10 Money Making Secrets for Your Disney Dream Vacation

Disney is a dream vacation for young families. But it can be expensive! We’ve rounded up all the ways we’ve saved money to go on vacation.

1. User Testing

One of the quickest and easiest ways we’ve made some extra cash is through User Testing. These are companies that pay you to test out websites. They’ll record your experience with their webpage and ask you to follow very specific instructions. You will speak your thoughts out loud, and then sometimes answer questions at the end. Each user test only takes a few minutes, and they pay $5, $10, sometimes even $20 each! They pay via Paypal a week after you complete each assignment, so the turnaround time is awesome. There are a number of companies that will pay you to be a tester. Here are the ones I’ve used: Userlytics, User Testing, and User Feel.

2. Mystery Shopping

My absolute favorite way to earn a little money on the side is Mystery Shopping. There’s something really fun about being a secret detective in your favorite stores. It’s also feels very productive to make money going to the places you have to go anyway for groceries and such, plus the shops are usually really easy! For example, I once did a shop where I had to check out the bathroom of my local discount grocery store. All I had to do was take a couple photos and write up a short paragraph about my bathroom experience. I was there to get groceries anyway!

Another time, I had to wander around a department store holding a large item and time how long it took an associate to ask me if I needed a shopping cart. I was able to make money while Christmas shopping! Again, there are a number of organizations that hire mystery shoppers. Please do your research. Don’t give out your personal information unless they are a legit business. The three I’ve used are: Best Mark, Market Force, and Secret Shopper.

3. Rover.com

If you love animals this might be the perfect side hustle for you. Rover.com connects pet owners with people who offer boarding services, house sitting services, dog walking services, and more. You don’t have to have a big house or fancy yard. We have boarded a number of dogs while we lived in a townhouse with a small fenced yard. Our dog Lily has stayed with a Rover.com sitter that lived in an apartment with no yard! The sitter just walked Lily to a nearby park several times a day. We absolutely love Rover.com. We get photos and videos of our pup, we know she’s sleeping in someone’s home, and not in a cold, loud dog kennel. We’ve made more from Rover.com than any other side hustle. Check it out here.

4. Care.com

Like Rover.com, this site will connect you with people that need a services. They also have pet sitting opportunities, but a plethora of others, like childcare, senior care, errands, tutoring, housekeeping, etc. If you like to help people this might be a perfect way for you to earn extra vacation cash. Look at the details here.

5. Use Your Tax Refund

For some people this might be a no-brainer. If you typically get a tax refund, use that money towards a dream vacation! If you have room to spare in your budget you could also increase your withholding to beef up your tax refund next year. Speak with your employer if this is something you’re interested in adjusting.

6. Ask for Disney Gift Cards for Birthdays and Holidays

If your kids are anything like mine, they get WAY too many toys from friends and family. Let your people know that you’re saving up for a dream Disney vacation, and tell them that contributing would be way more meaningful than another toy that’s going to get lost in the clutter. Ask for Disney gift cards, or give you cash to contribute to Disney gift cards for every birthday and holiday. You could also eliminate gifts from YOU to your kids. Let them know that the money you would have spent on a gift is in your vacation fund! Pro Tip: Getting the gift cards means you wont spend that cash on something else! It will be designated specifically for Disney.

7. Kick a Habit & Stash the Savings

Two Birds. One Stone. If you have a bad habit you want to break, use it as an opportunity to save money for your vacation, and reward yourself for getting heathier. Whether you want to break the habit of getting a latte every morning, or drinking soda, or getting that pint of ice cream every week, take the money that you would spend on those habits and put it in a jar (where you can SEE it, so you feel like you’re making progress). Then, when its time for your Disney dream vacation, it will feel like a reward for kicking that bad habit to the curb!

8. Virtual Assistant

If you are computer savvy, you could earn extra cash in your spare time by being a virtual assistant. They are basically helpers for business owners and entrepreneurs that simply cant get everything done. They might do research tasks, complete data entry items, manage social media accounts, and plethora of other tasks. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, check out UpWork and Fiverr.

9. Sell Things!

Selling physical goods can be lucrative. If you’ve got a lot of clutter around your house, you may be able to fund an entire vacation by just selling what you don’t use! And the best part is you don’t have to wait until spring to hold a garage sale and make pennies at a time. There are online forums to sell used items. If items are shippable you could use ebay.com. Or to sell locally you could use Facebook Marketplace.

If you don’t have any items at home to sell, that’s ok! There are plenty of opportunities to buy items, improve or repurpose them, and sell for a profit. For example, I built a custom farmhouse dining table using basic building lumber and high quality stain and finish. We moved, and had a much smaller dining space. So, I sold the table on Facebook Marketplace for almost $700 profit! Can you sew or knit? Or do you like to repurpose furniture? If you’re creative or handy, this might be the perfect gig for you.

10. Freelance Writing

You don’t need a degree in journalism to do a little freelance writing. If there are any topics you are knowledgably on, or interest in, I am sure there’s a blog or site that accepts user submissions. Think about the online content you already read – do they pay freelance writers for articles? Their website will tell you! One of my favorite things to write are Listicles, which are list-based articles. They can be lists of items to purchase, interesting facts, people, or any other topic. My favorite place that pays people to write interesting listicles is Listverse.

Bonus Tip: If you have a Target Red Card (could be a debit card, does not have to be a credit card), you get 5% off any purchase you make, including Disney gift cards. You can pay for your vacation online using these Disney gift cards, which essentially means you are shaving off 5% of your vacation costs! It’s free to sign up. Check out the details here.

Are there other ways YOU have saved up for a dream vacation? Have you tried any of these methods to make money for vacation? Let us know in the comments below!

Money Making Secrets for your Disney Dream Vacation

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