Perfect timing...Since I'm only about $60 short of my goal for 2018's trip, it is time to start looking at 2019
.
I have 2 budgets...Cash and Gift Cards. My gift card budget is all 100% free money because all of my gift cards are acquired through rewards programs. I never "buy" a gift card. My cash budget comes mostly from donating plasma but I also have $75 deducted from my paycheck every 2 weeks.
This budget is a little convoluted and confusing but I will try to keep it simple...
First, the backstory...
The trip is October 18-26, 2019. The travel party will be myself and my 2 daughters (16 and 14), my sister and her daughters (11 and 7) and our parents (71 and 68...well, we come home the day before mom's 68th birthday
). We all took a trip together (with my DH and DBiL) in Oct 2016 and the husbands did not have much fun. They were a hot mess about two days into the trip and so my sister and I decided that we would like to take another trip with just our girls and leave the boys at home...they were 100% fine with that decision...but of course, Dad has to come
. So the dates were set back in 2016.
Now, here is where the budget story starts. As soon as we set our dates, we bought our tickets! We bought 7-day park-hoppers from UCT and I bought them only for my girls. For this trip, I will be using what is remaining of my Gold AP. (*How I ended up with that is an even longer story
) So for my budgeting purposes, the tickets are not included since they were paid for back in January of 2017.
Lodging...well...*I* am not paying OOP for anything
. The plan is that my dad has lined up a DVC member who will be transferring 122 BWV points into my account. I will be using 167 of my AKV points to book a standard 2BR at AKV Kidani for 5 nights (Fri-Tu) and then we will use the 122 BWV points to book a P/G 2BR for Wed-Fr nights. My dad and my sister are splitting the cost of the BWV points.
That brings me to airfare...that's a little simpler. Back in 2016, Dad decided to sign up for the SWA Visa card and get the 50,000 bonus miles. Since then, he's put EVERYTHING on that card (paying it off every month, of course). They even recently remodeled their condo and added another 10K points! Dad thinks that by the time we need to buy our tickets, he will have over 110,000 points in his account...and they never go anywhere! He said that since I am using so many of my DVC points, he will use his RR points to buy his tickets and then he will use whatever is leftover to buy tickets for me and my girls. He said he will get 2 for me and then if there is still enough, he will get one for my sister. So, the way I am figuring it, I should only need to pay for one R/T airfare
. I always buy EBCI for the trip home and I have just found that it is easier to add it both ways, especially when booking with points, so I will budget $500 for airfare, just to be safe.
That means the only major expenses that I need to cover are food and entertainment. We do not use the dining plan since I will have my TIW card from my 2018 trip that will still be valid. My food budget is usually around $1500 but I will have to tweak that when we sit down and decide what TS restaurants we want to try. I also said that my dad WILL be going to the Halloween party, even if it means I have to pay for it so I'm adding $500 to the budget for (5) tickets.
That brings my overall budget to $3300. For now, I will be splitting that into $1800 for the cash budget and $1500 for the gift card budget. I know that the airfare will almost certainly be a cash expense. The food and the party tickets ($2000) could both be paid with gift cards, but I am not sure I can come up with $2000 in "free" money in the next 17 months...that's a pretty lofty goal. The only other thing I will add to the budget is about $300 in random expenses like tips and my portion of the groceries that we will have delivered to the resort.
OVERALL BUDGET: $3500
CASH: $1750
GIFT CARDS: $1750