How do you save for disney?

[julsmom]

How do you save for disney?

A change jar? Disney gift card? Pay a certain amount each month until your trip?

I have heard some great ideas and am interested in ways to make paying for disney easier.

 

[Plantlady]

My husband sells photography on Etsy. All of that money goes straight to our ING account, for vacation purposes.

We don't touch it for household expenses.

I also do sunshine rewards, the money also, goes straight to ING.
And, we have a change jar. Everyone, even the kids put money into it.

 

[ameraumi]

What we do:

*all change is saved and cashed in at about $100 to add to the savings acct
*I put $40-50 a week into the savings acct
*the "extra" paychecks goes into the savings and not touched (my budget is figured on a 4 paycheck month)
*Ebaying
*Just signed up for Pinecone Research and hope to start earning a little money from that to put back

 

[mrsltg]

My Disney savings is my child-care flex spending account. My company matches 1/3 for each 2/3 (ie - I put in $3333, they put in $1777 - for a total of $5000.) Being that this money comes right off the top of my paycheck I don't miss it. We accumulate this "free" $5000 throughout the year and then it is our Disney money. We also do our change jar which usually yields a few hundred in spending money. From there we also bank our "spending money" for the week we will be in Disney ($180/ea x 2) for more spending money. Our philosophy about vacation is to deny nothing (within reason) so if we go a little overboard we will charge it and pay it off with savings when we get home.

Have a wonderful vacation!!!

 

[Pooki]

Our family decided (kids included! DD5 is actually the one that gave me the idea) that we would rather take nice vacations instead of getting big/expensive presents throughout the year. We have been setting aside money each paycheck for about 2 years now strickly for holiday spending (birthdays, Christmas, Halloween costumes, anything like that), but this past year we toned everything down, put aside a little more each paycheck, and decided to do Disney as our big family present. We are doing the same this year, but this time our big Christmas present will be AP's Disney (we will be moving close to Tokyo this summer, so yay TDR!!)

Another thing I do to save money is to actually save saved money (lol - sounds stupid, I know). Anytime I use coupons, I put the difference aside. When my car insurance went down $20/month, I put that money aside. Same thing with raises. Any sort of "found" money I try to hide from myself right away, otherwise I will just end up spending it on nothing. I dont save this money for Disney, but use it to pay off one more credit card, but this could work for any type of saving. I actually find this kind of fun, but I suppose I'm weird like that

 

[trivial]

These are budget and saving tips I have on our big family vacation blog (credit some of these to MouseSavers.com). Our vacation isn't happening until 2012, so the big savings rule is to save $1/day/person until then, and that will cover the cost of the trip. You'll see "loonies" and "toonies" mentioned; these are the Canadian coins for $1 and $2 .

• Open a savings account at your bank exclusively for vacation savings. This is a very important step! At the end of each month, deposit all vacation savings into the savings account. This way you'll not only be less tempted to spend the money, but that money will earn interest while in the account. Doing this will require very little time and effort, but the interest adds up.
• (On a related note, if you have credit card debt, it is more financially efficient to put these savings towards paying off that debt than putting it into a savings account. Once credit card debt is paid down, switch over to the savings account.)
  
• Find a container that you can use as your vacation jar.
• For families, one idea is to have dedicated piggy banks for each of the kids. Just before bed, for example, give each of the children a loonie to put in their vacation piggy bank. If you can afford to, add an additional loonie to the "family" vacation jar.
• At the end of each week, empty out all of the change in your wallet/purse/pocket into the vacation jar (picking out the toonies first is fine ).
• (To take the last tip a bit further, never spend your quarters (or loonies even); save them for the vacation jar at the end of the week.)
• If you buy coffee on a regular basis, resolve to make the coffee at home and put it in a travel mug, then deposit the savings into your vacation jar. By skipping one large coffee each day, you'll be saving over $500 per year.
• If you eat out a lot, calculate how much money you would save by cutting back by even once a week. By skipping just one fast-food meal a week, you can save $200-$300 per year.
• Have a garage sale (or a virtual sale on eBay.ca or Kijiji.ca), and deposit the earnings into the vacation savings account.
• If your bank will accept unrolled coins without charging extra, great! Otherwise, either roll them manually or consider using a CoinStar machine (we have one in our local Superstore). If using a CoinStar machine, only put in pennies, nickels, and dimes. The machines take a hefty chunk of 9% out of whatever you put in, so pick out the quarters and loonies (and toonies) first, and roll them separately.
• If you have no pressing financial needs (ha!), deposit your tax return into your vacation account. Or even half of it.
• If you have a credit card that earns cash back, deposit your cash-back cheques into your vacation savings account.
• Shop around for home and car insurance at least once a year.
  
• And finally, resolve to not spend your vacation savings on anything else.

 

[kasandria]

I've already had one yard sale and plan on doing another. I do surveys, reward programs, the change jar, cutting out eating out a few months before trip time and just saving extra $$.
Kas

 

[azgal81]

I save a certain amount each month for all my vacations put it in the vacation savings account gaining over 5% interest. I do reward programs and online surveys like crazy though for disney gift cards, disney dollars and cash. It is amazing how much of the trip that covers. I have been saving my gift cards, disney dollars for this current trip sine February and I already have 30% of the cost covered. Hopefully by December I will have the whole trip paid for with my gift cards from reward sites! I'll use my vacation savings to pay the rest of the balance if I don't.

 

[EllyLovesDisney]

Well we pay for the actual trip itself out of our savings. But for all extras (souveniers, meals outside the ddp etc) I save all change - usually about $400 and I pick up Disney Dollars everytime I go to the mall. I go to the mall at least once a week and I get 10-30 at a time. I started for this years trip in January and I already have $300! For anything outside of this money once we are there we will use our debit card.

 

[EllyLovesDisney]

I just wanted to add that buying the disney $ is a great way to get your Disney fix for the day when your an addict like me

Also when there is a gift giving event close to vacation dh and I don't exchange gifts, vacation is gift enough! This year Mothers Day is 3 days before our trip and I will not be getting a big gift

 

[sylvenmaid]

These are all great tips. I just cashed in my coin jar for a fundrasier at ds's school for Relay for Life. I had well over $20 already in less than 2 months. If I could just keep hubby out of there for quarters.

I budget my expenses on a 4 week month as well and we just stick the extra paycheks into our vacation fund. I already put 1 check in there and half the trip is paid for with just the extra checks.

I ebay for all our extra spending money so I have a small fortune to sell for my dad and hoping to get $3K and that will actually be our vacation fund money including spending money. Since we are going after Christmas, then I'm going to ask the relatives to give us GC's we can use while there since it's the same amount regardless. We usually get about $300 each xmas so that will just be extra money to spend or a couple of nice meals out.

I put all my extra money like survey checks and freebies in my gift envelope/gift closet to dole out all year. I pay cash for almost everything now. I stick my budgeted money in each envie like food, gas/electricity, water, and so on. At the end of the year whatever money is left in each envie will be ours to use on the trip. That way it builds up and I probably won't have a lot like $50-100 but it's still extra money.

 

[Hedy]

Overtime, get paid to sites (SR and cashduck), change.

 

[mommiepoppins]

lest see I take my student refund and thats about 800 for WDW
save change.
buy gold $ and save them.
pre pay as much as I can from my own personal spending moneymoney ( I cut WAY back on going out to east and Mickey Dee)
use all my freebees for my trips( I havent bought a rasior or deoderent(sp) in over 1 year)

 

[eliza61]

We're pretty easy, we figure out where we want to stay then we usually book a year in advance and then we divide it by 10. That gives us 10 months to pay off the trip.

 

[SCQ86]

Great ideas.

 

[lisaross]

be in 2009! We just did our 1st family trip this past August and Loved it!

I definitly want to do the dining plan and stay for 10 nights - last time we stayed 8 nights! I figure the biggest expense is really the airfare, so i rather wait an extra year and do it up the right way!

HOw am i saving? well the change jar definitly - we put change and any extra bills in so i'm thinking by the time we go we'll have over 1000.00

I think the next 2 years when i get my tax refund i will put 1000 away each year for our trip - so now we have about 3000!

Um i put away $ montly into a vacation fund - which i will use for long weekends for this year and next but come 2009 i will put $ away just for that -

I'm thinking we'll need about 5000 - probably won't be that much, but i'd rather think on the high end - and that includes taxi cabs to the airport the kennel for the dog etc!

also starting a year b4 the trip any extra pay or overtime will go to the trip -- any extra money made - like from yard sales.......

lisa

 

[eyeheartgoofy]

I have an envelope marked "Destination Disney" that holds our vacation funds. After I figure out the trip budget, I place the necessary amount of cash into the envelope each pay period.

 

[jkp_9192002]

what are the online surveys?? and how did you get involved with it?

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

We save change and $1 bills. We also give each other Disney $ on Valentine's Day, birthdays, etc. Last year we rolled our coins and found we had over $500! We also had around $250 in Disney $ saved.