5 Ways we’re saving for a family vacation (without using our own money)

It sounds pretty crazy to save for a vacation without using our own money. No, we’re not stealing! And we’re not using anyone else’s money.  But I want to see how much we can save creatively from money that isn’t our regular income. Hear me out!

We have something exciting planned for our family in 2025 that requires some advanced planning and saving. A year ago, Mike and I were gifted a cruise- the first time we had ever done anything like that! Although we enjoyed a week of uninterrupted alone time, we also kept thinking about how our kids would love to the experience, too, so I started making plans.

Since most of our family travel is in the form of road trips, preparing for a more expensive cruise requires more saving and forethought.

I thought it would be fun to see how much of the trip cost we can cover without dipping into our normal budget. I always love a challenge!

I estimate the total cost of our trip will be around $8,600 all-in for the eight of us. You can see the complete breakdown on this estimated total, along with our savings plan at the end of the post.

Creative Ways We’re Saving

When we initially planned the trip back in November of last year, I decided that I wanted to see how much of the $8,600 we could come up with without using our normal paychecks. I’ve divided these activities into a few groups of like activities. Some of them are large sums, while others are many small sums. Both small and large sums can easily get lost when they aren’t directed toward a specific goal.

Here are five ways we have saved for our vacation without using our own money and how much we have saved so far with each. I’ll go into detail below the summary.

1-Bank Account Opening Bonuses: $1,200

Normally when we get advertisements in the mail with bonuses for opening new bank accounts or credit cards, we ignore them. Back in the day when we were working to pay off six figures of student loan debt, we would have been interested in the “free” money offered for jumping through a few hoops. Now that our only remaining debt is our mortgage, we haven’t jumped at these offers in many years.

If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, many banks will offer bonuses for opening a new checking or savings account. Requirements may include things like

• certain initial deposit
• certain daily balance
• length of keeping account open
• certain number of transactions

So far we have earned:

$300 bonus for opening a Chase Total Checking Account (this offer is still available )

$200 bonus for opening a Chase Savings Account

$400 extra bonus for opening both the Chase Checking and Savings Account

$300 for opening a Chase Business Checking Account (this offer is still available)

Sometimes it’s hard to find these offers when you’re looking for them, but if you are currently looking to do what we’re doing, some of these offers are actually still available.

2- Credit Card Opening bonuses: $1,100

Opening a new credit card almost always has bonuses too. Normally the bonuses are tied to a certain amount of spending within a certain time frame. Sometimes the bonuses come in the form of “points” but usually can be used for cash back. As with all credit cards, we pay the full balance every month so no interest is due. Otherwise the opening bonus is quickly countered by interest fees.

$900 bonus for opening a Chase Ink Business Credit Card (this offer is still available)

You have to spend $6,000 in the first three months in order to qualify for the $900 bonus. There are several different “Chase Ink” cards. The one we chose is Chase Ink Business Unlimited because there is no annual fee and it gets 1.5% back on all spending.

$200 bonus for opening a Carnival Credit Card

3- Cash Back (so far): $1,084

For the regular credit cards we use, we get cash back on all of our purchases. One of them gets 1% on all purchases with more on certain categories that change quarterly. Another one gets 1.5% on all purchases. Even though that doesn’t sound like much, it does add up over time. The third has a confusing point/reward system, but the points we have accrued will result in cash back from our cruise purchase (which we can use toward our other trip expenses like gas or parking.

$677 Credit Card Points Redeemed for Cash Back

This is cash back (from the two credit cards linked above) that was deposited directly in our checking account. With the way we budget, a statement credit works the same as a checking account deposit because when we spend money on a credit card we automatically set aside money for that purchase so it is ready when the credit card bill arrives. A statement credit means that some of the money that was set aside for paying the credit card bill can go toward our vacation fund instead.

$371 Cash Back from Cruise-Specific Credit Card

When our cruise payment is due, we will pay with our Carnival Mastercard which will allow us to cash in our current points (earned at 1 point per $1 spent) at a rate of 1.5%. Currently that amount of cash back would be $191, but this increases as we use the card. Additionally, paying the remaining $6,000 cost of the cruise will generate 12,000 points (2 points per $1 spent on cruises) which will be give us a statement credit of $180.

$36 Rakuten Cash Back

If you’re shopping online (pretty much anywhere besides Amazon), there is likely cash back available. There are many different companies that offer cash back. Whether it’s through Rakuten or another cash back site the key is to remember to go to their website first and click through to the online store you’re planning to buy from. One of the great things about Rakuten in particular is that they don’t have a certain payout threshold. They give you a payout every three months, even if it’s a small amount. The key is to remember to use it. I’m kicking myself as I write this because I do online orders for places like Walmart, Sam’s Club, Ebay, and Target all the time and I don’t always remember to go through Rakuten! If you don’t already have a Rakuten account, you can get a $30 bonus when you spend $30!

4- Selling Stuff: $198

I haven’t focused very much on this category. I am good at setting aside things that I can sell on Ebay, but not as good at taking the time to photograph and list items. Most of the things I have sold recently have been books and homeschool things that we are no longer using.

$198 Selling stuff on Ebay

5- Other Programs: $170

$80 OhmConnect

If you’ve been around here a while, you have probably heard me talk about OhmConnect. It’s a program that pays you to reduce your electricity usage. We used to be totally into it back when we had complete control over our utilities. Since renting out our Airbnb and now hosting a Ukrainian family in our apartment which is on the same meter, we can’t control their utility usage during OhmHours, so we aren’t earning tons like we used to, but we still earn a little. You can check your zip code here to see if the program works in your area.

$50 Referral Bonus

Occasionally I share things that I love with friends and earn a referral bonus. In this case, I shared how we are saving for a vacation without using our own money (yes, the very topic of this post!) and shared my referral link for opening a Chase checking account (which gets you $300!), which was a win for both of us!

$40 Product Recall

In our September budget update, I shared that we got a surprise $40 check in the mail for a sledge hammer that was recalled. We filled out and submitted the paperwork well over a year ago and had completely forgotten about it until the check came in the mail. We added that surprise check to our vacation fund!

It all adds up!

Any one of these individual line items may not seem like much. It’s easy for $10 of cash back here and a $50 bonus there to get lost in your bank account and not make a noticeable different in your budget. But when taken together and saved for a specific purpose, it all adds up!

After nearly a year of saving, all of these add up to more than $3,700! Now that’s real money!

We won’t save the entire cost of the trip like this, but I’m guessing we will have at least half saved without using money from our regular paychecks, which is pretty significant!

What’s even more significant is that if we hadn’t made the goal to creatively save as much as we could for this trip, we would have nothing to show for all of the seemingly small amounts of money. Plus, we wouldn’t have been motivated to earn the bigger amounts for opening accounts either. Instead we would have used $3,700+ from our regular paycheck!

And for that, I’ll calling this challenge a huge success!

Family Cruise Cost Estimate

In case you’re wondering how I came up with the $8,600 estimate for the total cost of our trip, here is the breakdown below. We might spend less, but I doubt we will spend more.

• Cruise deposit: $400 – We paid this deposit when I made the booking in November 2023. PAID
• Cruise balance: $6,000 – This will be due in January
• Passports: $780 ($130 x 6) – Mike and I already had passports but we needed passports for all 6 kiddos. PAID
• Gas to Long Beach $160 (400+mi )  We will be driving the 15-passenger van since it’s the only one that fits us all.
• Lodging for night before cruise $200 I’m planning to drive down the day before our cruise to make sure that we get there without incident (car trouble, traffic, etc). Getting there the night before will give us wiggle room and peace of mind.
• Parking at port $184 ($23 x 8 days) Even though we will have to pay for parking, it’s much cheaper than flights for 8 of us!
• Excursion? $500 – We might come up with our own excursion rather than booking one offered by the cruise line. We’ll budget some money here and then decide what to do.
• Internet package x 2 $200 Last time Mike and I shared an internet package between the two of us and it was really cumbersome. When the time comes, we might opt to not get an internet package. Last time it was mostly to be connected with our kids and their grandparents, but since the kids will be with us it won’t be essential. We’ll include it in the budget and decide about it later.
• Gas home: $160 (400+ mi ) An estimate of the gas we’ll use driving home afterward.

Total Estimated Cost: $8,584

Total Remaining to Pay: $7,400

Savings Plan

We started saving in November 2023. Our goal was to set aside $500 each month, which would give us $9,000 by the time of our trip.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we decided to sneak in an epic trip to Guatemala in July 2024. Having our cruise savings already started is actually what made that trip possible. We just increased how much we were saving each month to make both trips possible. You can read about how we budgeted for our first international family trip and then you can read about how our actual spending compared with our budget.

So now that our Guatemala trip is in the books, we are back to saving for our 2025 family cruise. As of the end of September, we have $4,744 saved. We still have 7 months left to save the remaining $2,660, which comes out to roughly $380 per month.

Let’s hear YOUR ideas!

Have you ever challenged yourself to save this way?

Have you ever opened an account just for the bonuses?

What do you do with the little sums of money that you get like bonuses and cash back?

What other ideas do you have for us?

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