Sort of a budget ? about money in the parks

[undertheradar]

OP, how do your kids handle money now? If they are used to handling cash and doing transactions, then cash would be the easiest way to go. No worrying about receipts to know what the balance is on a gift card, not having enough money left for what they are purchasing. Sometimes cash is just easier.

 

[LovesTimone]

We will have all the money for this trip in June and i am trying to figure out how to carry all this money?? - You can charge to your KTTW card, and pay at the end of the trip, thats what we normally do.

Should I put it on my prepaid card and do they have a limit of how much can be put on those cards? Or should we just carry the cash? I don;t really want to do that. We have used the prepaid cards for food and wine, but you can use for tips and such. I would keep some cash for mousekeeping tips, and such. I would not put all my eggs in one basket so to speak.

Also we want to give each kid about 50 bucks to spend and should I get gifts cards for them or just cash? I am asking b/c dh thinks cash in case they don't buy anything in disney. I would tell them you get 50 to spend and that it, as a suggestion we go shopping our last day, that way everyone has seen what is out there for them, then they spend for what they really want.
Also we want to give each kid 15 bucks a day for food so i am wondering if we should put that on their card if we get them one all at once or give cash each day but then if we put the money on the card we can't give cash?? 15 dollars is not even going to begin to cover it, maybe for one meal. Do you have breakfast together and then dinner at night this would cover lunch with no snacks.
so confused

Breath breath!!!

I know that some people here on the dis, use the envelope system for what they are budgeting to spend perday.

We use the dining plan so we only add in tips, adult beverages, and whatever we want to buy = spending money. before the dinning plan we normal would budget, around 100 a day person per day, this said we enjoy TS and character meals. So not sure if you only plan to do CS meals, or if you are planning on breakfast in room or eating offsite.

 

[cheermom1]

Our grocery stores Kroger and Martins offer fuel savings with your grocery rewards card. I never pay full price for gas b/c of this program.
Basically every dollar you spend at the grocery store is equal to 1 point. However, at Kroger, gift cards are worth double points and sometimes during specials, gift cards are worth 4 points per dollar!
100 points equals 10cents off per gallon.
and that accumulates so
200 points = 20 cents off
up to
1000 points = 1.00 off per gallon.

Depending on how much I've been spending at the grocery store I usually save 10-50 cents a gallon. It is easy free money. I just use my rewards card at the store and then swipe it at a participating gas station. No thought required and with a 20 gallon tank on my minivan, even 10 cents off adds up!

We did not do a budget vacation last time (9 days, deluxe hotels and a ton of character meals, souvenirs, etc) so I think I bought 3,000 dollars in gift cards. Some were worth quadruple points and some worth double points. So just from our Disney gift card, I got about 10,000 points.

Our Kroger has a massive display of gift cards from hundreds of places. I have friends who get gift cards at the grocery store many of their other purchases to gain fuel points.
Heading to Applebees for dinner? Go get a gift card first. Heading to the movies, get a gift card first. Need to order something from Amazon, go get a gift card and so on.

Here's the info from Kroger:
http://www.kroger.com/in_store/fuel/Pages/b.aspx
And Martins:
http://richmond.martinsfoods.com/shareddev/sharedcontent/OurStores/Departments/fuelperks/index.cfm

Thank you for explaining this to me. too bad we don;t have either of those here. So sad now.
That would have been a great way to help us. Thanks anyway.

 

[cheermom1]

OP, how do your kids handle money now? If they are used to handling cash and doing transactions, then cash would be the easiest way to go. No worrying about receipts to know what the balance is on a gift card, not having enough money left for what they are purchasing. Sometimes cash is just easier.

They are pretty good now with money. I am just worried that they will get all excited and forget about their money, maybe i am worrying for nothing.

 

[cheermom1]

I know that some people here on the dis, use the envelope system for what they are budgeting to spend perday.

We use the dining plan so we only add in tips, adult beverages, and whatever we want to buy = spending money. before the dinning plan we normal would budget, around 100 a day person per day, this said we enjoy TS and character meals. So not sure if you only plan to do CS meals, or if you are planning on breakfast in room or eating offsite.

We will not be doing any character meals and we will most likely do CS and then breakfast in the room thanks

 

[sk!mom]

DH and I charge everything on vacation just like we charge everything on a daily basis at home (love those cc rewards). Then we just pay it off when the bill comes. Normally on a trip, we'll take a couple of hundred in cash just in case we run into some place where we need cash. Normally we still have the cash when we get home.

The best idea we've ever had for giving a kid money was getting DD15 a bank account and debit card. We transfer her allowance into her account every two weeks. When we go on a trip it's very easy to add some extra.

 

[poohfriend77]

Regarding whether to give your teenagers 50 dollar Disney gift cards depends on the kids and whether you care what they spend it on. If the money is for the trip only (use it or lose it) - gift cards are the way to go. If you don't mind if they wait until they get home and use the money on a new wii game (or whatever), then use cash or a non disney prepaid card. IF you trust them to not go over budget, you can also have them charge things on their KTTW cards and pay those off at your resort every day.

Regarding food money, I'd do that on a Disney card too. (whether $15 is enough depends on what you are expecting them to get with that money). Same as above, IF you trust them not to go over budget, have them charge to their KTTW cards.

I'm a big fan of gift cards - we bought several thousand dollars of Disney cards in the months leading up to our trip last year. We get double fuel points at our grocery store and saved a few hundred dollars in gas by getting the gift cards. I would buy them and go home and call Disney and apply them to our reservation. By the time we left, everything was paid and all we carried in the parks were our KTTW. I would then go to the desk to apply gift cards to our KTTW balance. It worked great and I figure that gas savings was "free" money that helped put a tiny dent in the overall cost of our trip.

That's a good method, but I wanted to point out that you need to apply the gift cards to your KTTW balance BEFORE you check out! I tried to do that on our last trip, but they had already charged our balance to my cc. Not a big deal, because I only had $25 or so left on gift cards, but I would have been upset if I was trying to pay all our charges with $500 in cards.

I have since learned that you can take your cards to the front desk and have them credited to your room early in your trip.