Saving For WDW?

[Colleen27]

How do you budget saving for your WDW vacations?

We are in the process of buying a house, so every extra dollar goes towards that.

I would love to save money in either our savings or checking account, but worry that if it is saved there, we will just end up using it on things related to the house.

What do you do?

I'm probably not the one to ask - we're most likely postponing our trip because we're putting so much into the house we just bought! Well, it isn't just that... For us, closing was delayed from May until July, which meant making 2 mortgage payments that we thought we'd be able to apply to the trip (we bought the new house free & clear), so that plus a couple of unexpected expenses at the new house kind of snowballed to put a sizable dent in the trip budget.

Usually what I do is book the trip, then instead of holding the trip money in my checking account, I make payments to Disney as soon as I have $100+ accumulated for it. That way, the money isn't sitting around available to be spent, but can still be refunded in a usable form (not Disney gift cards) if we have to cancel for financial reasons.

We also have a spare change can that is Disney/vacation money, and that's accumulated about $300 since Feb that we don't touch just because we don't want to bother with it. Also, anything I sell on eBay, Half.com, Craigslist, garage sales, or at the local consignment shop is money that goes straight to vacation. My little bit of income from writing for online sites (which is my "fun" writing and doesn't pay much; my "real world" copywriting income goes towards the everyday budget) goes towards trips too, because it all goes into my Paypal account and I only use that for vacations.

As far as spending on the house, I don't know if you know this or not but when you change your address with the post office, they send a 10% off coupon for Lowes that is good on purchases up to $5000. You can get the same offer from Home Depot by signing up on their "moving" page, but their offer is only good up to a total purchase of $2000. The money we saved with those coupons went straight to our vacation, as does any money I get back from rebate offers.

None of it sounds like much on its own, but all told I've put together about $1100 for Disney since February, and we've got a big community garage sale and some more stuff for the consignment store ready to go for next month.

 

[Colleen27]

I decided to challenge myself to see if I can save approximately $2200 in 51 weeks for our vacation. My blog chronicles my efforts as well as teaches you how I am doing it. You can chose to save your money for Disney, other vacations, other pleasures or anything in the world. The resources are out there. You just have got to know how to apply them to your life.

I love your blog, what a neat idea! I'm subbing to learn what I can, not just to save for Disney but to apply to my overall goal of reducing our household operating expenses to the lowest possible level without scrimping on things that matter. We've never had a CVS nearby before but there's one just 3 blocks from our new house, so I've got a lot to learn about working their special offers!