Florida Projects: how to afford it

I have heard from several asking how we could afford the Florida Project (going to Florida for a month). In this article, I will share with you some of our secrets!

First, our Disney Visa Credit card. We have the extra point program and charge everything we purchase. We earned enough points in two years to pay for our Disney year passes! That means we are visiting the parks for free!

Next, we visit Down Town Disney a lot. Down Town Disney has no admission fee. We also visit the Disney resorts and tour them. They don't have admission fees either. And there are free shows, for example: Yeeha Bob at Riverside, magicians at Boardwalk, and nightly movies under the stars - all free!

We had a house with a full kitchen. So, we bought groceries like we normally would, and ate two or three meals at home per day. Compared to staying at home? No additional cost.

As part of our normal budget, we go to the movies about once per month and eat out once or twice (sometimes more) per week. We transferred that normal spending pattern to Disney. We did, admittedly, splurge on some Disney dinning experiences and those contributed to the cost of the vacation. While I am glad we had those experiences, I would skip them next time and thus save on a lot of the restaurant costs.

We normally do a summer vacation - either Myrtle Beach or Florida. That is part of our yearly budget that we save for. We learned that for the cost of a hotel room for two weeks? We could almost rent a house for a month! Renting a house is a lot cheaper than hotels. When renting a house there are many options with many price choices - we just had to find one that fit our budget. 

In addition to house rental and restaurants, we drove our van 2,500 more miles than we normally would have. That gasoline cost us an extra $370.

You could drive from New York to Florida without stopping (20 hours) but we get a hotel along the way. I got great deals on hotels - I found a HoJo for $47! The hotels added to our vacation cost.

We extended our vacation with several stops. South of the Border is a free stop. The USS Yorktown required admission. Hershey World is free, but has some optional activities that you must pay for. And touring the Gettysburg battlefields is free.

Going to Florida for a month isn't cheap. But we were able to do things that kept the costs under control. House rental, hotels, gas, and some restaurants totaled up most of our vacation cost. But we used our credit card points, transferred our normal spending habits, and rented a house to help keep costs low.