How do you pay for your cruise?

[Fanpower]

I found the two repositioning cruises we took were a good buy. One was up the west coast from San Diego to Vancouver for repositioning to Alaska. The other was San Diego to Puerto Rico thru the Panama Canal for repositioning to the Caribbean.

[notentirelynormal]

I found the two repositioning cruises we took were a good buy. One was up the west coast from San Diego to Vancouver for repositioning to Alaska. The other was San Diego to Puerto Rico thru the Panama Canal for repositioning to the Caribbean.

 

This thread, though, is about how do people save/pay for their cruises. Not how you got a good deal. Whether you go a good deal or not is irrelevant.

[srlafleur]

This thread, though, is about how do people save/pay for their cruises. Not how you got a good deal. Whether you go a good deal or not is irrelevant.

 

Getting a good deal is part and parcel of being able to save and afford a cruise.

 

There are deals to be had for loyalty to a cruise line, but also not sticking with one line, shopping around for the best deal across several lines, can help you afford to cruise more.

[langit]

I always used the credit cards, simple

 

 

[Veng]

This thread, though, is about how do people save/pay for their cruises. Not how you got a good deal. Whether you go a good deal or not is irrelevant.

 

Paying less is one of the ways I pay for my cruise, so getting a good deal is part of it.

[YubaSutter]

We have a dedicated travel savings account. $1250 is put into this account every month.

[maywell]

I mostly book early and pay it down monthly through out the year before the payment deadline. (Having a job helps too :p). If I have enough money in savings plus if the cruise fare is reasonable, I take a another last-minute cruise before the schedule one. :) I also do the math and calculate how much paying it down will affect my everyday finances before buying the trip (hey, rent and household bills comes 1st:( - my wallet stop me from doing an 19 day this year, next time maybe.....)

Edited March 24, 2015 by maywell

[Stateroom_Sailor]

Reward Credit cards help, both in everyday purchases, and the cruise itself. :)

[Dr.A]

We have a dedicated 'holidays' savings account and we transfer a set amount to it every month. We have ISAs (tax free savings up to £15,000 per year per person) for our long term savings. We also have a savings account for unexpected expenses. We always pay off our credit cards in full each month and use either cash back ones (we have a Costco Amex that is good) or 'points' credit cards like the Hhonors credit card. The latter has paid for numerous hotel nights.

[dinansm3]

Southwest Visa in both my name and my wife's pays for all our flights, has for 2 years now. Then my Capital One Venture miles has paid for our cruises. We take 2 a year, all monthly bills and expenses are paid by the cards and paid off in full every month. We never pay interest charges and travel free or close to it. When I started a few years back my best resource was a blog ; million mile secrets.

[twistedwankel]

We are retired so time doesn't matter on how long it takes to get anywhere. That is a big deal. Being able to use a slow enjoyable ship instead of a fast irritating airship is taking about the same amount of cash every two years and enjoying the traveling part for once.

 

We have family all over so once we get somewhere the living is pretty cheap also keeping the cost down. We can also take advantage of relocation ships making two one way trips out of it. Two separate vacations instead of one.

 

Every time we spend 4-6 weeks in UK it costs about $4000 no matter how you travel. So we only do that once every two years.

[Gardeneroflove]

My husband works, therefore, we cruise. :D

 

I hope once the house is paid for we'll go twice a year, but by then kid will be in school and we'll have tution to pay, plus less flexiblity since dh thinks school is important and won't likely agree to her missing a week.

[Schaefer Light]

Southwest Visa in both my name and my wife's pays for all our flights, has for 2 years now. Then my Capital One Venture miles has paid for our cruises. We take 2 a year, all monthly bills and expenses are paid by the cards and paid off in full every month. We never pay interest charges and travel free or close to it. When I started a few years back my best resource was a blog ; million mile secrets.

I'm working on a strategy similar to yours. At the moment, the two best credit cards for accumulating miles that can be redeemed for cruises seem to be the Capital One Venture card and the Barclay Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard. They have similar sign-up bonuses and both give you 2x points on all purchases.

[Schaefer Light]

Reward Credit cards help, both in everyday purchases, and the cruise itself. :)

Question. How difficult is it to redeem credit card rewards points when booking a cruise? I've never done it before, but there are a couple of credit cards out there (Capital One Venture & Barclay World Elite MasterCard) that have piqued my interest.

[kalyn]

Question. How difficult is it to redeem credit card rewards points when booking a cruise? I've never done it before, but there are a couple of credit cards out there (Capital One Venture & Barclay World Elite MasterCard) that have piqued my interest.

 

Princess has their own credit card that can be used to collect points, but I don't know about the other cruise lines.

 

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk HD

[dinansm3]

Question. How difficult is it to redeem credit card rewards points when booking a cruise? I've never done it before, but there are a couple of credit cards out there (Capital One Venture & Barclay World Elite MasterCard) that have piqued my interest.

 

I used Venture card and it's very easy, you can redeem points to pay for any travel related charge i.e.cruise , the key is that it requires to pay whole charges in points so what I do it every $500 I have in points I make a $500 payment toward my cruise then use the points to erase the charge. I book a year to a year and half out so that its paid in full my the final payment date and used points for all of it 😀

[Schaefer Light]

I used Venture card and it's very easy, you can redeem points to pay for any travel related charge i.e.cruise , the key is that it requires to pay whole charges in points so what I do it every $500 I have in points I make a $500 payment toward my cruise then use the points to erase the charge. I book a year to a year and half out so that its paid in full my the final payment date and used points for all of it 😀

That's a good strategy. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes perfect sense. Thanks for the feedback.

[juneann52]

Just came upon this topic:) ....Always looking for helpful hints.

My hubby and I save Every $5 bill...all the money coming back from my"Flexible Spending Plan" at work....and booking Early.

We are on CCL Pride Journey(14 days) March 2016:)...That I booked while on the CCL Breeze Nov.2014:cool:...

Not cruising in 2015:(

[sverigecruiser]

This may sound like a small thing but it really isn't!

 

We use cash as much as possible and save all coints we get and also all 20SKR bills (20SKR is around $2.50). We start to save once a cruise is paid for and we save until we shall pay for next cruise. When we should pay our latest cruise we had almost $4000 in coins and small bills.

[perditax]

Question. How difficult is it to redeem credit card rewards points when booking a cruise? I've never done it before, but there are a couple of credit cards out there (Capital One Venture & Barclay World Elite MasterCard) that have piqued my interest.

 

 

Barclay (at least the arrival+ card) is well suited to cruises because you can typically only redeem points against a given travel purchase one time. Since cruises let you pay in increments, you can create lots of individual purchases that can be redeemed over as you accumulate more points.

[MHF]

I can typically save from $7 to $10 a week by using store and manufacturers coupons. Over a year, that's the cost of an airline ticket. I only use the coupons of items I routinely buy. (Check the sale flyers too)

 

For some items, I check the per unit price and buy accordingly. Sometimes we have to have the name-brand (Oreos or Diet Coke) but for dry spaghetti, store brand is fine with us.

 

My husband and I also brown-bag our lunches to work. I'd rather eat leftovers or a homemade sandwich then spend $10 a day and have to stand in line for it.

[Amandah1987]

I booked my cruise and paid it off in 5 months, by putting every cent I had left after paying for bills and groceries, went without extras for a while but it helped, then every fortnight I'd save up and pay off something else (so far in 7 months I've managed to get our passports, travel insurance, flight to Sydney, drink package, pay off the cruise and our luggage.

I have 7 months til I leave and I plan to save money for spending, accommodation for after the cruise, and flights home, plus some things I'll need to take with us)

What helps me is writing down everything and working out a budget to pay things off one by one, it's worked for me so far

[TrinaP1204]

Our biggest money saver is our Royal Caribbean credit card. As another poster mentioned, we use ours for EVERYTHING we can. Just keep up with it like a checkbook or debit card so we can pay it off at the end of the month. This time we are saving $1300 plus a $50 onboard credit. (We drained the available points dry :) ) Also book early. None of our cruises have ever gone down in price. Our sailing next month to Alaska we took advantage of the latest promotion BOGO 1/2 price. All of that coupled I feel we did get a pretty good deal.

[anamarieus]

well this time we got lucky and called on a Friday - only had to put a $99 deposit down and pay every pay day until final payment. One secret is to book way in advance, that way you have plenty of time to pay it off.

[Drazil65]

We did not want to wait until we retired to enjoy travel, especially cruising. We downsized completely, sold our house (you don't realize how much stress is attached to a home and upkeep), went down to 1 vehicle, we live totally on one paycheck! We don't use credit cards and owe no one, so we get to do what we want to do with our money, we keep it simple and it helps that we can drive to most ports on the east coast.

 

I work to pay cash for all of our trips, we are cash hoarders :D...we live and enjoy life now, why wait? We leave all the drama for everyone else, we have minimized all the stress in our control. Its all good! :D

Edited August 2, 2015 by Drazil65