Budgeting / Saving

Obviously everyone has their different way of saving up for a Disney trip. There is no doubt about it, Walt Disney World – and everything once you get there – is a costly endeavour. There are ways to budget, and ways to not spend the earth, but if, like us, you’ve decided that a few extras are on your itinerary or you just want to find a way to save up, I wanted to share the way we’ve been saving up.

Stephen and I opened up a joint Monzo account. If you are not familiar with Monzo, it is an digital bank account (there are others available such as Starling and Revolut) within which you can separate your money from your main balance into pots for your various spending/saving needs.

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We have both had individual Monzo accounts for just over a year now and we have been together for 19 years, married for almost 17, and this is the first time in all that time that we have been able to effectively manage our money. Previously we have nearly always used overdrafts, credit cards or just generally been in debt. Now we are OUT of debt and managing our money really well, so I want to just put that out there first things first! (This is not sponsored by Monzo, I just wanted to say why we use it!!)

So we opened up the joint account and all of our spare money each month (WE HAVE SPARE MONEY THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!) goes into this account. Then I have made pots for each individual thing that we needed to save for on the trip. The great thing about the pots is, once the money is in there, it can’t accidentally be spent. You have to physically move it to the main balance to spend it. Also, you can lock up a pot until a fixed date too so that you can’t even move it for a while.

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So, for example, here are the things we are saving for. There were some other items on the list but as we have already saved up and paid for them, we’ve deleted or renamed those particular pots.

We are hoping by doing this, we shouldn’t come unstuck when we arrive. We have put away a little spending money for ourselves and the girls too, but what we love is that the girls have their own little savings accounts which work in a similar way and they have been putting a little of their own money aside too, by saving a bit of their own weekly allowance! They are already doing better than us!