How do you pay for your cruise?

Buy stock in Carnival Corp,,,,,get 100 credit on any cruise the line owns.....carnival....holland america...etc

when I shop at Walmart I always enter my receipt into the savings catcher on their website. For items that you buy it compares prices to other stores. For any items found lower you get a credit. Save the credits and when getting ready to cruise can use money to buy stuff for cruise or gift cards to use for dinners pre/post cruise, for hotel, rental car, hotel rooms, gas, etc. my family members save their receipts too and we enter under one account. For our cruise next month we have almost $100. We are going to get a cheese cake factory card to use for dinner pre cruise. We are using hotel points for the room. So our pre cruise stay will cost little money and we won't be sacrificing.

If you go this route there is also ibotta, checkout 51, receipt hog, savingstar and several others that I use. Most of these can be cashed out with paypal and then transfer the money to you checking account if you just want the cash.

I use savingstar and cut coupons then transfer that to savings as well as the royal caribbean visa card . Not enough to pay for the cruise but does pay for ship purchases...

Sorry, just noticed the apps I included in my response were already mentioned in the above two posts.

Sorry I didn't read back far enough.

I super coupon! Don't laugh! It's true! My best shopping week was $1700 in groceries for less than $400. By doing this and stocking up, I have reduced our regular grocery bill to less than $150 a month. All of that extra money goes for the nice things in life. :D

I super coupon! Don't laugh! It's true! My best shopping week was $1700 in groceries for less than $400. By doing this and stocking up, I have reduced our regular grocery bill to less than $150 a month. All of that extra money goes for the nice things in life. :D

That is great! That is what I do also but I have never had a week like that:eek:

I have gotten away from couponing as much as I use to. But when I was really into it I would make a spreadsheet of my savings for the year. It was always over 3000.00 a year saved that went towards cruising.:cool:

I research, research research...I keep an eye on prices and I book when I think they're at their lowest. I also save up all of my spare change over the course of a year and I use that towards my cruise. It's generally $500-$750 (It adds up fast!). I have a cruise coming up in a few weeks and I used my 'spare change' to pay for my pre-cruise hotel, transfers to and from the ship and I used the rest ($350) for on-board credit,

Since I have stopped routinely using my credit card and do not want to have to do that when final payment is due ( to get one more month before I have to pay the bill) I am putting a monthly amount aside in savings so I have the final payment ready when it is due. I will charge it and pay it the same day! I also have a sinking fund for vacations expenses most months to pay for hotels and food. We save change all year ( or at least between vacations) and DH uses his business account card for air miles. I've decided that if I cant afford to pay "cash" I wont go. We canceled a 14 night Alaska cruise tour that we had booked on board in September and traded it for a 7 night Caribbean for next year saving over $12,000 in that choice. We will save up for that dream trip probably over the next 5 years unless something else comes up. :) I also want to be able to research other cruise lines ( we currently sail on Royal) to get the best experience at the best price. I have plenty of time now to do that!

That's pretty much it for us too. Any extra money that comes in throughout the year goes in the vacation fund as well as overtime and bonuses.

This is us too. We book usually 2 cruises a year. 7 days or longer and always balcony. We book through a friend of the family so we get extra perks and upgrades.

One of the BEST things we ever did was get the Carnival MC. We get dbl points for EVERYTHING Carnival and single points for everything else. We started switching all of our extra cash to the MC regularly and paying ALL online bills through the card to get the points. I've had the card over a year now and not paid 1c in interest and reaped over $1000 in reward redemption's, which we put back into our cruises. Some of the point rewards are a better value than paying for the item (example: Our upcoming cruise in April we used points to pay for our 8 day gratuities. If we paid for the gratuities out of pocket they would have been $223.20. Using points we spent 19,400 points = $194.00).

Does anyone know of a rewards credit card other than the Capital One Venture or Barclay Arrival Plus that can be used to pay for cruises? There are tons of credit cards that let you transfer points to hotel chains or airlines, but I'm not aware of any that let you transfer points to cruiselines. I'm also not aware of any cards other than the two I mentioned above that allow you to "erase" travel purchases.

Barclay offers the Carnival MC. It gives you dbl points for everything Carnival, single pts for anything non-carnival. If you apply for the card on the boat, you get 5,000 bonus pts. 5,000 bonus pts w/ any balance transfer. 10,000 pts = $100

Points can be redeemed for statement credits, onboard ship credits (pretty much any kind), gift cards (pretty much anywhere) or even toward booking cruises.

I take advantage of reward cards whenever possible. My most used are my Carnival MC (we use it for pretty much everything since we cruise 2x yr), Chase Amazon, Discover (when they do home improvement months as we renovating 100 yr old farmhouse).

I have only been on 1 cruise & currently "saving" for our 2nd cruise this August 2017. It is almost paid off--just need a bit of spending money. I treat vacation savings like a bill. Money is put aside and every 2 weeks--I pay an amount that I can afford for that week. We are retired and I do still work a part time job. We cannot afford more than 1 big vacation /year, so we do have to plan & save. We like to have nicer accommodations, I won't go too cheap anymore--we've been there, done that, & don't want that anymore. I know if I research more we could get some better deals.

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Does anyone know of a rewards credit card other than the Capital One Venture or Barclay Arrival Plus that can be used to pay for cruises? There are tons of credit cards that let you transfer points to hotel chains or airlines, but I'm not aware of any that let you transfer points to cruiselines. I'm also not aware of any cards other than the two I mentioned above that allow you to "erase" travel purchases.

We use the Sam's Club Master Card and Costco Visa. Both are much superior to any of the cruise line cards. The Costco card pays: 4% back on gas; 3% on travel including cruises, hotels, rental cars, and restaurants; 2% on Costco purchases; and 1% all other places. The Sams card is very similar.

One of the big advantags are these are cash back cards meaning you can use your benefits anywhere. For example, you can get 3% on a carnival cruise and 3% on a Princess cruise and use the cash back from both on a Norwegian cruise. You're not locked into a specific cruise line.

The other principal advantage is you don't have to struggle with points. Cash is cash is cash.

I booked my cruise 18 months out and I put down a deposit now I am paying for it by adding any payments I can afford each month and I am also starting a shipboard money acct. I should have my cruise paid off by the end of 2017.

Amex for deposit. Pay the cruise off via Amex about a year in advance as we book the cruise to follow on the next year so we have time to pay off well in advance. Keep the membership miles going until something of interest pops up i.e. Bose QC 35 free with miles.

I just opened a BOA RCL VISA as back up to AmEx as there are places that do not take AmEx. Some RCL bennies using this VISA. Time will tell. Card should be here before our April Cruise per BOA letter that arrived today. Card is "in the mail" apparently.

Thanks to everyone for the great hints!!! Only one thing I'm not familiar with is buying gift cards toward purchase of your cruise. Do you use these gift cards and just deposit them in your checking a/c or do you send to the cruiseline for the payment on the cruise?

Thanks to everyone for the great hints!!! Only one thing I'm not familiar with is buying gift cards toward purchase of your cruise. Do you use these gift cards and just deposit them in your checking a/c or do you send to the cruiseline for the payment on the cruise?

If you purchase cruise line gift cards or receive them as gifts, you can have them applied toward any outstanding balance, you can have them applied so that they'll be a shipboard credit when you cruise, or you can carry them with you to the ship and apply them once onboard. It's really your choice as to how/when you want to apply them.

We have a vacation fund (separate savings account) and save a set amount each month (auto transfer)depending on what we have planned.

My daughter is single and a TA so I get to be her plus one at a steep discount since I don't mind sharing a cabin with her. Most of the time LOL.

Im a blue collar single woman so I put it on a credit card then skip eating out at work and pay more than the minimum so that when the next cruise rolls around the card is pretty much paid off. On the rare occasion that cash comes my way, it will be applied to credit card or put into savings account.

My husband and I got 3 comped cruises this year from Atlantic City casinos. We each got one for upgraded tier level at Tropicana and I got another from a promotion at Resorts. I'm eager for Caesars to run their next promotion!

Work lots of overtime!!! Let it snow let it snow, let it snow.......:p

8

Sent from my SM-N920T using Forums mobile app

Sorry, didn't mean to send that

Sent from my SM-N920T using Forums mobile app

I save all dollar bills that have a letter C or E in the serial number. It is amazing how fast they add up.