How Do you pay for your vacations?

[HoneyPooh]

We pay for it all beforehand and charge absolutely nothing. It's usually an accumulation of overtime, tax refund, rebates, yardsale income, money we received as gifts, DH mowes a couple of lawns and I clean a couple of houses a month. This year we got a cheaper car insurance policy and put the difference we hadn't planned on towards vacations.

 

[MayMom]

Quite a few ways actually:

We buy our tickets with our Christmas Club money, which we increased to cover this purchase.

DMIL gives us $1000.00 for Christmas. All christmas/birthday money from parents, grandparents, etc. also goes into the fund.

My husband earns a stipend for coaching (3000.00) and 1/2 of that goes to Disney

We usually have a BIG rummage sale and I usually make $800.00 at least, but I've had some great luck with eBay and may give that a lot more effort!

Tax Return after we take out property tax. (around $1500.00)

I also collect change and make sure my little boy cashes is out with me or DH and puts it in his wallet. He uses it for his souveniers and it really makes him contemplate what he really wants badly. I think this teaches him a few lessons about how we pay for our things!

Above all we do not charge anything. It is the only way my husband will do a trip!

 

[floridagirrl2]

Obviously, I am missing something. How does college financial aid turn into a trip to Disney? Don't you have to account for it with a Financial Aid office???

Nope. Once you qualify for financial aid and recieve the checks, there is no accounting for the money (unless, of course, you drop out of school!) When I was in nursing school over 20 years ago, I made more $$ working part time and having financial aid (grants and loans) while I attended school fulltime than I'd made the year before I returned to college, when I was working full time in a low-paying clerical job. Being the frugal person that I was, I used the extra $$ to visit a friend who had moved to New Hampshire.

 

[tinkerbell of winter]

I work a second job for play money/vacation money/extra things that I would like.

It is my feeling that if you cannot pay cash for a vacation, you should not be going, you should never "charge" a vacation.

If you are using a financial aid refund go to on vacation, obviously something is askew with your entitlements, if you have that much extra money floating around you shouldn't be getting financial aid. When I was in college I was lucky to be able to make ends meet most of the time, that was with full financial aid as a single parent, also recieving gibill and working a part time job. Obviously you are taking out student loans in excess and using that money. You will have to pay it back later.

 

[floridagirrl2]

Luckily, we live 2 hours and 15 minutes from WDW, so our trips aren't terribly pricey. This is how we pay for our (approximately) 6 weekend trips to Disney per year:

Annual passes--we give these to each other for Christmas

Change jar--we throw bills into it as well as change!

Money earned on Ebay and Amazon (I have a schedule C legitimate small business--my --small--profits are spent on Disney trips).

Extra money over and above what we pay for bills, living expenses, and savings (DH is self-employed and periodically will have an extra-special week--this extra money sometimes goes toward WDW).

 

[mannasn]

Our first trip will be next May (graduation, woohoo)! Here's how we're planning on financing it since we don't do credit AT ALL...

Scrimping, saving, tax return (hope it comes in time), ebay, yard sale, amazon.com (wish I could sell these darn nursing textbooks LOL), Christmas money, and leftover financial aid (which really isn't leftover - it's there in case my husband decides not to pay the bills/loses his job, which wouldn't be that uncommon for him. It's like my insurance policy - plus I'm not borrowing too much, it'll mostly scholarship money).

 

[LoriMistress]

When planning a vacation, we use some of our paycheck. Sometimes it's money we recieive (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) and sometimes we use the money from our tax return. It just depends on how long we want to be on our trip.

 

[It's A Happy Day]

We ususally don't take big vacations... usually long weekend at the beach and usually off season as we're not big on crowds at the beach. If we go to the beach in season we will just make a day trip out of it. So because of this we usually work it into the regular budget. However trips like WDW or another major trip we usually will use some of our Tax refund to pay for essentials...travel, hotel, and food. I will make up the rest of the spending money with can returns, ebay sales, rebates, change jar (just rolled $70 in quarters last night!), and another one I use is I pay OOP for my prescriptions and send in a reimbursement form to my prescription plan. This check gets put into out fund as well. We also have the disney visa so will be using rewards too.

 

[snowy76]

This year we paid for our vacation with our income tax refund(we don't usually get one), my coupon savings, pinecone surveys, and rebates. Extra spending money comes from the change jar and a yard sale.
Next year DH claims we are going to Las Vegas on vacation. Don't know about that. My heart belongs to Disney.

Go to Vegas and then to DL, since you'll already be out west!
(Yeah I know it's a totally different state but when you've already come so far...)

 

[snowy76]

Sorry to be a little bit sarcastic but there had a lot people pass away for your WDW-trips.

Sorry could not resist.

Greets Renate

Actually, I sort of chuckled about this because this was how we paid for OUR trip last year! My great-uncle died and left money for all his nieces and nephews, including my dad, who couldn't stand the man and wanted nothing to do with his money. Anyway, dad passed it right on to us, so we put a downpayment on our house and one month later went to WDW!

So now I say: God bless Uncle Steve!

Right after that trip we started a change jar and earned Disney Visa rewards to pay for our trip this year!

 

[crisi]

stock market.

 

[vfb2girls]

I pay my whole vacation off with my inheritance check that comes every March. Both my parents loved Disney and as a family we have some wonderful memories of our trips to the world so it seems fitting for my husband and myself to go to disney and remember the happier times when both my parents were alive. Also whoever suggested they were planning a trip to Vegas, the planning just isn't the same like planning on a trip to disney. We chose to go to vegas for my birthday and I just can't get excited about this trip, if it wasn't for the airline tickets being paid for already I would cancel the whole thing...

 

[disneysteve]

I pay my whole vacation off with my inheritance check that comes every March. Both my parents loved Disney and as a family we have some wonderful memories of our trips to the world so it seems fitting for my husband and myself to go to disney and remember the happier times when both my parents were alive.

What a great idea. I'm sure they would approve and be glad you are using the money to make more happy family memories.

 

[chipmunkfan]

My company has a reward program: It's a Visa credit card that can be used at specified retailers and also WDW! A colleague can give a "star" to other colleagues worth $100 as part of "going above and beyond your job duties." So far this year I have received 7 stars...$700 and used all of it towards my December trip!

I'm so happy my company's initiative is colleague recognition!

 

[dawnsb]

I love to plan vacations; my DH recently said if I didn't already have a job as a software engineer I'd make a great travel agent!

I take money from my check each week and put it into savings. By the time we go on vacation there is always enough in the account to cover the credit card bill that everything will be charged to.

I continually put money in, so I'm continually planning trips. This year we're going to Disney - next year we're going to Alaska on a cruise - the year after that we're going to the Yellowstone National Park area. Hawaii is coming up sometime after that...

Dawn

 

[etwinchester]

Combination of ways:

* Saving all loose change
* Selling Mary Kay
* Putting money aside from DH paychecks
* ING Referrals
* eBay

* to be added to the list for next year: selling houses.
Right now I work as a secretary PT at a Real Estate office to save for my schooling. I'm not use to working (was a FT SAHM), so it's not needed income. Next year when I sell a house, I'm going to set all the money aside for our next trip.

We are planning to stay onsite for the first time on our next vacation. It will be the first trip for just the 3 of us. Last trip we went with 10 other family members and rented offsite. It's just so far away, 2008, and I'm going to save to HAVE A TON OF FUN IN THE SUN !!!

 

[floridagirrl2]

I work a second job for play money/vacation money/extra things that I would like.

It is my feeling that if you cannot pay cash for a vacation, you should not be going, you should never "charge" a vacation.

If you are using a financial aid refund go to on vacation, obviously something is askew with your entitlements, if you have that much extra money floating around you shouldn't be getting financial aid. When I was in college I was lucky to be able to make ends meet most of the time, that was with full financial aid as a single parent, also recieving gibill and working a part time job. Obviously you are taking out student loans in excess and using that money. You will have to pay it back later.

Nope! Didn't take out student loans "in excess." Worked 20 hours a week and had (completely legal and above-board) grants and loans. I was very frugal, no kids, didn't own a house, owned practically nothing except a 20-year old car, some clothes, and a few pieces of hand-me-down furniture. I lived a very, very frugal lifestyle (hard to do when you're a single parent or if you own a home) and could pinch a penny until it screamed!

 

[cdrn1]

I have $$$ taken out of each paycheck to use specifically for vacations. I don't even miss it yet I know it's there when it's time for a trip. It goes right in to the credit union. I also use the Disney Rewards card whenever I can, and toss change in a jar for extra.

 

[skiingwife]

I'm saving $400 a month from my paychecks - direct deposit into a vacation savings account. I've sold $500 of stuff on ebay and rolled $320 in change. I need to sell a few more things to get to my budget amount of $6000. It's a lot, but I'm glad to pay cash rather than go into debt.

 

[RedRuby]

I love to plan vacations; my DH recently said if I didn't already have a job as a software engineer I'd make a great travel agent!

I take money from my check each week and put it into savings. By the time we go on vacation there is always enough in the account to cover the credit card bill that everything will be charged to.

I continually put money in, so I'm continually planning trips. This year we're going to Disney - next year we're going to Alaska on a cruise - the year after that we're going to the Yellowstone National Park area. Hawaii is coming up sometime after that...

Dawn

Heh heh: Substitute "paycheque every two weeks" and I could have written the above, right down the the Alaska cruise next year, and Yellowstone and Hawaii (although I'm not sure when we'll fit in the latter two before our 10th anniversary trip to Norway in 2009, and our 2010 visit to Vancouver for the winter Olympics ).

To tie into another thread, we do make accelerated and annual lump sum payments against our mortgage, but also balance this out with retirement savings contributions and money for travel. I think we'd probably be able to knock a number of years off our mortgage if we didn't travel *anywhere*, but we also live rather frugally on one-and-a-half incomes -- and well, our kids are only young once I don't know when we'll make another WDW trip but I think I'll just sock away a little extra cash here and there, since some good friends recently bought a timeshare in Central Fla -- and they love amusement parks (including Disney).