Has anyone ever earned enough SB to basically cover lodging and park tickets? That's our current long-term goal.
Haven't been on this thread in a few days, so I'll chime in now with my experience.
My very first DW trip was in February 2016. It was me, DH, our son (who had just turned 4) and my parents. We made the decision in early September 2015 to take this trip, so I joined SBs around the end of September. This was during some of the better days of gift card churning, so I was cashing out SBs for ebay and using the ebay > Target <> ebay <> Target > Disney method, which is obviously a dead deal now. Oh, how I miss those days...those ebay bucks were amazing.....LOL. Following this method, with just a few deviations here and there to try other stores like
Best Buy and Walgreen's, I was able to get $2950 in Disney gift cards paying only $2021 OOP. In my opinion this was incredible savings for only a few short months. We used the cards to pay for our room and used the rest for all of our food and souvenirs while there. We paid OOP for our tickets because we did the military salute tickets through my parents. It worked out great. At that point, I was hooked.
I decided to try to apply this methodology to other vacations to maximize my savings. We booked a Carnival cruise in February 2016 and I started earning and churning for that trip on February 13th. My end goal was to have the cruise paid for entirely with "found" money. In the beginning everything was going great and I was earning at a wonderful rate. However, soon the rug was pulled out from most of the lucrative gift card churning methods, so I started to rely primarily on SBs earnings. I've been able to cover almost all of our cruise expenses using a combination of SBs earned, some credit card statement credits and a few months of gift card churning in the beginning.
DH and I both have SBs accounts. For the last several months my basic strategy on SBs is to cash out the first $25 card on something I can get for 2200 SBs (typically
Amazon or Target since I would spend those on other things anyway). I'm not converting these cards into any other kind of card, so I just track the $25 in my spreadsheet as money allocated to the cruise. The rest of the month I cash out for $25 Paypal once I earn enough, then transfer that money to our bank account, again tracking the money in my spreadsheet as allocated to the cruise. I use a multiple tab spreadsheet to track all of this. I track SBs earnings, all gift card info, ebay bucks earned, credit card statement credits, etc. The only thing I haven't factored in is % back on making payments with my credit cards, so technically I suppose my savings are a bit higher. Here is my breakdown as of today:
2,057.10 - Cruise Fare
239.00 - Insurance
194.25 - Pre-paid Gratuities
+ 289.72 - Dolphin Excursion Tickets for 3
2,780.07 - Total Due
237.00 - Deposit Paid w/Credit Card
189.72 - Portion of Excursion Paid w/Credit Card
+1,000.00 - Paid to Carnival w/Credit Card
1,526.72 - Paid OOP w/Credit Cards
+1,350.00 - Paid to Carnival w/Gift Cards (earned through SBs cash outs and churning)
2,776.72 - Total Payments
2,780.07 - Total Due
-2,776.72 - Total Payments
3.35 - Balance Due
1,526.72 - Paid OOP w/Credit Cards
+ 297.99 - Cash Invested on First Gift Cards (for churning)
1,824.71 - Total Paid OOP
(WANT TO FULLY RECOVER THIS AMOUNT WITH "FOUND" MONEY)
250.00 - AMEX Statement Credits (for making Carnival payments)
189.72 - Chase Statement Credit (for making "travel" purchase)
+1,039.00 - Paypal Earned (through SBs) + Coupon Rebate Apps (cash outs to Paypal)
1,478.72 - Total Earned/Credited
1,824.71 - Total Paid OOP
-1,478.72 - Total Earned/Credited
345.99
+ 3.35 - Balance Due on Cruise (will charge on credit card when due)
349.34 - Remaining Amount to Recover
Hope that wasn't too hard to follow. The $3.35 cruise balance due should be charged to my credit card within the next few days. At this point, if I can cash out right about $350 from SBs before we leave on the cruise, then it will be COMPLETELY FREE.....including cruise fare, insurance, gratuities, and a dolphin excursion!!! It's taken well over a year to do this, but it's definitely worth it to me.
