This Year's Financial Goals: A Disney Vacation for 6 For Close to Free

We had such a great time at Disney last year that this year's goal is to go back to Disney World for as close to free as possible for a family of 6.

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I am the mom of four kids and like most mom's I've had to make sacrifices.  I've always wanted to take vacations and I kept waiting for the money to be there but it never is.  Last summer, I spent most of our savings account on a Disney World vacation.  We had so much fun. We want to go back and add Universal Orlando into to the mix as well.  However, even though I was very frugal in my planning, it was very expensive.

My goal this year is to have us go back for almost free.  I'm going to journal my experiment here.

I keep reading about a lot of families of four going to Disney World for free or cheap just by signing up for credit cards.  These deals won't work by themselves for a family of 6 so there's going to have to be another way for us.

Here's my plan and some possible bumps in the road.

1. Apply for credit cards.  We have fairly good credit though my husband doesn't have a lot of credit. This part of the plan really pains us because we are big fans of Dave Ramsey so this makes me incredibly nervous.  We are going to plan this very carefully with what will be charged on each card and hopefully have a credit card emergency fund.  We have approval on 3 of the 4 cards we applied for (2 each).  The last is questionable and I may have to come up for a new game plan on that one.

2. Target and other gift card savings.  That's right. I'm going to shop mostly the gift card deals at Target. I know there are cheaper places to shop than Target but I'm going to try to be reasonable about which deals we do.  Then I'm going to use the "free" Target gift cards to buy Disney Gift Cards.

3. Rewards Programs.  I am going to earn gift cards and free gas from Swagbucks and use points from Plenti to pay for gas. 

4. Odd Jobs. I do a few jobs like secret shopping that only take 15 min. or so and aren't part of my regular paycheck.  I also plan to put that money towards a trip and step up the work here.

5. Disney Vacation Account.  I plan to combine any extra money from odd jobs and gift cards I earn or shop for into a Disney Vacation Account.  For every $1000 we spend from our Disney Vacation Account, we will get a $20 Disney Gift Card as long as we spend it before the end of 2017.

I started about 5 days ago.  This is what we have so far:

Target: $45 in gift cards.
Swagbucks: $25 giftcard from points previously earned cashed out for Target giftcard.
Lowes Visa Gift Card: Bought enough qualifying groceries for the $10 Proctor and Gamble Rebate.
Plenty: We *should* have 5050 points being added from AT&T since we added our daughter to our AT&T account from another company and purchased a phone on the Next plan. It's their current deal and we plan to pay that off in a few months.

Thanks to the Target gift cards, I've already been able to order a $50 Disney gift card on order and the first spend bonuses from the credit cards, I'm counting September's balance as $225.  Not bad for one day in September.  I'm new to this so who knows if we can keep going at this rate.  Still, $225 in "free money" isn't a bad start.

What are your frugal travels ideas and ways to earn "free money"?