Budgeting

I have saved money for WDW by budgeting. I like to think I can transfer money from each paycheck but we all know this is hard for some, especially me. Some of the ways I like to save money is by saving my tax refund, saving my spare change, purchasing Disney Dollars, and sending $10 a paycheck to my vacation fund. I save all my spare change as well as my boyfriends. We put it in a jar on my dresser or we put it into my son’s Florida jar. Whenever my son gets money he puts some in one of his four jars, Florida, Spend, Charity, and Save (for college). I’m starting to buy Disney Dollars for the trip for purchasing souvenirs and possibly some treats for myself. I also buy Disney Dollars for my son for celebrations. We gave him three Disney Dollars and a new NASCAR for Valentine’s Day and he’ll receive golf clubs (bought on clearance) and two more Disney Dollars for Easter instead of candy. He’ll also have to find some eggs filled with quarters. My tax refund, which is also my vacation fund, is sitting in an online bank account earning 1.63% interest. This money is for the majority of our vacation. With my spare change I’m hoping to pay for tolls, gas, and our food on the trip down. I can roll this a few weeks before our trip and cash it in at my bank for dollar bills. I’m also saving quarters and shiny pennies for the penny and quarter press machines. We have some at our zoo so we will use them there also. With a lot of planning and creative thinking I’m hoping to pay for our trip with cash, as in not accruing any more debt. I don’t want to carry all that cash around so we’re going to have to figure out how to spend that money. I’m thinking a pre-paid Visa gift card, depositing that money into my bank account and just using my debit card, or just finding an ATM and paying a fee to withdraw money as I need it. I hate paying fees so that last one doesn’t sound so good to me.
Another trick, but takes lots of self-discipline, is the Disney Visa Credit Card. For every hundred dollars you spend, you earn 1 point. 1 point is equal to 1 dollar on a gift card, after 20 points you can request a gift card and use these to purchase items at WDW or even your park tickets. You can also use them at The Disney Store. I have found that unless I pay each and every bill by myself I can probably do this but with other people in my household paying bills and me not having access to the bills consistently I am unable to use this without over spending. Let’s do some math to show how easy it is to spend $100 and earn points. My car payment can be auto billed to my credit card, my car payment is $337.00 per month (well until June it is!), my electric bill is about $80 a month, my gasoline is about $100 a month, my cell phone bill (for two phones) is $82 a month and my satellite bundle is $137 a month. Just by using these simple recurring bills my total spent is $736.00 per month x 12 months in a year and that is $8,832 divided by $100 (equals 1 point) that is 88 points per year. Since I didn’t include the other household bills I could put on the credit card (food, oil changes, medications, memberships etc) I would estimate at least 100 points per year. The trick is to pay that card off in full each month. This way finance charges are avoided and your points are free. The best part is under the terms I have the points do not expire for 60 months, so if I knew we were going to WDW in 2 years I could easily earn $200 free dollars to use to pay for part of my vacation. I do not endorse applying for credit when it cannot be used responsibly. I am a testament to that. I did not use credit responsibly until recently. I do sometimes slip up and abuse it but I’m doing my best to pay off all my debt in the next 24 months. It may take me longer but at least I can say I should have a bunch of it paid off soon!