This is a success story from my Reader, Emily! She’s doing such a great job!
We planned a trip to Disneyland in August of 2012. We are a family of 6, but our twins who were 10 months old at the time were free, so we only need to purchase 4 park tickets. We opted for the hopper tickets because it allowed us a bit more freedom. It was up to me to come up with the money to pay for the Disney portion of our trip. Our trip was a total of 2 ½ weeks and we were travelling from Portland to San Diego. We were visiting family along the way, so the gas portion of our trip was paid for out of our normal vacation fund, but in order for us to be able to afford Disney I needed to save extra through online sources. Here is a breakdown of our expenses:
$1011 – 6 nights hotel 1 block from Disney
$964 – Disney 6 Day Park Hopper Tickets
$300 – Food (Lunch in park, dinner out of park)
$2275.00
I saved through various means. For starters, we were looking for a new credit card that would offer us better rewards than miles, so we signed up for a new Chase Freedom card. For signing up we received a $400 bonus! I earned money from selling crochet hats I made ($270), online survey companies ($975), Swagbucks ($20), Credit card rewards ($359), and little bits here and there from Ebates, gifts, catalinas, etc. to come up with the final amount we needed. I started saving for the trip in Februrary 2012 and had our final amount earned towards the end of July. It was crazy fun earning the money and saving for this trip.
Since then, I have “couponed to Christmas” 3 times as well as a 10 year anniversary trip to Hawaii for my husband and I last August. Next up…braces for our oldest son, Christmas 2015, and hopefully another trip to Disneyland in 2016, I’m itching to get back there!
