How do you save for your Disney trip?

[Surfinpiratee]

I love all the ideas! I think I'm going to try to do the "52 week money challenge" plus putting other money away as well. Also, I'm curious what the point is of buying the giftcards is...? And how are you getting discounted ones..?

 

[AquaDame]

Personally since we are a couple of dinks we have discretionary income. Depending on what we have planned we either put it to credit cards/student loans etc or take a portion of that and buy giftcards at Target every month. Those GCs are 5% off if you use their red card and we use them to pay for our cruises/Disney trips. We keep buying them until we have enough to cover our vacation changing the ratio to keep it in line with whatever we need for the vacation. We are very, very lucky to be able to do it this way!

 

[angierae]

Never on credit cards! For our last big trip I set aside a specific amount per paycheck that went directly into my ING account, plus I used my two "extra" paychecks a year towards it, plus part of my year-end bonus.

This trip is five days (three at Disney, two near the Orlando Convention Center) was a bit different because DD18 paid for part of her share. Her $450 went towards our plane tickets and the hotel. I received some unused sick time paid out, that paid our deposit at Disney. My summer bonus paid off our disney reservation and paid for our Halloween party tickets.

All that's left now is the hotel near the convention center (the event is working out a hotel contract with a good discount, so we are waiting to get details on that) and the two $50 tickets to the event we're attending. I'll pay that out of my normal everyday "spending money" over the next month or two. Since this was a last minute trip I'm just cutting back on frivolous things until then.

We don't have a dedicated vacation fund because we don't always take a trip that needs one. I want to do the Princess half-marathon in 2016 but I also want to take a full week in 2015, so at some point soon I'll start figuring out how much I need to start saving per week.

 

[purplepixiedust]

We never use a credit card to pay for a trip and then worry about paying it later. We don't use our credit card that way at all.

We decide when we want to take a Disney trip, budget how much we are willing to spend and then figure out how much to put aside each week direct deposit from our checks to save up for our trip. We don't go until we have the amount needed saved.

I also sell things we no longer want/need at a local consignment store and put that money in our Disney account. Same goes for any rebates, etc we get that are unexpected small windfalls. We too save our change and deposit it into the Disney account as well. Small things here and there do add up.

 

[mandyloowho]

We're doing Disney giftcards through the Target Red Debit Card until we have enough to go. Hoping for free dining plan next October!!!

 

[chrystalc77]

I love all the ideas! I think I'm going to try to do the "52 week money challenge" plus putting other money away as well. Also, I'm curious what the point is of buying the giftcards is...? And how are you getting discounted ones..?

We use Disney gift cards for "extras". Some people use them for payments on their trips. I like buying gift cards because it's an easy way to save specifically for Disney. If saving cash sometimes it's easy to dip into that. Disney gift cards are the way to go for us!!!

 

[mandyloowho]

I love all the ideas! I think I'm going to try to do the "52 week money challenge" plus putting other money away as well. Also, I'm curious what the point is of buying the giftcards is...? And how are you getting discounted ones..?

5% off with a Target Red Card. I use a Target Debit Card.

 

[NokOnHarts]

We have never (and never will) put a vacation on a CC and pay it off later. We use CCs for the rewards we get, but if you don't pay them off at the end of the month, there isn't much reward in paying the interest later. We do like other PP in that we push our trips far enough out that we have time to save. We also make a very detailed budget of the costs involved so we know exactly what we can cut / get a deal on and how much is needed to save. We are planning for Oct. 2014 right now. For disney savings, I do surveys from several places and have been averaging around $100 a month in Disney GCs from those. I am a SAHM so that is one great way I can contribute. My DH gets occasional bonuses and side jobs and all that goes to the vacation fund. Extra money from birthdays, or selling items, etc. usually goes into the fund. Saving for Disney has kind of become a game for me. I want to see how much we can save that does not come from our monthly income. I've been pleasantly surprised how successful this has been so far! It's amazing the "extra cash" you can make when it means Disney is involved.

 

[winterwhite]

We don't need to "save up" we have regular savings we can pull from or since it's just DBF and I we can just cash flow it. I booked our september trip for 6 nights and it was I think $1200 all in for the 2 of us and I just paid it. No saving up required I just paid it from my paycheck.

 

[sbkzb]

We have a Disney Fund and all extra change each day goes into a bucket. It doesn't really help with the whole cost of the trip, but it usually adds up to paying for meals. We also use the Disney Visa card and all my rewards points are used at Disney. Sometimes I buy the tickets with them. A few years ago I decided to buy 10 day non expiring tickets with the water parks included (from Undercover Tourist). They are expensive, but they are great. Since we don't always have time to go to the water parks, we have a visit per year for 10 years! It's nice to pay for the 10 day no expiration and then have no ticket expense the next time you go.

 

[d1gitman]

For our Disney & all other vacations & excursions, we use 4 weeks pay per year. We do this by using the paychecks that fall on the 5th pay period from the months that have 5 pay periods. This makes it so that we run the balance of our "life" budget on 48 weeks of pay, thus making all 12 months equal in a fiscal sense.