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A great way to earn money for your vacation is to use a credit card that will earn you miles or rewards. If you currently have credit card debt, I don’t recommend that you get another card. If credit cards are not paid off monthly, they are not a frugal choice. Paying interest defeats the money earning potential of the cards.
If you don’t have credit card debt, and you can afford to pay things off on a monthly basis, then you can make the credit cards work for you. Between my husbands work and personal credit cards, he has earned enough miles to fly our family of 7 to Orlando for FREE. Getting enough miles for all of us to fly has taken YEARS, but by paying for his expenses with the cards and then paying them off each month is what earned us those 7 FREE tickets. If we didn’t have those free tickets, our trip would be costing us and additional $3500. That is a HUGE savings!
I use a rewards card for my everyday purchases, and pay it off as well. My card of choice used to be the Fred Meyer rewards card, because getting FREE groceries sounded great to me. I decided to apply for the Disney Rewards Visa and am using that one now. They are currently offering $50 Disney Dream Reward Dollars for applying, getting accepted and using the card once.
Before I applied for the card, I did some searching, and I found an offer that is even better than the one they are advertising on their site. You can find an offer for a $100 Disney Gift Card HERE. This is the offer that I chose. My $100 gift card arrived in the mail about 2 weeks after I made my first purchase. That was one of the easiest $100 I ever made, I was able to earn $100 just for applying and using the card. That $100 will probably go towards our souvenirs at the parks. Plus, as I use the card I will be earning more rewards each month. I am also eligible for Disney discounts and perks too.
Check out THIS post over at Saving Cents with Sense, it is actually a guest post from Angela at Savvy Mom Finds regarding her trip to Disney that was extremely cheap, because of the Disney Rewards Visa she had been using for years.
If credit cards are not an option, there are also ways to earn gift cards that can help you pay for your vacations, I am highlighting two of my favorites.
Swag Bucks -You can redeem your points for a Southwest Airlines gift card to help pay for a flight you plan on taking. My favorite gift card to redeem my swag Bucks for, is Amazon. The Amazon gift cards are definitely the best value, you can get a $5 Amazon gift card for only 45 Swag Bucks. When we went on our first Disney trip 2 years ago, we were in need of a new point and shoot camera, so I saved all my Amazon gift cards that I earned, and was able to buy a new camera without any money out of my pocket.
This is by far my favorite way to earn FREE gift cards, if you aren’t currently using Swag Bucks, you can sign up HERE. Using Swag Bucks is simple, you simply go to their site, and do your web searches from there instead of using Google. Occasionally, you will be rewarded with Swag Bucks. You can also share with your friends, family or blog readers and you will earn Swag Bucks every time they do (up to 100).
MyPoints
– Mypoints is one of the very first reward sites I started using. I started using it nearly 9 years ago, and still use it on a regular basis. Mypoints will reward you with points for reading emails (an clicking through to a site), shopping online, and for completing offers. Mypoints has a HUGE list of rewards, you could redeem gift cards for hotels, restaurants, airlines and more! My husband and I had a getaway for our anniversary once, and we paid for our one night hotel stay at the Marriott with gift cards I earned through Mypoints. They have several choices when it comes to travel, like Marriott, Hyatt, United, lots of restaurants, and even Prepaid Visa cards.Other Gift Cards – Several people have have shared with my that they save their gift cards that they earn to use for vacation money. Target gift cards are an example of this. Target will often have a coupon to earn a $10 gift card when you bring in a prescription. They also have gift card offers when you buy certain items. Saving all these gift cards will help you pay for those things you need for your vacation like sunblock, snacks or even souvenirs.
I would love to hear if you have used rewards cards or gift cards to help you pay for a vacation.
