How do you pay for your Disney trip?

[WeLoveLilo05]

What is your method? Do you charge it? Pay maybe $100 a week? Whats your method?

I feel like this time around I keep putting little amounts ($40, $60) on my debit card, thus far I have paid off $500 and I have til July to pay the remaining $2000.

I have $1800 in vacation savings account, I guess I am trying to save as much as I can before I dive into that lol.

 

[Justsyd2]

We save the cash first then use it to pay off the trip before we go. It's great going on vaca knowing that everything is paid for!

 

[Alice28]

Pay a little at a time. I usually pay for almost all of our food with my earnings from Sunshine Rewards.com. It's a cash back earnings site, like my points, but you can cash out for Disney gift cards.

 

[jagafen]

Book the trip, stash the extra cash in savings, and pay it all off in one lump sum when we have the funds!!!

 

[RachaelA]

We usually charge it right before our 45 day mark and then pay it off with our tax refund (gotta get disney dollars!). This year we are going to be a little short so we'll just use extra money in our savings account.

 

[karliebug]

income tax refund

 

[luvdisney00]

We usually pay one thing at a time in little chunks so it doesn't seem like so much. Like first I'll pay outright for the airline tix, then the deposit on the package, then pay off the package etc.. We don't usually have all of the money in hand when the trip is booked but we do pay it off before we go. If I have extra money, even a few dollars, it gets stashed away for miscellaneous and i also use reward dollars to pay for as much as I can. We use Sunshine Rewards, Disa Visa and Discover rewards. They can really add up to alot of extra cash for a trip.

 

[tlh0726]

We charge everything we can to our Disney visa and pay the card off each month. Electric, cable, garbage, propane, gas, groceries, anything and everything that will except a CC gets charged. If you have to pay these bills regardless why not get a little something back, it definitely adds up.

We also have a disney jar. Any coins or bills that are left laying more than 24hours gets grabbed up and put into the jar. (DH left a $50 laying on the nightstand, the kids and I were like ) We take the jar to the bank once a month and cash it in and deposit it directly to our vacation account.

DH and I do not exchange birthday, anniversary, or valentine's day gifts. We take the money we would have spent on each other and deposit it into our vacation account.

We also take any checks that we receive for our birthday or xmas and deposit these directly into our vacation account.

We cut back eating out also. We take the extra money and put into our account.

 

[J3nn78]

Pay a little at a time-using our tax refund as a big chunk. We save birthday money and other gift money for our trip

Will never charge a vacation

 

[Haley/Hayden Mom]

Last year I booked the trip in January (just like this year) and we paid $200 every 2 weeks when DH got paid until we payed our trip off. This year DH told me to just pay the deposit and are waiting for our income tax to come in to pay off the remainder. The joys of being married to an accountant he has the pay process down to a science.

 

[kristinw3girls]

I have $300 a month taken out of my paychecks. I deposit that amount once a month in a seperate savings account. I have never charged a penny for any of our vacations. When my Dh works overtime, I pay extra on the trip. I also save up about $1000 for spending money. I have never used it all on the trip, and any leftover spending money goes back into the fund for the next trip.

 

[Ka' eo]

I see most people posting here are paying off or saving ahead of their trip. That is AWESOME.

When our kids were younger and I wasn't working I used the Disney Visa and had 0% for 6 months to pay off the trip. We did an automatic payment each month online to pay it off. Sometimes this was done well ahead of our trip, sometimes we booked a last minute trip and paid it afterwards. I would not recommend doing this unless it can be paid off in that 6 months time.

Now since we are both working we save the money and pay OOP before we leave. I usually buy the airfare when it is lowest, then search for a hotel deal, then save for park tickets, and lastly. We have been using our Disney Visa for all our utilities, food, etc so that we have Disney Dollars for food.

This year we decided to go super cheap and our trip is only costing us $1,606 as we are staying offsite and had non-expiring plus give a day vouchers. We have close to $800 in Disney Dollars for anything we eat or for souvies. So this trip was very easy to pay for. It is a last minute trip and seemed the most logical. '

 

[hsmamato2]

we are 'pay as we go' kind of people- we pay for almost everything on a cashback cc anyway,every month- so we just add whatever we're booking to the cc and pay as we go (never carry a balance) this way,when we finally take our trip,and come back,the next month cc balance is all that's left to pay off-
we book everything independently anyway- like airfare,rooms,tix,etc.
I keep a running tally of all vacay expenses in my handy budget notebook,b/c even tho we never spend more than we can pay,I like to know exactly what out trip costs us!
And we get our cashback check from our cc for trip related stuff too.

 

[scard192]

Won't be going back until the Fall of 2013. Last week I opened a separate savings account and will deposit $10/week into it. Trip will be paid for before I go.

 

[englishteacha]

The stipend I earn for running the school drama program pays for most of our vacation, and I stash away money here and there in a bank for spending money.

 

[TinkerbellsMagic]

Disney reward dollars paid a nice chunk of it. The rest of the trip was charged to my Disney visa at 0% for 6 months. We will make sure its paid before the time is up. We will be taking cash to pay for extras.

 

[pigletto]

I calculated how much per month we would need to pay to have it paid off 45 days out from our trip. I move that amount into savings each time we are paid and once a month I take that and make a payment.

Part of me wonders if I shouldn't just hang onto it all in savings and hope for a decent exchange rate before making a payment. But so far it hasn't been too bad so I exchange once a month.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

I know some don't agree, but I have more taken out of each pay check so when tax time comes around, we get a nice refund, which this year equals $8066. I figure we will have to use, about $1500 of it for our Sept Disney trip and the other $6566 will go into savings. We have been getting Disney gift cards so that will help as well.

 

[PinkRhombus]

We don't save for a trip specifically. We save in general. We have lots of other things that we have to plan for in the future (cars, home rennovations, etc.) And we look how things are going for those when we're planning our upcoming trips. If things are going good, we take a good trip. If not, we utilize the hotel points my husband has earned in his travel and head to the beach and veg for the week.

 

[Brer Shay]

Most of the time, we're able to pay the majority of the trip with what I call "found money." We definitely save our change and use that for cash. Any time we get a rebate for a purchase, that money goes aside. If DH or I pick-up an extra few hours at work, that goes aside. If for some reason I don't have to pay as much daycare, that money goes aside. Things like that. Also, I get rewards on my Disney Visa and through Sunshine rewards. It's added up pretty well for us. I do also set aside $25 twice a month as additional vacation savings.

My youngest will start school full time in the fall. We've decided we will set aside all of the daycare money we won't be spending and plan to use it for two Disney trips in one year (one shorter one just DH and I and one longer one with the kids)