available.) We're just building our practice so we have to be more careful with our finances year-round. In the end, we're going to take the trips to WDW anyways... we just figured that we could put the $ for our resort stays towards a DVC purchase to save us in the future.
So far for this year, we took a 7 day trip in June (staying w/ my parents @ their DVC), taking a 4 night trip in Sept. for one last kungaloosh (staying at the CBR - paying w/ cash for AP discount) and then taking a 6 night trip in October (staying on developer points at SSR.)
Also taking a trip in September to Cancun for 5 days - not disney related.

 

[jodifla]

For those DVCers who live in Florida, it's a pretty reasonable vacation.

-- You can get Fla resident passes even cheaper than the discounted APs. They're about $250, closer to $200 for renewal. They are good ALMOST all year...they black out the really busy times I wouldn't go anyway.

-- You can drive, so minimal transportation costs.

-- You can pack up your car full of coolers of food and use your DVC kitchen, so big food costs.

So, we'd get about 20 days of vacation a year at DVC for about $1000. Pretty good deal!

 

[bgraham34]

I can tell you how I do it. I have a Delta Skymiles credit card. I charge everything and I mean everything. I also pay my bill off every month as well. So all in all I charge 40-50k a year. I get 10k in bonus miles and about 50k in regular miles a year. This allows me to take a free flight for myself and my wife every year. That does help alot.

 

[starbox]

We took non-DVC trips really cheaply when we were a young family and I was a SAHM.

A few things that saved us $$:

1) No expiration, non-hopper, 10 day plus passes. We scheduled our park days carefully and had some water park or DQ days - and we stretched those passes out over multiple trips. We get APs now - but trust me, you can really work those 10 day non-expiry plus tickets.

2) Dining - again - when we were on a tight budget - we found that eating a big, late lunch at a TS restaurant or character breakfast and then doing a light CS (or eating offsite) for the more expensive dinner meal saved us lots of $$ - (If you do APs - with DDE eating this way saves even more). We only have one soda pop a day.

Eating a TS lunch or Breakfast will save you LOTS of $$ over the DDP.


3) "Stuff" - we're pretty much over the Disney stuff by now and just don't spend time in gift shops. The kids will usually get a Disney gift card for 20$ so they can choose some little thing. We do like to pin trade, but I made a rule long ago that we don't buy pins at Disney - we just trade. I'll pick up cheap pins via. the internet to use as "traders" when I see them - but won't pay more than 2.50 per pin.


4) Lastly - I KNOW that the economists out there will tell me that I am an idiot to save money by using Uncle Sam as a bank and giving him the interest, but it works for me.

I have extra $$ taken out for income tax - that way I always get a nice refund. The refund arrives just before vacation every year and pays for other big expenses. The add-on we did was paid for with a tax refund.

 

[vascubaguy]

We fit into the moderate income category and we usually go to Disney twice each year. Financial planning and budgeting is how we get it done.

I only purchased enough points to get a studio for 2 weeks (no weekends) during times when we travel most often. We then plan our vacations far in advance so we pay for what we need to way before the trip comes around. We don't buy the "junk" we used to buy. We'll pickup pins and gifts for other folks, but we don't have bags and bags of Disney merchandise like we used to. So, before we go, we pay for tickets (or APs) and airfare. When we get back, we only have to pay for the dining plan (or food if we didn't get the plan) and incidentals.

With the rising cost of travel I have started reconsidering how to plan our upcoming trip in November. We always fly due to the convenience; however, I checked flights today and they are around $300 per person (normally we can fly for under 200 per person). With the increase in cost (and having family go with us this trip) I'm thinking we might be driving instead (about 12 hours). I believe gas (and food stops) would cost about $350 (round trip for 2 cars) which would beat paying $2,100 for 7 airline tickets.

I should add that we do take care of bills and contribute to retirement, so we keep our eye on our future too (although we don't max out our contributions each year). I think contributing to R&R on vacations is an investment in sanity (which I'd like to still have when I reach retirement age)...

 

[ransom]

Careful living. That's how we do it.

 

[Quiksilvr]

My wife and I haven't been taking semi-annual trips to WDW but will probably do so now that we've joined DVC. Even though taking semi-annual (or more frequent) trips to WDW seems a little extravagant to me (I grew up in a household where we only took vacations when my dad happened to have a conference somewhere) it's actually pretty cost-effective compared to what a lot of my friends do. I am a lawyer at a big firm where the partners average somewhere around a million a year in "salary". They go on really extravagant vacations. A number of my fellow associates grew up in households where they took similar extravagant vacations, so they are all off to Europe, Australia, Thailand, Africa, whatever, you name it even though our incomes are nowhere near what the partners make. I, on the other hand, am more than content with my trips to WDW that don't cost me $10,000 per. For us anyway, WDW almost seems cheap compared to some of the alternatives.

 

[Greg K.]

This is why God made tax refunds.

Seriously: we use that, and whatever money I squirrel away throughout the year.

FWIW...I did a quick tally the other day and discovered the entire cost of our 14-day visit to The World in June (not counting annual dues) came to roughly $3500. For two people. At SSR. That's airfare, car, park tix, food and souvenirs.

 

[marvali]

1. We have DVC for accomodations
2. We have a SW VISA which has earned enough points that we haven't bought a plane ticket in YEARS
3. We mostly cook/eat in the room. Groceries at home or groceries in Florida - pretty much the same cost. We splurge on eating out once or twice at WDW.
4. We do rent a car, so that is an added cost, but we are not at home driving our cars, so there is some slight wear and tear savings
5. Our major cost is park tickets. We generally buy a 8 day (at least) no expire pass and spread it over at least a couple of trips. That is our major vacation cost.
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All in all, DVC has made vacations a pretty reasonably priced event.

This is pretty much the same for us. DVC is our way of "saving" for vacation over time instead of cutting corners at the "last minute" and putting enough away to go. We drive so don't have airline tickets to pay for. We also eat out relatively little while there, so even if we were home we would be paying for the groceries so that's a wash. The big thing we really have to do is also come up with the ticket expense and that isn't nearly as difficult when you don't have to also shell out bucks for a hotel room, parking, etc.

 

[limace]

I've always prioritized travel, and will continue to do so-while we are doing a great job of saving for retirement, I think, I really believe it's important to travel and have other fun experiences now, rather than waiting for some mythical day in the future (that might never arrive). Our children may not want to travel with us forever; heck, my eldest is 11-so I figure I only have a couple of years left before she won't be seen in the same state with me LOL. My mother just retired from working in hospice for years, and really taught me that you never know what your future holds-so be smart about your money, but don't wait if you don't have to! She saw too many people plan for all of their fun after retirement, and then lose a spouse, and often much of their money in the course of an illness, without ever having done the things they wanted to do.

But, more specifically, DH and I haven't been able to travel much for a few years-we had another baby, I went 1/2 time at work, and we had a house on the market. That house has sold!!!!!! and we are doing much better financially now. We've been meeting with a financial planner and have let him know that an essential for us is setting up a monthly savings amount for travel, in addition to our retirement and emergency funds planning. We are fortunate to make decent, though not extravagant, incomes, to have pensions through work so we don't have to save as much, and have relatively low expenses-a small mortgage and only one car payment, currently no CC debt.

We eat out little, and spend less on groceries than most people we know (we love food and love to cook, but buy almost no convenience/prepared food, which saves a fortune). One of the things that appeals to me most about DVC is not having to eat out for lots of meals-both to save money and to give us a break, as we all get tired of eating out a lot (esp with a toddler in tow).
We don't have cable TV. I'm inheriting a small amount of money that I hope to use to pay cash for 150 points or so for our first DVC purchase (though we plan to rent points on a visit first, as we've never toured the resorts).

We have an Alaska Airlines card as our only credit card and hope to start doing what a PP does-charge every daily expense possible, and pay off monthly. Alaska also requires only 20K miles for a domestic ticket-lower than most other airlines-and I get one $50 companion fare a year with the card.

 

[bookwormde]

My current system is this, first year doing it so I will see how it works.

Trips: 2 in 12 months then take a year or 2 years off

Transportation: If there is a good fare on SW I will fly and rent a car, otherwise I drive (1200mi). The only exception is for June trip if I can 1 way down on SW I get one of the 1-way north rental cars for next to nothing and drive back.

Accommodations: DVC weekdays (mostly 1br some studio), AP CRO on weekends or Sanibel.

Tickets: Premium AP w/ DVC with discount (2 long trips) Annual passes to Sea World

Food: Only do park meals for special things like character meals, birthdays etc when staying CRO (still get a DDE). Most vacations are summer so we take a mid day break anyway (food in the room or villa or occasionally off site).

Parks: With premium AP we can come and go as we like to any major or minor park or attraction. For miniature golf we get ½ off.

Misc: Have Disney visa so that give a few extra $ to spend on pins etc.

Flying we end up with about $3800 for 12 days if we drive it is about $3400 for a family of 4 per trip.

We also do a week at an outer banks house (costs almost as much as DWD) with family every summer and Hawaii every 4 years (brother has a time share)

We are working stiffs but I am cheap and with children vacations are the big luxury we do.

bookwormde

 

[wisbucky]

DH and I have dual incomes. Kids are out and on their own. We dont vacation anywhere else but Disney. We go 3-4 times a year. This is what we do to save money for these trips.

- All change is placed in a container to save for trips. You be amazed how much you can save in just one month.

- We have a frequent flyer miles card which we use to pay for just about everything we can. We have end up with at least two free trips for one of us each year.

- I work overtime as much as I can to save for trips also. DH takes extra jobs on the side to pay for the annual passes. He is a video/audio specialist.

- While on vacation we do eat a lot in our room.