Update #4 - How I get “free” Vacations.
As a reminder, I’m not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. Do not use money you need to pay bills and feed your family for this kind of experiment.
Refer to my original blog post here for the complete story on how it began.
The “most magical place on earth”, also happens to be a pretty expensive place to visit. I know there are several ways to do it affordably, but for me, I like to splurge a little and enjoy convenience. Especially since I work an average of 50-60 hours a week all the time. So when vacation time rolls around, I want to relax and not have to deal with any hassles.
THE EXPERIMENT
If this is your first time here, what I did was take about $12,000 that I earned from doing side hustles from 2021-2023 (Door Dash, taking surveys, affiliate marketing etc) and invested it into 3 YieldMax ETFs that pay very high monthly distributions. I collect that income and move it to my vacation savings account at my local bank every month. The distribution varies every month, as does the total balance of the amount invested due to stock price movement.
If you’re saying “But you’ve got $12,000, you could easily pay for Disney with that!” - You’re right I could… but doing it this way, in theory - the $12,000 is saved and generates enough income to pay for Disney world (and more) every year for the rest of my life. So if I go 10 more times, instead of “costing $50,000 (10 x $5,000/trip [[2 adults, 3 kids, on-site moderate, 6 days]])” - it only still “cost me” $12,000 - because all the other income was free money generated by my portfolio.
From the math, you’ll realize that $12,000 investment is actually paying me $800-1000/mo - which is $9,600-$12,000 in total income. That is enough to fund all the vacations I take every year. So over the next 20 years, I’m saving almost $240,000 in vacation costs. If this continues to work.
THE UNKNOWN
The Yieldmax funds are relatively new and it’s unknown how they will perform in a down market. There is a subtantial risk of loss of money for sure with these new fund types. That’s why they don’t make up more than about 20% of my portfolio where my play money is, and less than 1% in my retirement account.
As such, I would not recommend anyone go out and do this particular thing unless they are ok with losing their $12,000.
UPDATE #4
As noted previously, I have changed from “Disney vacation fund” to just “Vacation fund”. I began selling options that will also fund “General vacations”. But for this experiment, I’m only going to use income from the 3 funds that I originally began this experiment with.
(I had previously planned on using YMAX as well for general vacations, but this month, we ended up renting an awesome 800 sq ft space for a new photography studio and rent is around $650/mo, so I’m going to use YMAX - since it’s more steady and somewhat reliable - to help make sure rent is covered)
Balance History with current values:
JULY ($13,790)
AMDY - $3,478, 200 SHARES (+ $15)
CONY - $3,848 200 SHARES (- $940)
NVDY - $5,740, 200 SHARES (- $306)
JUNE ($14,297)
AMDY - $3,463, 200 SHARES (+ $147)
CONY - $4,788, 200 SHARES (+ $1429) ** added 45 shares to get to an even 200
NVDY - $6,046, 200 SHARES (+ $962)
MAY ($11,758)
AMDY - $3,316, 200 SHARES (+$528) ** added 50 shares to get to an even 200
CONY - $3,359, 155 SHARES (-$526)
NVDY - $5,084, 200 SHARES (-$178)
APRIL ($11,935)
AMDY - $2,788, 150 SHARES
CONY - $3,885, 155 SHARES
NVDY - $5,262, 200 SHARES
JULY 2024 - PAYOUT #4 ($955.72)
Total Disney World account is now $3,805.43- with 3 months to go.
Averaging the 4 months of payments I’ve received since I began in April to calculate possible future distributions for the next 3 months, we’ll still be right at $6,500 which should be more than enough to pay for everything needed for the 3 (was 4 days - see note at bottom of post) days well actually be on-site at Disney World.
For those who are into visuals, here’s a chart showing the balance and income history to date of this experiment
A NOTE ABOUT JUNE/JULY
We had an unexpected death in the family that took us to Nebraska, which was a 15 hour car ride from home. Since we were going so far into the midwest, we decided to make it into a last minute vacation and we were actually on the road for 8 days total and visited South Dakota and Wyoming on the way out, and then came back through Nebraska and then Illinois then South.
Total Cost for that trip was $1,811.52.
We’ve also got a big beach trip coming up as well that’s going to be around $3,000.
As a result we’ve decided to cut back a day on Disney and instead of 4 days in the parks, we’re going to only do 3 and also leave a day early to save a little bit on the money side.
