money saving tips anyone?

Geebs

Mouseketeer
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Messages
190
Does anyone have a new ideas on how to save money for upcoming trips. I am already an avid change collector. I would just like some ideas from other people. We stay at DVC/OKW(thanks to my parents) and have cheap flights. We try to cut down on food costs, but my husband is a huge guy (almost 7 feet tall) and sometimes that is a little harder to do.
any money saving tips? thanks
 
this is a new idea for me and not something i have tried yet. but an idea none the less.....i was at the dollar store a few weeks ago and saw these huge pink pig banks that you have to cut open to get the money out. anyway i started thinking. i always have ones laying around that end up getting spent on only God knows what. what i was thinking about doing was going back and buying one of those pigs. then putting my spare ones in it. wont cut it open until my trip and then i will have some extra money not really planned for!
 
this is a new idea for me and not something i have tried yet. but an idea none the less.....i was at the dollar store a few weeks ago and saw these huge pink pig banks that you have to cut open to get the money out. anyway i started thinking. i always have ones laying around that end up getting spent on only God knows what. what i was thinking about doing was going back and buying one of those pigs. then putting my spare ones in it. wont cut it open until my trip and then i will have some extra money not really planned for!
 
1). If you're not doing rewards programs yet, give them a try. You can get details from the rewards forum on these boards. Programs offer anything from Disney Dollars to restaurant GC's as well as cash via checks or Paypal. I've been doing them for better than two years now and, while they are not as profitable as they once were, you can still shave a few dollars from your budget by doing them.

2). If you've got good credit and do not carry a balance on your cards from month to month, consider some sort of cashback credit card. Use it for every purchase you make (gasoline, food, Dr's. office, etc.) and pay any large recurrent bills with it (like your telephone bill, gas and electric). The advantages are two-fold, you only have to write one check every month and you get a percentage of what you spend back in cash. Any cash you get back should be earmarked for Disney.

3). Have a garage sale. Get all that old stuff that is cluttering up your basement and attic out and dust it off. Sell it cheap. You'd be amazed at what you can make! And you free up storage space for more Disney stuff.

4). Eat in and buy Disney Dollars. Everytime my kids want to go out for pizza, Taco Bell or McDonald's, I remind them how much can be saved by eating at home. Just cutting our take-out bill in half saves almost $200 per year. I budget $40 per month for fast food. If we stay under budget, I use the balance to buy Disney Dollars so that I can't spend it elsewhere.

5). Become the coupon queen on your block. I always make sure that I cut any good coupons from the newspaper every Sunday as well as from the coupon books the kids sell every fall for school. If there's a BOGO or two-for coupon to be used, I've got it. My local grocery store tallies your savings at the end of the receipt. When I get home from the grocery store, I just add that amount to an envelope to be used for more Disney Dollars.

I'm sure there are others but at least these will give you some places to start.
 

One of the ways I find a ton of cash every year is our dependant care spending account. It comes out of my paycheck, and once I get $5,000 in daycare bills (which doesn't take long), I begin getting checks in the mail. Since I don't run to the bank regularly, these checks kind of stack up. And then they go into our savings account, instead of the checking account where they'd get spent.

Other checks go into the savings account to. Work bonuses, expense checks, checks my girlfriends write me to reimburse me for lunch, dividend checks. In other words, any money I get that doesn't come from salary.
 
This is my second year doing this. I also buy the heavy duty plastic piggy banks that don't have an opening to them. I put my spare dollars and change into it. I also try to put some extra money in it each week. Due to the heavy plastic, it is very hard to get these piggy banks opened. You need heavy duty scissors and strong hands to cut these banks open.

I was able to save over $400 for our last trip. I already almost $200 in the new bank for our next trip. It is so fun to see the bills pile up in these banks.
 












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