How Do YOU save for your trip?

[amy_225]

As a stay at home mom who also homeschools, vacation money has always been hard to come by. However, several years back I bought a couple of English Springer Spaniel females and a male (investing tax refund money, etc.), and have now expanded to five dogs. We make about $40,000 in residual income each year from the dogs, and that's my "mad" money. Of course, a lot of times it has to go for bills, especially with DH in construction right now...
But it's how I get my budgeted $5,000/year trip to Disney! DH doesn't understand the obsession, but he tolerates it.

 

[Goofy_Dad_24]

I also used some of my 401 K money in savings to pay for the trip.

I am not judging your individual situation, because obviously I don't know it. I will say that this is a TERRIBLE idea for 99% of people out there.

 

[Drewsmommybear]

I am a teacher and I offered to do morning duty every day for the whole year. It's an extra $150.00 a paycheck. Getting up and out the door at 5:30 isn't always the easiest but I find myself chanting "Minnie, Mickey, Donald, Goofy" when the kids are too wired in the morning. On top of that, we will be getting some money from a business deal later this year. These two things (and a 40% off pin code) have made it possible for us to stay at a Deluxe resort this June for our 15th anniversary.

We've already decided no Disney next year (yeah right) so there will also be no morning duty.

 

[edk35]

DW and I use our income taxes to go. We pay a little more towards our taxes during the year. When we file our taxes, we usually get a decent refund and we don't owe Uncle Sam any money in the process. I know we could very easily put the extra money into our savings account, but we tend to spend it if we have it. This way, we don't have it readily available to us and therefore we can't spend it. We like to joke and call this our savings account.

Also; when we have extra money, we'll start buying things we'll need for our vacation. For example: We like to fly SW, so we'll take any extra money we have and buy a SW gift card. This way our flights are paid for when it comes time to book them, and we didn't spend the extra money on something else. SW's gift cards don't expire, so we know we can use them anytime. One less thing to worry about.

I love the SW gift card idea.

 

[Anal Annie]

We are fortunate to own DVC but there still plenty of costs involved with going (flights, AP's, meals). In the past we have always had a good sized tax refund & I always budgeted our trips out of that but I don't know about this year. I have been unemployed for quite awhile & DH had pay cuts so he had to change his exemptions. I am just keeping my fingers crossed we'll still get something back. When I WAS still working I also used to have 3 envelopes that I stuffed cash into & would periodically deposit into a separate bank account at a diff. bank than our usual bank - so the money was harder to get to! I used to put $25 a week into each envelope. One was for more DVC points, one was for DCL cruises & one was for vaca spending. Sadly, no more envelopes in my sock drawer now!

 

[edk35]

My husband is fortunate enough to get a really good bonus every year in March. Put that together with our tax return and we have a nice chunk of change. We usually use some for a vacation, fixing up the house and save the rest. Last year though we also paid off DH's truck and so now we don't have any car payments which is nice. That extra $500 a month we use for all sorts of things and this year we just put 4 months worth towards the Disney trip in December. We are also flying for free (long story) and getting the free dining plan so all we have to worry about is spending money and that will be taken care of. My parents gave me $150 in Disney gift cards for my birthday, my best friend gave me another $25, and we should have about $200 earned cash/points from the Disney Visa.

Your dog is sooooooooo cute!!!!

 

[hcoker1]

I'm the worst saver out there (just ask my husband, the Dutch accountant! I'm cursed both ways!!). So I decided that the only way we could go back to WDW was for me to pay for it. I take out $100 each Monday and put it right into a deposit envelope when I'm at the bank machine. I then hide it in the house so that only I knows where it is. When the deposits are due for Disney I give my hubby the envelopes and ta-dah, the trip is paid for! It did help that there was the "buy 4 get 3 deal" on for March Break.

 

[alyssa810]

When we started saving for our first onsite trip, we opened up a savings account that we call -drumroll please- the DIS fund! We each put in $10 a week for starters. We also put all our can and bottle refunds into the fund. My husband also keeps some of his savings in CDs and takes the interest he earns and adds it to the fund. Any extra cash we get, like from rebates on stuff we buy, or from doing surveys etc. goes into the fund. Over the course of the year we exclusively use the fund to pay for our annual passes, the fees for our DVC, airfare, dining, rental car, and airport parking- basically everything except souvenirs. It's worked out well for us, and we have little to no OOP expenses since we're saving in our account all year. We've also started to use cash we accumulate to purchase Disney gift cards, ensuring that the money goes toward vacation.

 

[edk35]

When we started saving for our first onsite trip, we opened up a savings account that we call -drumroll please- the DIS fund! We each put in $10 a week for starters. We also put all our can and bottle refunds into the fund. My husband also keeps some of his savings in CDs and takes the interest he earns and adds it to the fund. Any extra cash we get, like from rebates on stuff we buy, or from doing surveys etc. goes into the fund. Over the course of the year we exclusively use the fund to pay for our annual passes, the fees for our DVC, airfare, dining, rental car, and airport parking- basically everything except souvenirs. It's worked out well for us, and we have little to no OOP expenses since we're saving in our account all year. We've also started to use cash we accumulate to purchase Disney gift cards, ensuring that the money goes toward vacation.[/QUOTE

Great ideas!!!

 

[LoveMyTwoPrincesses]

In the town that I live in there is a company that does pharmaceutical research for drug companies. They basically test brand name vs generic drugs. I was able to do two studies that lasted two weekends each. This allowed me to earn an extra $2200 towards our trip.