Saving for your next Disney trip
Updated March 2023
Before we discuss how to save for your next Disney trip, there is something I need to say -
I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR!
Many of my friends will testify to this statement as I was commonly known to be the worst of our group with money when I was younger. Thankfully Sarah looks after 99.9% of our finances which is probably how I’m writing this page with a roof over my head!
Anyway, I digress. Lets get back to helping you save for next Disney trip.
I recently got fed up with high street banks for a range of reasons and decided to look at alternatives.
Revolut is a free online banking service (paid upgrades are available).
It doesn’t have any branches, but you do still get a bank card and can therefore make cash withdrawals like a normal current account - Including when you’re abroad.
Revolut have an app (who doesn’t these days), which is where you manage all of your banking needs.
Here you can see your account, vaults and pockets as well as many other interesting parts of the app.
Let me go through some of these sections with you now.
Accounts
Revolut only allows you to have one UK based account.
This may seem like a hindrance, but Revolut has an interesting way of dealing with this.
Unlike traditional banks were you can have multiple accounts and savings accounts. Revoult uses a system they call ‘Pockets’ & ‘Vaults’
You can open an account in a variety of currencies including GBP, USD and EURO.
This is especially useful for when you go to Disneyland or Disney World in America or Disneyland Paris in France.
Also as DVC annual dues are paid in USD, you can also use your USD account to pay them from there.
You can also easily transfer money between your different currency accounts and the transfer rate will be the rate that split second of the transaction.
Pockets
These are very useful for paying bills, subscriptions and reoccurring payments.
By assigning payments to a pocket, you can separate your regular bills from your bank account allowing you to see your actual available money, rather than a grand total.
You can even put money into your ‘Pocket’ ready to pay the bills you assigned to it, meaning that when a bill goes out, you’ve already covered it in advance and don’t need to worry.
Personally I’ve found ‘Pockets’ to be a game changer in how I think about money as I can easily see how much goes out each month and therefore how much I need to credit my ‘Pocket’ by when I get paid.
Vaults
Now this is the part I think will be helpful to those of you wanting to save for your next Disney trip and if you are already a DVC Owner, you might want to do this to help pay for your annual dues.
The name ‘Vault’ is very apt for this feature as each vault is like your own bank safe.
When you create a vault you are essentially opening a savings account.
You can pick to either ‘Save and Earn’ or ‘Organise My Money’.
Both will earn interest like a normal saving account. The difference is if its a personal vault or if others can contribute to it.
Putting money into a vault is useful if you want the money you are putting aside for your trip to earn interest. For example you may have earned a bonus at work, but want to wait until there is a deal on at Disney or an airline is having a sale on flights.
Put the money into a vault and let it earn interest so you have even more to spend on your trip.
‘Organise My Money’ you have two options - ‘Store for Myself’ & ‘Share with friends’
Either can be used in the same way, with the exception that ‘Share with friends’ allows more than one person to contribute to the vault and withdraw (if assigned that privilege).
Once you’ve opened your ‘Vault’ you can give it a name, select a theme (i.e holiday) and select the currency you want to use.
You can even upload a photo to help customise your vault and help you remember what it is your saving for.
You can then set goals. And this is where I think Revolut is useful for Disney fans.
Say you want to go on holiday in September 2024.
You can set a goal deadline for August of that year and tell it exactly how much you want to have saved by then.
The vault will then workout how much you need to save each week in order to hit your goal.
It will even tell you if you are on target, behind schedule or if your’ll reach your goal early.
If you chose to open a ‘Share with Friends’ vault you can invite friends to contribute.
For example if you are planning a trip with a large group of family and friends, each person could contribute to the vault for say food, drinks and tickets.
In the overview screen you can see how much each person has contributed and manage permissions.
I really like this feature and Sarah and I use this all the time to save for our trips.
You can set up regular deposits from your main account and even setup round ups on your purchases. Round ups will add 2p to a £1.98 purchase for example. The 2p will then be added into your vault and to be honest, you won’t even notice it, but it will soon add up in your vault and help you save.
Sarah and I use Round Ups on our ‘DVC annual dues’ vault and have found we can save a considerable amount over the year to help contribute towards the annual payments.
As I said at the beginning of this page - I’M NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR and my review of Revolut is purely my opinions and experiences with the app. That said I have found it to be an extremely useful banking service.
I can view detailed itemised statements of all my income and expenditure. I can organise my bills into account and keep them separated from my actual available money and I can save for the things I really want with the help of goals and Sarah can contribute to our combined vaults like those for upcoming trips and DVC annual dues.
You can upgrade your Revolut account via monthly or annual fees which then adds things like Travel Insurance and free currency exchanges.
You can find details about these features in the app and on their website.
If you do want to try Revolut - Click on the image here to use our ‘friends link’ where you can earn £50.
(terms and conditions apply)
