Just started our Disney fund! Looking for ideas...

[LMN]

We just started our Disney fund yesterday! The kids are beyond excited. Our last time to be at WDW was Dec 2010- the trip we're saving for will be in June 2012. I'm planning on contributing funds each week based on how much I save at the grocery store and also any "found" money (refunds, rebates, etc). I'm looking for additional ideas on how we can continue to fund our Disney trip....those of you who save money for your trips....what kinds of things do you do to save money?? Our belts are already tightened quite a bit...really not a lot of money being spent on entertainment or dining out that we could forego. Also...the kids are pretty excited to help contribute...what kinds of things do your kids do to help save for your trips?? Looking forward to hearing your tips and tricks! Thank you!

 

[cjnix29]

For my Disney savings, I do Sunshine rewards. You can do daily surveys to earn money, and can cash out for disney gift cards. There is actually a forum on rewards sites on the DIS, that can help too. For our upcoming trip, I have almost $300 in my sunshine account. Been saving this since August, when we booked our trip for January. We have also sold a few things on craigslist to go into the fund. Too bad you weren't going at a time you can book tickets with the YES program, as it is a great deal, but they don't offer the classes in June. Good luck with your saving! I'm sure you will get a lot of great ideas here.

 

[hineshm]

We have been saving for our February 2012 trip. We have been saving cans (mainly because my dd11 can participate). We also scrapped metal and made $200 for old lawnmowers, old gas grill, etc. I also have been doing food demo's in the grocery stores on the weekends for our Mickey money.

 

[tara98]

We just had a yard sale yesterday! Made a little over $300 for our Nov 2012 Disney trip! As a bonus, I was able to clean out my basement, and my son's closet.

 

[goofyredraider]

**Sell any unused, unplayed with toys and items on craigslist. (I've made over $400 in the past few months that way!)

**Take outgrown kids clothes to the resale shop. Whatever they don't accept, put in your garage sale stash.

**Have a garage sale. We made over $350 at our last one before our July trip! I plan to do one in March. I've already started cleaning things out and putting items I want to purge in the garage. My husband thinks I should just donate it all, but I know how much $$ could be made by selling it.

**Save all your spare change. I just started saving it in mid-July, and between my husband and myself, we have already saved over $200 that way! I imagine by our trip at the end of May, I will have almost $500 at this rate!

**Any "extra" cash (from rebates, bonuses at work, cash back offers) goes directly into the Disney fund.

**Something I've done before when saving is go to a cash envelope system. Some variations I have done before:
****Budget for the groceries, incidentals, etc. Whatever is leftover
at the end of the week goes in savings.
****Any $1 bills from cash gets put immediately in savings. I
did this for a few months and saved almost $500.

 

[Marionnette]

We just started our Disney fund yesterday! The kids are beyond excited. Our last time to be at WDW was Dec 2010- the trip we're saving for will be in June 2012. I'm planning on contributing funds each week based on how much I save at the grocery store and also any "found" money (refunds, rebates, etc). I'm looking for additional ideas on how we can continue to fund our Disney trip....those of you who save money for your trips....what kinds of things do you do to save money?? Our belts are already tightened quite a bit...really not a lot of money being spent on entertainment or dining out that we could forego. Also...the kids are pretty excited to help contribute...what kinds of things do your kids do to help save for your trips?? Looking forward to hearing your tips and tricks! Thank you!

If you really want to involve the kids, have them sell bottled water and prepackaged snacks at your garage sale.

If the kids are old enough, have them rake leaves, shovel sidewalks and plant flowers for neighbors.

Let them clip and organize your coupons. Have them do some of the sales match up for you or hand them the sale flier and a red marker to the stuff you need.

Do a "savings" chart that measures the cost of tickets, airfare, hotel, food, etc. Let the kids mark each column off to show how close they are to paying the trip off.

Give them Disney gift cards for birthdays and holidays. Let the kids use those for their souvenirs.

There are rewards programs that you can do surveys, online shopping and click thru emails in order to earn points that can be redeemed for cash, Disney gift cards or something that can be used for your vacation somehow. Don't overload yourself with tons of them or you will get burnt out. Pick two or three and then focus on them. Ebates is good because you get cash back but it is only for shopping. Mypoints sends tons of click thru emails and surveys but they don't offer any gift cards that are directly related to Disney. Some people love Sunshine but I think that it is a slow earner unless you are willing to spend a lot of time on qualifying for surveys.

Good luck whatever you choose to do!

 

[LMN]

Great ideas, guys! I especially need to check out the online and click thru opportunities- I've never done that kind of stuff before. Keep the ideas coming! Thanks!

 

[daisyduck123]

Yard sale!

I have one every spring & average about $800.....always goes straight into my Disney fund!!

 

[drgreene1096]

This is a very simple idea and one I have been doing for several years. My net savings per year is on average about $900.

On dollar bills, there is a single letter in a circle. Some letters are more common than others. For instance, letter G is very common.

We save 4 different letters. Our names are Danielle, Jimmy, Jessica (2 last names of Brenner & Greene). Therefore, we save D's, J's, B's, and G's. I use bank bands to band together groups of $25 and once a year, right before vacation, we go to the bank and cash them in. My record was $1012. My lowest was $847. I've been doing it for about 4 years. It requires a mindset to 1. use cash for purchases, 2. make your letters absolutely unspendable! (in our home it is against the "law" to spend those letters and if you get caught, you must give double dollars from your pocket to make up for the illegal spending. and 3. You cannot dip into it to order pizza, or go to the movies, or whatever. (this is hard for me because I sometimes want to grap a buck or 2 to get a pop if I don't have any cash...but I have ingrained my mind not to.

We also save change...we never use change to pay a bill unless it is $x.and pennies, if it is over $.25 we use a dollar and save the coinage!

 

[DCPrincess]

For my Disney savings, I do Sunshine rewards. You can do daily surveys to earn money, and can cash out for disney gift cards.

Me too!

 

[Lees3rwe]

Sell your old gold jewelry if you don't wear it anymore! I sold old jewelry from when I was a teenager (charm bracelet, a few rings and pendants) and got almost $300 for it. It was stuff that I would never wear now and I don't have a daughter to pass it on to.

 

[klmrph]

If you shop online, make sure to click thru a rebate site like Ebates.

 

[delmar411]

If you have an android phone or iphone you can do apps that pay:

wereward - works on both types of phones, pays to paypal after you get $10, this is taking pictures of products in your home, places you shop at or yourself 'checking in' at places. (both DH and I do this one) If you do this one, have you or your Dh refer the other spouse so that you can earn the extra 10% off your 'referral'.

fieldagent - only for iphone (this is like a secret shopper app), pays to paypal and you can cash out at any amount (this is only DH sicne I don't have an iphone)

checkpoints - works on both types of phones. this is scanning items and you can cash out for things like Amazon GCs. Our kids like to do this one. (again both DH and I do this one)

shopkicks - works on both types of phones but I get a lot less kicks on my android than DH does on the iphone. Dh has already cashed out for a $10 BB GC but I only earned enough for a $5 one in the same time frame. The kids like to do the check ins for this app too.

We started saving the money from these apps in August and we are at $600 in Field Agent, $500 in wereward and $60 in Amazon GCs from checkpoints.

HTH!

 

[KristiKelly]

I do MyPoints.com to earn Rainforest Cafe gift cards, I have $100 for our upcoming trip.
I also have over $200 in change that I have to take to the bank. My kids think I'm crazy but I LOVE to roll loose change.

It's not much but it's something...

 

[nilseks]

Lots of great ideas here. Like a lot of people said, I do a yearly garage sale and I also sell unwanted things on CL. I'm not a fan of clutter, so things can move through this house pretty quickly. I also participate in a kids consignment sale. Whatever I sell there, I'm able to make more $ than a garage sale. I just participated in one last month and made $400, strictly on clothes.

Also, I use reward credit cards. I used to use the Chase Disney but I stopped because other cards have much better perks. Chase Ultimate Rewards is a really good program, and I like Discover as well. If you order a lot of things online, you can get 5-20% cash back with Discover. In your birthday month you can get 5% back, and every quarter they have different incentives where you can earn 5% cash back. DH's bday was September and I charge EVERYTHING (and I do mean everything) on Discover. I never carry cash around, everything goes on the card, and all our bills are on autopay to the card. Last month alone I earned $179 cash back!!!!

 

[nilseks]

Forgot to mention that by using our Chase Ultimate Rewards, we were able to earn all 4 of our Universal tix for next month for FREE.

 

[budafam]

We also use reward credit cards. It only "makes" you money if you pay them off every month though so you have to be strict about it. For our last trip, we had an extra $350 from credit cards... so far for the next trip, we have over $425 saved up. I also just opened a Southwest credit card for 3 free flights... can't beat that!

Craigslist & Ebay everything you can. Maybe pick up a little extra side job for extra cash (paper route, babysitting, etc.) I make cakes here and there... whenever someone gives me more than what my materials cost, I put it away for Disney