How do you save money for your WDW trips?

[SandraC]

Hi all! I was wondering how you save money for your trips? Do you put a little away each month? Save change? Sell children ~ lol!

I have a special back acct I call the Disney Acct. (it's actually the Disney-all vacation-fun-major applicance emergency break down account). I put just about everything I make from my PT job in that acct. I get a reasonably decent interest rate because it has so many restrictions. The interest adds up to about $300 a year. Pretty cool.

What do you do to save for Disney? S

 

[Mortlives]

I budget travel money right out of my pay, with the rest of my expenses. It goes into a savings account. Just to keep myself on track, I pay for things in advance, at different times. deposit on airfare and hotel one month, passes next month, balance on air month after, balance on hotel month after that. Last month before going is saving for expenses (food, extras, souvenirs, towncar).Since I will use a credit card, I will also have the month after to make sure the whole trip is paid. And I soooo can't wait.

Ciao,
Mort.

 

[cdnmickeylover]

We have a US dollar bank account and put money into it on a regular basis. Any 'extra' money, such as refunds etc. goes into this account as well. We also pay for things gradually. We are probably going to buy annual passes this year so we have been debating about when to purchase the first one and then a few months later we will purchase the second one. We don't like to put a lot on the credit cards so we usually end up paying cash for most things. We drive though so we take a lot of food with us and don't eat out a lot.

Cdnmickeylover

 

[SandraC]

I am more of a 'cash up front' type of person too. We do used credit cards a lot of vacation so as not to carry too much money. But we pay them off right away with the money I saved for the vacation. S

 

[bunnyfoo]

I save a set amount each week which goes into a savings account. When I need to buy passes or pay for travel, I take money from that account. I also have a change jar which I recently cleared out and found over $100 in change. I also do a couple of reward programs...

Selling children... *lol* I'm sure my mom thought of that on several of our vacations!

 

[SandraC]

I just started a change jar, it looks pretty good already. I have about $175 USF cash left over from last trip and a bunch of change (great for tolls upon arrival). Everytime I get US change and toss it in a USF change jar, that's starting to add up too! Like I mentioned before, the interest on the DISNEY acct is about $300 annually ~ it all adds up!

S

 

[minnie56]

How do you have money left over when you get home from Disney??

We just got back from a 10 day stay at AKL and spent almost $5,000 USD!!!!!!! And....we drove...and I paid only $109 plus tax a night...and I had the DDE card for 20% off food!!!???

I don't know....I must be doing something wrong!

 

[Mortlives]

Originally posted by minnie56
How do you have money left over when you get home from Disney??

We just got back from a 10 day stay at AKL and spent almost $5,000 USD!!!!!!! And....we drove...and I paid only $109 plus tax a night...and I had the DDE card for 20% off food!!!???

I don't know....I must be doing something wrong!

If you had a great time, you aren't doing anything wrong. Sounds like you got a killer deal on AKL. I'd love to stay there myself, but I think for us that is still years away.Anyway, if I had that much, I'd spend it. You're on vacation. Celebrate. Besides, for 10 days, that sounds perfectly reasonable. I can spend $4GUS in 8 days, so you're in proportion. Of course, we won't have any money left over either.

Ciao,
Mort.

 

[minnie56]

But......
It is a lot of money....
I think Disney is a bit 'carried' away with what they are charging..I mean a cup of coffee is $2.00 US...and it's lousy! I pay that here only at 'Bigbucks' (Starbucks

Oh well....Your're right, we were on vacation!

 

[DSNY FN]

Our Honeymoon cost us a little over 7 grand US and that was in 98 we have animal cracker jars we got at cosco and when they were empty we seal the lid with wax and cut a coin slot in the back for the kids. we put all our change in it every day we split it up equally for the 3 of them. We started again last week and they are all over 35 bucks allready.We also put money into our US acct every month to it helps alot.

 

[SandraC]

minnie56, we had left over cash. We used credit cards a lot of vacation so we don't have to carry too much cash. I always pre-save the money so we pay off the credit card immediately. We spent over $7000 CDN per trip in 2001 and 2002, it was about $15G's for the two trips. I know it's a lot of money. But we really get our monies worth and love it! S

 

[cottontail]

Hi:

Minnie or anybody what is the DDE card for 20% off food, and where is it good for.

Minnie, just the exchange on our money kills us, but it is either stay away or go. We went down in april for a split akl/poly and had a great 10 day stay, the memories we have from that trip will never be forgotten.

We always drive and figure that is how we can afford to stay onsite in wdw resort hotel.

Deb.

 

[SandraC]

Hi, I figure the drive will save us about $2000.00 in airfare (minimum). We will likely rent a car to drive down there (1) saves the wear and tear on our cars (2) seems like move vacationy in a rental car (3) the price is the same as renting a car in Florida. (4) We can take down more food. (5) We are looking forward to something different than flying.

We are going to be saving $$$$ on tickets too. The last two trips were totally Disney, using the CDN special 7 day hopper both trips. Next trip we will get a regular 7 day hoppers and split them over two trips.

We aren't going to do 6 characters meals per trip anymore. I would like to do the Epcot Princess character breakky, but that's the only one I think we'll do ~ maybe the ice cream social again.

S