Saving for your Disney Vacation

[Goldenbear6]

Okay, sense we are talking about debt, and it seems to revolve around trips to Disney, this is how we pay for our trips. We have a 5 gallon water jug in our den. We use to save coins, and then we graduated to $1 dollar bills. We would refuse to spend a $1 dollar bill. If we wanted a coke or a cup of coffee, no dollars could be spent, had to be something larger than a dollar, at the end of the week, we would put all of our dollars in the jug. Something’s we would have 15 to 20 dollars to put in the jug. Now we are trying something different. We allocate ourselves an allowance at the start of each week. For us it is $50.00 each. We take our lunches to work, and at the end of the week, we empty our wallets and purses with the money we have left over. Most of the time, we put up to $50.00 in the jug, this week, we put $95.00 in the jug. We almost have our June trip paid for. What's nice, (and we have not had to do this yet) but in an emergency, we can always get to the money if needed. Let me warn you, this can become addictive.What other ideas do you have?

 

[comicguy]

I save money a couple of ways"

1) Any items I sell on ebay/half.com/craig's list goes into the Disney fund

2) Any money made from the yearly yard sale go into the Disney fund

3) My summer job money goes into the Disney fund

4) All of our loose change goes into our Disney banks and then once every couple of monthe we roll it and deposit into the Disney fund

5) Any money we receive for Ann. B-Day's, or other special days goes into the Disney fund.

6) Can't forget the all important bottle redemption, now that NYS has added .05 deposit on water bottles those nickels are really adding up!! and guess where that money goes, you guessed it the Disney fund

I have Aug 2010 trip taken care of money wise just waiting until early July to pay it off so I can make some intrest on my money. Good news, I have already started to save for our 2011 trip and airfare is "paid" for, now to work on the Disney portion.

 

[thebigkahuna]

I do something similar, only with a small pail that has a lid - I cut a hole in the lid, decorated it with Disney stickers and that is the "Disney bucket"!

Recently, I realized that I was spending WAY more than I estimated by using my debit card. So I have switched to cold hard CA$H. Sounds so simple, but the mere act of going to the bank, withdrawing cash & using that for my purchases has REALLY helped.

I took out my "allowance" last payday, and because it's harder to watch cash fly out of my wallet, I actually have some left. Because I made it to the next payday with cash in my wallet, that "leftover" allowance goes in the Disney bucket, and my wallet is replenished with this paydays allowance. May sound silly, but whatever gets dollars in that bucket is ok with me!

(I also put "found" money in there - a few weeks ago I found a dollar in a parking lot (no one around, so no one to ask "hey, did you drop this?" which I would do) so that was a bonus dollar for the bucket!)

 

[Goldenbear6]

So, no one saves for the Disney Trip? I guess everyone uses credit cards.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

So, no one saves for the Disney Trip? I guess everyone uses credit cards.

We use my annual bonus to pay for vacations...

 

[NY Disney fan]

So, no one saves for the Disney Trip? I guess everyone uses credit cards.

I use credit cards for Disney trips and then I pay when the bill comes.

 

[Disney Doll]

We save the change.

I also budget $100/week to go into the vacation fund. Yes, vacation is that important to us, that we figure it into our normal budget.

But, as important as vacation is to us, there are other things that are not. I don't need the newest car, or the lastest iPhone or the most expensive TV or sound equipment. Clothes...eh...I like to look nice, but I don't need to shop designer. Plus my clothes tend to be fairly "traditional" so they last a few "seasons" and I update a bit with a trendy accessory For example, I might wear a classic black sweater and classic khaki pants and put on a leopard scarf or a cute pair of patterned flats to punch it up a little. I'm not an expensive jewlery person. I will buy some decent costume stuff to accessorize with, but I probably have about 8 pieces of "good" jewelry (excluding wedding rings).

Because the material or trendy stuff isn't as important to us, we have some extra income to play with on vacation.

 

[Pakey]

For WDW, we own DVC so dues are paid in January using Capital One rewards and then we have no lodging costs. I get all of the corporate air miles at work so I rarely pay for airline tickets. We've been so many times we have outgrown the need for any junk while there so we have tickets and food and that doesn't require any savings, I just pay it out of the current paycheck.

 

[GOOFY4DONALD]

We have 8 WDW popcorn bucket (4 from each trip). We save all our change in there. We also bought cute little metal gift tins at Goofy's and all our 1's go in there as well. I also give myself an allowance of 300.00 every 2 weeks. This is for my gasoline that eats up 100.00 right there), kid's lunch money and their extras, additional grocery store runs (DH and I do 1 major grocery shopping trip a month beyond this) and my hair appts. You get the picture. 300.00 for everything but bills. I never spend 1's or change and anything left over goes right into the WDW jar. I also am starting a temp job with the census next week so all that money goes straight on the trip. I am about a month away from having all the $$ for the airfare (which is going to run me almost 3K this time)

 

[Kirby]

Not planning to go to Disney any time soon (gasp!) but I do save money for trips we take. I have a grocery budget each week and pay with cash. What ever cash is left after I buy groceries goes into the trip fund. It's amazing how much you can save on groceries when you have a plan!

 

[MagicMomentsMom]

I budget money monthly for the trip--so it's coming off the top Then I have all the loose change in a Disney Jar When DD gets change or finds it in the house then it goes into her Disney bank or her regular bank, she gets to decide which one gets it--then she can have that money to spend. Plus she got money from the grand's this last trip that she used for her "own money", lol.

I have two strollers now that I'm going to sell, that will be huge hunk of change off the maclaren--(the chicco stroller we bought for Disney won't work for GC this year she'll be too heavy)

Our yearly yard sale stuff--this year I think I will use that money for the trip too.

I sell all of GenevaClaire's clothes thru Once Upon a child, this year we're selling toys too. So the clothes money will go into a clothing fund for GC and the toy money will be GenevaClaire's money to save for the trip.

Product rebates and coupon savings--I'm really good about putting the rebate money up, but somehow I never manage to put the "saved money" in the disney fund....my idea was to take the amount from the bottom of the reciepts that say You've saved xx.xx and put it into the disney fund.

I use my cvs reward bucks and the walgreens cash to stock up on the stuff that we need for the trip too!

I'm going to start asking for disney gift cards for mothers day and my birthday since we'll be at Disney on my birthday this year!!!


I like the dollar idea for saving--I think we may start doing that--if it's a dollar then it goes into the disney fund

**our trip should be paid off by late spring, early summer. So I'll start saving for the next trip

 

[zachnsamsmommy]

No vacation this year . We are trying to get out of debt.

BUT...in years past, we've set up an acct, kind of like a Christmas acct, where we would deposit $10-$20 of DH's paycheck (I'm a SAHM), and then go on vacay when we had enough saved. I'd supplement the money from my part time photography jobs, ebay sales, and consignment sales.

The money this year goes straight to the 'pay off the cc' fund.

 

[Aimeedyan]

We just transfer $X into our ING direct account every payday. Never see it in the bank, never consider spending it, it adds up without us even noticing and it's ready for us to transfer when it's time to pay for the trip (anywhere - not just WDW). We do the same for our other financial goals (new car, taxes, new furniture, savings, future baby, etc). I have a bunch of subaccounts. And, we make a little interest off it.

We don't use cash (just debit card) so none of those kind of tricks ever worked for us.

 

[Acklander]

I've never really understood the logic of saving loose change in a water jug. It all adds up the same at the end. If I pay for something with the change I've gotten back, that means I haven't spent the dollar in order to get the change.

Am I the only one who just has a budget of XXX amount of dollars for living expenses? anything I earn (thru paycheck, yard sales, tax refunds or whatever) above an beyond that budgeted amount goes into the savings account. When we go on vacation we just take some of the money out of the savings account towards that.

 

[NeverlandClub23]

I have an automatic deposit every paycheck to ING for my vacations this year (not Disney). I also roll all of my loose change (which isn't much as I put everything I can on my Chase Visa and pay it off every month for the Disney Reward dollars) and deposit it once a month in a savings account at my credit union that I get 5% interest on for our 2011 WDW trip(you can only withdraw two times a year but it's not hard for me to see money sitting in an account if I know it's going towards something).

I also just started a Save Yourself Account with TD Ameritrade. If you haven't done one before you save $100 a month for a year and then they deposit an extra $100 at the end of the 12 months. So I deposit $100 a month towards our December 2011 trip . Here's the link for anyone interested:

Save Yourself Account

 

[DMickey28]

My DH is in Sales so his commission checks are set up with a certain % to vacation funds, % into regular savings, % towards debt (house/car/student loans). He gets various sized ones through out the year based on deals closing but with his new job he also gets a HUGE ($35K+ before taxes) one every Spring. We are using part of that to pay for our first real family vacation in December to WDW.

 

[paintnolish]

I'm all about using the tax refund but not this year...I have to take a class over summer so I can student teach in fall, so the refund will go towards that. Oh, priorities!!!

 

[Goldenbear6]

Now we are getting somewhere.....

 

[thebigkahuna]

My car will be paid off soon, and I plan to put away the same amount (as if I were still paying the car) - some will be headed into a "Disney Fund" and the other portion will be going to the "new car" fund.
I can't wait to go back!

 

[lacrosse_lady72]

Not planning to go to Disney any time soon (gasp!) but I do save money for trips we take. I have a grocery budget each week and pay with cash. What ever cash is left after I buy groceries goes into the trip fund. It's amazing how much you can save on groceries when you have a plan!

I do that too! And I end up buying less or cheaper things so that I can throw more in the trip bucket.