Saving For Disney - One Mom's Journey! ~ Jenny (part one)

Hi everyone!  We are running a special series about Jenny's family's journey to save up to go to Disney!  She is sharing this as part one, part two will come when they book their trip and part 3 when they travel, then hopefully an awesome trip report!!  If you have a story to share, please email me and I will share your story too!  Thank you Jenny!!



Hi Disney Fans!  I would like to start by introducing myself, my name is Jenny.  I am a stay-at-home mom, we have two great kids: David, who is 8 years old, and Sarah, who  is 2 1/2 years.

My kids and I are are huge Disney fans. We LOVE everything Disney. My husband, on the other hand, is a different story….let’s just say Chris only “likes” Disney because we LOVE it!  

Last July we started to talk about when we would be a good time to take the kids to Disney World (of course, I wanted to leave right then and there!), so we decided to look into it and get an idea of price. Chris Inearly fell out of his chair when we priced out the trip for a family of four to stay in a deluxe Disney resort (7 days, 6 nights), with the deluxe meal plan and park hopper passes for 6 days.

The look on his face was a cross between “I don’t want to disappoint my  family” and “I don’t think we afford to can do this.”

The very next day I started a Disney Fund Jar. I started to clean out the kids’ outgrown clothes and toys. I never realized how much we were holding onto. There was no reason to keep baby clothes, baby equipment, or old outgrown toys. They were just  taking up room and I had a much better use of them!

I started to sell these items on a few of the local Facebook Yard Sale Pages. After about a month, we had more than $1,000 in our Disney Fund!  Chris was amazed but predicted I would run out of stuff to sell in about a month. “No way you’ll make $6,000 selling stuff on Facebook to get us to Disney,” he laughed.

The challenge was on! Selling on Facebook was a great way to raise money and declutter our house. Chris began to joke that if he wasn’t careful he and the dog would both find themselves on sale on Facebook.

Fast forward 8 months and we have more than $4,800 saved in our Disney fund, thanks to Facebook and the tips from about 10 shifts working in my mom’s tea room! We are hoping to surprise our kids with a trip in May 2015.  

Sarah will turn 4 and Dave will turn 10 within 10 days of each other that month. We hope to be able to throw them a surprise joint birthday party and announce to them in a big way that we are going to Disney for their birthdays!  

Of course, we do have to save a little over $1,000 more to get us there, but I don’t think that will be a problem to do in the next 16 months.  Maybe I can even save enough for our spending money or airline tickets or both!  

Looks like the challenge of not being able to save by selling on Facebook is not really a challenge after all.