VACATION!!!!
When planning a vacation for, what will be, six people, it takes a great deal of thought, finding the best deals, and figuring how to follow a strict budget. That seems so impossible in today's time. I don't want to be cooking the entire time while on vacation or toting large coolers of drinks and snacks but we also cannot spend $60 per meal for a week. Whew!
After much debate about credit cards in our family, husband and I have settled on a happy compromise. ONLY BECAUSE WE ARE FINANCIALLY ACCOUNTABLE! I do not endorse the use of credit cards for those who have spending problems and/or cannot and/or will not pay them off BEFORE they accrue interest!!! We had a BP credit card that we got years ago when the return on it was awesome. Gas prices spiked and having an SUV, it seemed wise. Since then, BP has changed some things leaving us to not have as great of rewards. So we abandoned the cards and were using our bank card where we were earning QuickPoints. Not very quickly, I should mention. In a frugal, single income family, it's hard to earn much!
When discussing family vacation next year, we decided we wanted to do a Disney World trip and have the whole experience. This means hotel, passes, dining package, souveniers, etc... When I priced it out, for the "off season" it came to over $4,000! YIKES! How is a family suppose to afford that? Here is our solution:
We signed up for the Disney Visa through Chase. We've always been happy with Chase so we traded our BP card in for a cute Cars themed Disney Card. Awesome! Next, I have spend countless hours figuring out how we can earn the most reward points possible to put toward our trip. I have mapped out paying our bills online through each company individually. Before I was paying through our bank. The card gives us 2% back on and food, gas, grocery, or Disney purchases. We then get 1% back on every other purchase. This is HUGE for us! Any purchases we make for things we need we are putting money back in our pocket for this trip! AWESOME! Already, after only having the card for a week and only putting $300 on it after paying bills and some other things, we have earned about $7.50. Our plan is to use this card for every single purchase but log it in our records as if it were coming out of our bank account. I am extremely OCD about budgets and financial spending so this works for us! Again I say, if you are not financially conservative, this is likely a good way for you to get into BIG TROUBLE! My estimate is that by the time we plan to go on our trip next year, we will have about $1,000 in rewards. Other perks of this card are the member incentives like free dining plans. Hello!!!!! FREE DINING PLANS!?!?!? This means for our family, a $553.90 dining plan would be FREE!!! Yes, please and thank you, Disney! This does require me to have one meal for our fmaily per day which easily is breakfast since we are not much for breakfast and fruit and bagels suffice. Oh and staying at a Disney resort gives you free parking at the parks ($15/day) and free shuttle service if you so choose.
Here's the breakdown: Room is about $1600 for 5n/6d. The tickets run fairly cheap when you purchase more than one day so they are going to be about $1156 for four of us and the dining package ($554)--$FREE! With our credit card rewards that we estimate to be near $1000 by next fall, we plan to spend about $2000 for a $4000 vacation.
Needless to say, this mama is EXCITED! There is something about Disney with your children that makes you feel all magical inside! We are the kind of family that starts the park at open and we do not leave until close! If we are spending the time and money we are making the most of our trip. This is why the dining plan is so essential on a Disney trip!
Now, the other portion of our plan is to see if we can leave Disney and head to a rented beach house for a week and have a relaxing time there doing whatever there is to do. This requires a bit more work on my part because this is where the deals and coupons come into play to get the most of our vacation for the least money. Ideally, we would plan to make this trip with another family and divide up the cost but that is highly unlikely in our circle of friends because not everyone can coordinate the same dates and such. If you are one of those that can, we would love to go in on vacation with you!!! Beach stays tend to be my least favorite of vacations because it's not vacation when I have to cook, clean, do laundry, and clean sandy boys 24/7! But hey, it's a break from the day to day and after husband's special project vacation prohibition, by next fall, we will be needing a vacation!
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