Free Disney Vacation and Update
Four Nights for a Family of Four for Free!
Quick Update
The Slack Group continues to be a major success, and lots of alfa is coming out of there. This is exactly what I intended. For it to be a community where BowTiedBum members can share tips and tricks and help each other succeed. For some reason, the vast majority of paid substack readers are still not in the Slack Group. If you are paid Substack subscriber, please DM me on Twitter for access to the Slack Group!
is taking one of the manufactured spending methods and working on a reselling angle that could potentially be a solid play. If successful, he’ll have an additional income stream worth $500-$1,000 a month. If it works, I’ll have him do a guest post here. Keep your eyes out in the Slack Group for his progress.I’m proud of the determination guys in the Slack Group have. It’s been inspiring to see. One of the best things to come out of it, is a huge success rate with people calling the reconsideration line and getting approved, after initially getting denied for a card application. One guy even went to the Chase branch and took the rep out for drinks after getting approved! Love the hustle!
Big post dropping next week. I think it will open up a whole other dimension to this game, so keep your eyes out for it.
With that said, let’s get some families to Disney World for a once in a lifetime trip.
Disney World
A week ago, I tweeted the below. My inbox immediately blew up with parents that were interested in taking their young kids to Disney, on a tight budget. Rather than give each parent a customized plan, I wanted to write a post about how I would go about planning for this trip, and let people DM me with specific questions after reading it.
A few things first. This post assumes you’ve read previous posts and familiarized yourself with the Slack Group. If you haven’t start there. That will answer most of your questions. Second, Disney World is incredibly expensive. No way to sugar coat it. However, this guide will help SIGNIFICANTLY reduce costs. For the sake of this post, let’s say a family of four (two parents and two kids under 10) are going for four nights. From Chicago (random city) to Orlando. This guide will show you how to cover the entire hotel, all flights, and all of the park passes. Remember, your kids won’t care if you’re staying at the Ritz Carlton or not. They want you to be the hero that takes them to Disney to meet Mickey Mouse.
Each parent will be getting three cards over the course of four months. We’ll start with which cards to get, and then later go into a detailed explanation on exactly how to generate the spending required to hit each sign up bonus (via manufactured spending.
With that said, let’s get right into it.
Chase Ink Cash
Each parent will be applying for a Chase Ink Business Cash. Please read the Chase cards post below.
If you have doubts about your approval odds, you can click the link below, or stop into a Chase branch to see if you can get preapproved in person before applying.
https://www.chase.com/preapproved
You’ll need to spend $6,000 on each card to hit the sign up bonus, but I’ll explain how to easily do this below. The sign up bonus for the Chase Ink Business Cash is currently at an all-time high: 90K Ultimate Rewards points after $6,000 spend. We’ll use some MS techniques to put $6,000 worth of “office supply” spend on the card to generate another 30K UR points (office supply spending counts as 5X UR per dollar spent). After a couple months, we’ll have generated lots of UR points (see below:)
P1: 90K UR (sign up bonus)
P2: 90K UR (sign up bonus)
P1: 30K UR (5X category bonus)
P2: 30K UR (5X category bonus)
Total: 240K UR (worth $2,400)
Citi Premiere
Each parent will also be applying to the Citi Premiere card. I recommend doing this at the same time as the Chase Ink Business Cash (you can even do it the same day). Current sign up bonus is 60K ThankYouPoints after spending $4,000. While this might seem like a lot of spending combined, we’ll be using gift cards we purchased with the Chase Ink Cash to pay off the Citi balance. Detailed instructions on how to do this will be discussed later on in the post.
P1: 60K TYP (worth $600)
P2: 60K TYP (worth $600)
Total: 120K TYP (worth $1,200)
Chase Sapphire Preferred
The third card (and final) card each parent will be getting is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Current sign up bonus is 60K UR points after spending $4,000.
P1: 60K UR (worth $600)
P2: 60K UR (worth $600)
Total: 120K UR (worth ($1,200)
Quick Note
Yes, this is a lot of spending. But we’ll cover how to do it quickly and easily, and get the money back in your bank account later on.
Putting it All Together
Flights
Go to the Chase Travel Portal, select flights and enter your dates. I found the below to be the same price listed on United’s website. However, we get a better redemption if we use UR points to book. Note that I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve so my points get 1.5X for travel, but if you have the Preferred card, it would be 1.25X in the travel portal. The below flight would cost you roughly 35K UR points per person (with the Preferred card) or 140K UR total. Go a head and book it. We’ll only be using 140K UR points, and we’ll still have 220K UR points left!
Hotel
No, we won’t be paying $1,000+ a night to stay in a five star resort. Remember your kids won’t care. It’ll make no difference to them. Your job is to take them on a once in a lifetime trip, and my job is to make those dreams a reality.
I found the below hotel on the Hyatt website. 8,000 Hyatt points a night is a steal! The room has two queen beds and a sleeper sofa, and the rate is so cheap that you can either have the whole family stay in one room or get two separate rooms. Doesn’t matter. We have enough points either way, so it will be free. Again, this hotel is not located on a Disney property, but they offer a free and quick shuttle back and forth.
Hyatt Place Orlando/Lake Buena Vista
https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/hotel/florida/hyatt-place-orlando-lake-buena-vista/orlzb/area-attractions
To book, select your dates, number of people, and room. Hyatt is a transfer partner of Chase, so you can transfer 32K UR points to your Hyatt account for four free nights. After using these 32K UR points, we still have 188K UR points left! As well as 120K Citi TYP left!
Theme Park Tickets
Tickets for a one day pass for adults start at $109. This includes one park per day. Not sure it would even be possible or enjoyable to visit multiple parks per day.
Note we still have 188K UR points and 120K Citi TYP left (worth a combined $3,080). Time for some simple math. Let’s just assume we’re buying four adult tickets per day. That’s $436 a day or $1,744 for all four days). We can cover the entire cost of the park passes with our 188K UR (worth $1,880) and have $136 left over. Along with $1,200 of Citi points left over ($1,336 total).
Food, Souvenirs, and Additional Expenses
Like we said earlier, Disney is expensive. However, we’ve already covered hotels, flights, and theme park tickets for free! We still have $1,336 total for everything else or $334 per day.
Food
No need to be ultra-frugal here. Enjoy the food in the park. Get some ice cream. Don’t sweat the small stuff. No need to bring food into the park or try to pinch pennies.
Souvenirs
This is a once in a life time trip. When your kids are teenagers, will they care about going back? Probably not. The $334 per day should allow for them to play some games or buy a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.
Additional Expenses
Hopefully the plan below allows you to relax, and not be stressed about your budget. Some hidden costs here and there will add up, but hopefully the $334 per day we have will cover all or most of it.
How to Generate the Spend (MS)
We’ll be generating the spend with some manufactured spending techniques.