I have a confession to make. It’s a bit embarrassing. I have an addiction. To Disney. I know it’s commercialism at it’s finest and overpriced and blah blah blah. But Disneyland is amazing. Mr. Sim and I went on our honeymoon, on our first Thanksgiving, and we took Minionette #1 when I was pregnant with Minion #1. In the last four years, we have wanted to go back multiple times but made the decision to be good adults and put our money towards important things, like working vehicles and debt.
One of our big motivators to get out of debt quickly (at first, before we learned about FI) was to take our kids and go on a 5-day trip to Disneyland and California Adventure once we were debt free. We are undercover foodies, so we promised ourselves that we wouldn’t do the “budget” trip, but would enjoy our favorite restaurants.
After learning about FI, we still wanted to go on the trip, but I felt sick to my stomach thinking about spending $4,000 on flights, hotel, tickets, food, souvenirs, etc. I had heard about travel hacking, but the Dave Ramsey girl inside of me was terrified to open up credit cards. Mr. Sim and I discussed it (at length), and we decided that if I could come up with a plan to use credit card rewards without spending any additional money while saving a significant amount, we’d go for it.
We are currently about halfway through our plan! Because we have a low income, and therefore a low spend threshold, many of the options laid out in Brad Barrett’s Disney hacking course were not feasible for us. In fact, it’s a big stretch for us to hit $4,000 in 3 months because of our low expenses. However, when all is said and done, we will have paid for the tickets, souvenirs, hotel and flight taxes, and a little bit of food. Our estimated spending for the original $4,000 trip is right around $1,300. That means we will be saving $2,700!
Here’s how:
First, we realized one of our larger expenses was going to be a hotel. We looked into doing an AirBnB, but that would mean we would have to rent a car, pay for parking, etc. In the end, we wouldn’t have saved anything. We went ahead and opened up an American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card. The sign-on bonus for that card was 70,000 points after meeting a minimum spend of $3,000 in 3 months. We also earned about 9,000 points just from the regular spending, so after 3 months, we hit just over 79,000 SPG points. We transferred those over to our SPG Loyalty account, and reserved a room at Four Points by Sheraton Anaheim for five nights. Each night cost 17,500 points, and one night is free for every four nights you stay. Total points spent: 70,000. We did pay an extra person fee and taxes.
Next, we wanted to tackle our flights. We are currently working on reaching the $4,000 minimum spend in 3 months for our Chase Sapphire Preferred card. Once we hit that spend, we will earn 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. We already have some points from Southwest accrued, so we will transfer those points to Southwest and will have more than enough for our round trip flights. Again, we anticipate paying taxes on those flights. To hit that minimum spend, we arranged for the 3-month period to end shortly after we expect to receive our tax return check. With that, we can prepay grocery gift cards, gas cards, our 6-month car insurance premium, etc.
Finally, we plan to open a Capital One Savor card. When we spend $3,000 in 3 months, we will be able to “erase” $500 spent on restaurants. We plan to spend that amount in the parks, so once we hit that minimum spend, those dining experiences will be “free.” For those who do want to go the more budget route with food in the parks, you could also open up the Capital One Venture card and purchase your tickets from Undercover Tourist. The minimum spend is the same, and it would erase $500 in travel expenses (which could be from Undercover Tourist). Please be aware that it will not erase tickets purchased directly from the parks.
Even though we are buying the tickets without being able to erase any of the expenses, we were able to get a phenomenal deal from Undercover Tourist, which should still be in place through May. We purchased four tickets (the youngest two will still be free to get in) for 5 day, 1 park/day tickets for $872! When I originally priced out the tickets, they were going to be closer to $1,100. My assumption is that they are lowering the spring prices to try to increase visits before Star Wars Land opens up later in the year. I’m guessing it will be a madhouse when they open!
Yes, we could have saved even more if we started earlier by taking advantage of other cards. And we could have each opened up a card to get more rewards if we had enough spending to reach the minimum spends, but our goal was not to spend any more than we would have if we didn’t have the cards. $2,700 is nothing to sneeze at when it’s about a tenth of your annual income!
Travel hack away, my friends! And let me know if you have any questions!
