Personal Question- How do you do it?

[luvmygirls]

This will be our 1st major vacation with our children! (Dh & I have taken 2 vacations in 9 years of marriage, 1st was our honeymoon to the Pocono Mtns., 2nd was a 3 day trip to a cousin's wedding)..

Can we afford this WDW vacation? Probably not, but we are using our tax refund, so per-say nothing is coming "out of pocket" from this years' wages & my Oct trip is already paid for! I should have used the $$ credit card debt, but we figured the kids are only little once. Also, I have a niece with a congential heart defect, we could have her for 2 more years or 20 more years, her condition/prognonsis is very rare, the oldest "living" child that her hospital has studied is now in their early 20's. Since my niece has been born, I've come to realize, life is too short! So our "grand" gathering begins on Oct 2, 2005!!

My next vacation goal: debt free in 5 years (except our home-loan) & have enough $$ saved for another WDW vacation!

Shelly

 

[Chicago526]

All of my trips have been while single (I went with my mom), except my last trip wich was with my DFi. Our upcomming trip will be our honeymoon!

Needless to say, once we have kids we won't be staying at the GF or the Poly, but we should still be able to afford WL or any of the moderates. For example, assuming we have two kids under 9:

RT air from Chicago O'Hare to Orlando $800 ($200 x 4 people)

Towncar transfer $120 round-trip

7 nights at a Moderate with code, lets say $99 a night = $693

2 counter service meals and 1 sit down meal per day = $1120 ($40 per counter service meal and $80 per sit down meal)

5 day basic park tickets, no hoping $742 for all 4 passes

Then lets say $200 in souvineers for the kids.

That comes to $3475. Divide that by 12 months, I'd have to save $289.58 per month out of our budget. Or, my DFi can work 4 weekends of overtime. For us, that's doable. Our mortgage is low, and we only have one car payment. Also, I'm sure we can get the food budget down some by eating breakfast in the room and not eating one sit down meal a day, but I wanted to price it the way we tour now, without kids just to see what it would be.

 

[tlbwriter]

I look around and "everyone" has a camera on their cell phone...I'm pretty sure I make more money than lots of them, but I'm too cheap to pay the monthly charge for the camera feature.

Huh? I don't pay an extra monthly charge for the camera. Who is your service provider?

 

[loriandmatt]

chiming in here with how we swing it.

no,we are not loaded. we both work, we have a mortgage that takes about half of our monthly income and the rest goes to bills and savings and a small vacation budget. We have two kids. we pay for daycare for one and private school for the other. We have little disposable income.

We don't eat out - except for rare occasions. Neither of us are shoppers - except for groceries. We get new clothes or shoes only when we wear something out.

We skipped WDW last year because of the financial hit of moving and being very/pregnant and then dealing with a new born.

other than that we have been visitinig at least once a year for the past 5 years (sometimes more often)

How we do it is that for us a vacation does not have to be top of the line for it to be very relaxing and enjoyable. We camp or go on off season (my son's school has no problem if i take him out of classes as long as he takes along his work and writes a report before his return.) at a value resort only. We buy AP's. We stager our trips each year so that we can use those AP's twice before they expire. (if you go for more than 8 days a year - the AP pays for itself. That 2nd trip is almost like getting in free!) We only go if we can get a code or an AP rate. We only drive there as it is much cheaper than flying (even with the killer low rates you can get now - with a family of 4, from philly to WDW, and major high gas prices....it is still cheaper to drive to WDW. Plus if we are camping, we have to haul the camper there.) We bring along some food and eat some (not all - for us a meal out is a treat that we induldge in more often while on vacation) of our meals at the campsite/room or pack and take it with us.

These things make some folks i know wrinkle their noses up in disgust - a vacation should be all about pampering yourself to them. Big bucks on a cruise. Fancy posh resort. Eat/drink/souvies up the butt.

We get our pleasure from doing fun things together and doing so at a discount takes nothing away from the experience for us.

NUMBERS:
AP's for the 3 of us (DD is under 2) = @$1200
campsite or room = this can varry, but with a discount we try to keep it less than $75 per night. have gotten a campsite onetime(value season,discount code) for about $25/night.
all other expenses = we generally take $3000 with us and come back with at least $1000 every time - sometimes even more. that automatically gets rolled over into our next vacation budget.

Remember - if it is our 2nd (or 3rd) trip on those AP's that expense is already paid for. all we are talking about is lodging and other expenses. that $1000 we roll over goes a long way to covering most of that.


Not brain or rocket science - but just the way we do it.

-lori

 

[Dalpal]

In our family, its myself, DH, our DS (12), and I have 2 stepchildren DD(19), and DS (16). My stepson now lives with us. Both DH and I work in his family's business. He is the main breadwinner.

We own our home and land and only have one car note. We have the usual utilities and bills associated with home ownership. We do not have any credit card debt. Having said that, I should say that we live in a modest home in the country and housing around here is not nearly as expensive as in some other parts of the country.

Having two boys, I have a pretty good grocery bill every month. They are also constantly outgrowing and destroying clothes and shoes...so there goes a lot of our $$$

I found it helps for me to "scout out" our trip about 18 mos. in advance. That way, I know how much it is going to cost and I can begin to plan. As soon as we return from one trip, I begin making payments on the next.
We started out making a trip to WDW once every two years. We recently started going once a year. I hope to start going twice a year within the next year or two. We find that WDW is a wonderful place to bond with your family and de-stress and unwind. When it comes to WDW, I have to have my hotel and tickets paid for in advance and enough cash saved to cover our food, souveniers, etc. We do not charge anything that we cannot pay off that same month.
It may not work for everyone, but I have found that keeping our debt under control frees up extra cash within our budget.

This is very much our case....
I have to say though our children are grown, but I have 10 DGC who like to call me "Nana food" ..The only other person living with us is my DM...Also we are a one income family ...I stay home to help my DM.
We like to bring our DGC and watch them enjoy the world. Not all at once, That is not doable for us, but that just gives us more excuses to go! ..

 

[cobbler]

We are a family of 4. One income. I clean house for my mother once a week and all that money goes to our Disney fund.

Last year for a family of us 4 (me, hubby, boys 8 and 3 so not free anymore). We spent 9 nights in a value, ate bfast in our rooms except one character bfast, did MVMCP, got Aps for the whole family with gas down there and back, food, toll roads the whole nine yards we spent just over 4000.

Like I said, I put my cleaning money away strictly for vacation in an account to earn interest. I pay 25 out of our regular budget a month towards our hotel so it seems like less - if at all - of a balance when we get down there.

The minute I get back from one vacation I start planning the second one. I started planning this Octobers vacation last year December when we got back. This time its like getting in the parks for free because we have an AP. So get one AP for each member of the family for 2 years. I won't renew because we won't go again until Dec 06. We go in a cycle, december one year and October the following year to get the most out of our APs, and start the whole process over again. So even though we are going every year we fork over the big dollars for the Aps when there is a long year - 13 months between vacations and then that way when there is only 9 months until the next one we already have tickets. I hope that made sense.

 

[Sleepy]

Another way to look at expense of a vacation is this.......on average, a family spends one week at WDW. How much do you spend on groceries in one week? I know I can spend on average about $170. That's $170 toward my vacation budget (we usually go 2 weeks at a time, so that is $340). Same goes with how much gas money one spends in a week, etc. It's like having coupons on the final bill

Also, the next time you want to go out to eat, force yourself to cook. Take the money you would have spent on take-out and place it in the Disney fund.

 

[jenr812]

This trip is my graduation gift from my parents. We could never afford this kind of vacation on our own. DH and I have been to disney twice (before our daughter was born) and we went the super value route. The first time we stayed offsite at a super 8 motel and only went for 3 days. But we were young and in love and it didn't matter. We had a blast! The second time we "splurged" and stayed at CBR when it was only $89 per night. Again we had a fabulous time. This vacation, for us, will truly be the trip of a lifetime. I doubt we will be able to afford anything like this again for a very long time.

I just saw that you graduated nursing school and are an L&D nurse CONGRATS! I graduate in 2007!! Happy Nurse's Week

 

[Tarheel Tink]

1. Hard Work
2. DVC
3. Being Childfree

Ditto!

 

[bicker]

Double-ditto.

Any my two brothers' answers to this question would be:

1. Hard Work
2. Brother is a DVC Member
3. Brother is childfree

 

[Tiffa]

This will be our 4th trip to Disney in Aug. I am a SAHM and hubby is a firefighter (not bigbucks for sure) Our kids DD almost 6 and DS is 11 my husband makes a vacation a priority he looks at it in this light- "we have only 7 more vacations left with our son lets make them great! so we do. Its not that we dont use the credit card we do and try to pay it off by the end of the year (I still run outa the house when the bill comes) we just make it work- we will rent a house this year because we have family comming too. But tickets from ticketmania.com and good lodging with a kitchen and pool will be great ! Our kids are saving their own spending money earning it and saving pop cans even - good luck I can't get my hubby to do a cruise

 

[heavenleigh412]

I am a single disabled mom living on a set income... we take a few small vacations a year (mostly to visit friends around the country) and do Disney every other year.
My daughter is 11 now, and who knows how much longer she will want to go with her mother to Disney?
We save spare change all year, and add so much a week to our vacation fund.
My daughter also saves her own spending money from her allowance (I buy her a few things... like last year we did a charm bracelet, and I always buy her ears... but all the extras are hers to buy)
We usually do 4 days in Disney, this year we are doing 8... It is special for us because we are actually going to do all the things she has been begging to do for years that we never could because I wasn't the one planning (We usually go with my dad, who could never bother calling for breakfast at Cindy's etc)
We booked with a meal plan and options on our tickets (water parks, disney quest, etc)
This vacation cost about 3,000 with everything included, which is a bit high for us, but it is completely paid for.

I think in the end you need to decide what is important to you, and go for it.
I really enjoy the time away with my daughter, so we scrimp a little during the year and pull things off.

 

[maxaroni]

We make vacations a priority. However, my dh only gets 2 wks per year and they can't be taken together. He takes one the week between Christmas and New Years and it's family time, relax and enjoy the season. We make sure we get away that other week, in the summer. We didn't go to WDW as a family until 2001 and thought it was such a 'big' trip. We went again in 2002 and then said we'd take a couple of years off. We really hadn't thought about going again this year until we started thinking about vacations and we were about to pay for our week in VT. For some reason, I priced out WDW and it was no different than what we were going to spend in VT. Well, WDW here we come! Unlike others on these boards, we don't plan on doing WDW every year as we enjoy other things as well. In our opinion, vacation is important to reconnect as a family and we can have a great time in the mtns of VT or WDW. However, WDW does have lots of and it is truly magic. We are so looking forward to going again this year...

 

[ANTSS2001]

we just basically try to prepay our vacation...book hotel now and vacation is not till Sept. and monthly we try to pay it gradually sometimes we take part time job like a 4 hour a week and that lil amount of salary goes straight in buying a disney dollar every week so we dont get to spend it. come vacation our rooms and tickets are paid for and our disney dollar is our pocket money. Recently he kinda trick ourselves... we pay for our laundry we have a cup ( compared to the vending machine at the laundry machine at WDW) and charge ourselves $2 everytime we wash and a $1 for drying that has been a good outcome we really even got to pay are electric bill with it plus some left over for gas when we drove the last time to Florida from Pa.

 

[PatsGirl]

I make vacations a priority for sure. I am a single parent with two children, 8 and 15. Although I do receive support and work full-time, I think it 's the other variables that make it possible for us to vacation they way we do. BTW, my friends are forever making jokes about my robbing banks to go away...

I drive a car that is 8 years old,

we NEVER shop Gap full-price (only clearance items),

groceries cost me between $60-80/week which is the one thing that "throws" most of my friends. Don't get me wrong, we eat well, just not steak each night. Example for this week: tonight, burgers and vegetable shiskkabobs on the grill after DS's baseball game, last night, green peppers stuffed with Spanish rice, Wednesday, salmon steaks and caesar salad, etc., the night before French Toast and sausages. I think it's easier without anyone insisting upon a meat and potatoes dinner with dessert each night. THe key is I take the time once a week to look at what we have, what's on sale, and make a menu. Very little goes to waste here. I don't buy cereal, soda, individually wrapped snack items or juice boxes, chips, ice cream, etc. But, we do go out for ice cream probably once a week in the summer, lol.

I drink cheap wine, usually at home with friends,

Vacations other than WDW/Universal have been very inexpensive, usually camping trips at $20-30/night and you have to eat anyways don't you?

We live in a modest home which I had built 22 years ago (when I was 22) and is nearly paid off now -- now that was good thinking, thanks Dad! I worked extremely hard from 22-35 or so in order to keep up with bills but now everything is evening out and I don't have to kill myself working 50 or 60 hours a week.

Working at the same company now for 14 years May 11th, benefits include a great hourly and 5 weeks paid vacation, woo hoo!

So, while my preference is to cruise for 14 days every year and take a WDW vacation at least yearly, I can't do the cruise yet, but I'm working towards it. I did take a 7-day this past year and last year and loved every minute of it.

I think of sitting in the sun with a Corona or Mudslide every time we eat grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner