Disney Vacation - The Back Story
I figured the easiest way to share our hints and tips was to take it day by day....we'll see how this goes. But before I can begin, I have to give you the Reader's Digest version of US. We are a family of 4. A Husband, a Wife, a 21 year old Daughter (who celebrated her 'birthday week' in Disney) and a 16 year old Daughter. We are also known as Gary, Whitney, Stephanie and Samantha. (You'll probably hear a lot about us in the next few days.) Gary and I were married on June 15, 1999 and he was fortunate enough to not only marry me, but my two girls as well. We spent our Honeymoon - ALL OF US - in Disney. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship! Not just our love for each other but our love for Disney!!!
We have traveled back 3 times since (including this trip) and always swear we are going back every year. Of course, we said that back in 1999 and, because of money restraints, it obviously did not happen. But we are older and wiser now. Wiser because the first year we paid for everything using a credit card...and probably spent the next two years paying it off. We don't do things that way anymore! Older because our kids - who aren't kids anymore - understand that if we want to go on vacation then we have to make sacrifices throughout the year to pay for it. If we go on vacation it is PAID IN FULL --- money in the bank to cover all charges -- before we pull out of the driveway. It saves a ton of money, a ton of worry and a ton on wrinkle cream!! (Worry = wrinkles; wrinkles=wrinkle cream!!)
I'm pretty big into couponing (not extreme - please don't put me with those crazies!) - and one day in my search for great deals I ran across a website called www.couponingtodisney.com. The lady that runs the site, Kristen, had started noting how much money she was saving using coupons. She began socking that money away for a trip to Disney for their family. Wait...what?? I coupon. I save money. I could do that too!! So, before I go any further with my narrative, you should totally save the link up there and visit her website. (When you are done with me, because I'm still talking.) I could re-write her entire guide, but why in the world do I want to do that?? Go straight to the source, I always say!
I will tell you what I started doing though. For every coupon I used, every paid survey I did, every rebate I received, every cash back bonus we got, I kept a running total of how much I had "earned". (For the record, Gary makes the money....it's my job to SAVE it.) Each month I transferred the monthly total from checking into savings...and then we.did.not.touch.it. We didn't use it to go out to eat, or buy a new outfit, or pay our bills with that money. That was our vacation fund and we just pretended it wasn't there. I started saving on June 1st, 2010 and paid $3,088.14 in full on October 8, 2011. It took 17 months to save the money but it was soooooooo worth it! I'll be honest with you too - the trip was 100 times sweeter knowing that it was paid for (with quick service dining plan - but we'll talk about that later) before we left the house, and that I had been an integral part in paying for this. It was even sweeter when my daughters thanked their Daddy for taking them and ME for saving the money so we could go. Sometimes nothing feels better than a job well done and a great big pat on the back!
You know what? It honestly was not that hard. Oh, I got really burnt out a few months ago and not only didn't want to coupon, but didn't want to even go grocery shopping! That's when Stephanie stepped in. For some strange reason, she LIKES to buy groceries. So she guilted me back into clipping and she started shopping. The great thing that happened was that she got a fabulous lesson on saving and couponing! She's great at it too! But all in all, it was pretty simple to put a few dollars here and there away each month and just pretend it didn't exist. Once I hit the $1,000 mark it actually started to be fun!
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