Tips and Tricks

  Ah Disney... they most magical place on earth. And also one of the more expensive.  I'm going to share my tips for how I budget for my Disney trips, and we'll start with the most expensive: The park tickets. Unfortunately Disney has gotten INCREDIBLY greedy (Thanks Bob Chapek  Edit as of Nov '22: Welcome back Bob Iger!!) and their prices for park tickets have gotten very expensive over the last few years. And not to mention that it's basically an extra dash of salt in the wound when you go to buy your tickets online and see this: "Oh look, tickets for $109." Think again. Most tickets for weekends and during "nice weather" average more like $139-154 BEFORE taxes. (Add on about $10 per ticket per day for taxes) So unfortunately the park tickets don't see really any discounts (and even for military, it's only a couple bucks for "weekend warriors") though they do offer better discounts for 4-day tickets with park hoppers:   vs the reg...

So we're coming up on the end of 2022 and I'm looking at how to keep my Companion Pass for 2023. I have used my Southwest Credit Card for nearly all purchases this year, registered for a couple of the Promotions that Southwest runs on their site (like this one pictured below):  And I am still about 48,313 points shy of earning the Companion Pass for next year: What's a girl to do? I'm not gonna lie, I've had a very difficult time this year finding hotel stays that will either give me enough points for the money spent, or make sense to stay in for the trip (location-wise, budget-wise, or quality-wise). I've booked approximately 3 hotels out of the 9 hotel stays I've done this year on the Southwest website to earn points off of... and even still those only got me maybe 1,000 points here, or 2,000 points there (not much to speak of). I've got 3 trips left on the calendar for the rest of the year, and 2 of them already have hotels booked (both done through ...