“How do you afford to travel?” is probably the #2 most frequent thing people slide up in my DMs to ask me. I wrote a post about how that question feels to me but let’s address the question head on today with one of my FAVORITE ways to fund my travels.

Traveling is not as expensive as people tend to think. Trust me, it can be, but it can also be very affordable if you play your cards right and cop great deals.

Before you can take advantage of the deals, you’ve got to have some cash available, right? I mean until Delta starts taking monopoly money, food stamps, or bitcoin we gotta come up with this cash. I have found that, more often than not, people’s biggest problem isn’t being able to afford travel it’s intentionally saving for it.

If you’re anything like me, saving money is tough. Either you feel like you just don’t have enough money left over to save or you really only save when you have large sums of money like a tax return or a bonus.

This right here is why the 1 small thing I do to save for travel has made SUCH a HUGE difference for me. Lemme tell ya, I’m pretty terrible at saving money.

Enter my favorite app – DIGIT!

It stores away $2.00 one day, $3.00 another day, $7.00 another day…and those dollars add up! I don’t know about you but, I definitely would not voluntarily go into my checking account and move small amounts of money every single day. I’m doing good to floss my teeth and put lotion on my ashy elbows every day, no way I’m doing this, so thank GAWD Digit does it for me.

Digit is an app that builds up a savings account for you a few small dollars at a time. It looks at your spending habits and your average daily balance and stores away small amounts of money every single day. Take a look at my digit activity:

Here are a few testimonials from some of my friends who have signed up for digit:

Signing up for Digit has truly been a great decision for me. Last year, my aunt passed away and I had to purchase last minute flights for my daughter and I to attend her funeral. It wasn’t in the budget to do this and my dollars were already stretched. Thankfully, Digit had stored away $300 for me, which was more than enough to cover our flights! Thanks Digit!

A few of the features I love about Digit:

• It takes money based on your average daily balance so whether you have a lot of money or a little money, it will save for you and the money adds up faster than you realize!
• It will not take money out if that will put you in danger of being overdraft. If they do, they’ll give you a refund of it.

• You can pause it if you need to. Maybe you need Digit to simmer down for a minute because you have some big expenses coming up. You can pause it for as long as you like and then unpause it when you’re ready to start saving again.
• You can set up goals to save towards. The default savings bucket is “rainy day” (which to me translates to “get on a plane and go somewhere else”). I am also saving for an Away carry on bag and a Purple Mattress (travel and sleep, you see where my priorities are). So when Digit takes money from my account, they allocate some of it to my Rainy Day fund and some to each of my savings goals.

• You can set a minimum account balance. Let’s say you like to have a cushion in your checking account, let’s say you don’t want your checking account to go below $100. You can let Digit know this and it will not make a withdrawal if it would put your account below $100 AAAAND BONUS if your account goes below $100 for any reason, it will automatically transfer money from your rainy day fund back to your checking to get it to your minimum balance. Isn’t Digit a sweetie?

What are the cons? Honestly, I can only think of two:

• It will make a liar of you! You’ve been saying that it’s too hard to save money or you just don’t make enough to save money. Digit will completely prove you wrong. You’ll look up and find you have a couple hundred dollars saved up and realized that you CAN save!!!
• There is a $2.99/month fee. I think the fee is pretty nominal considering what Digit is doing for me. Also, I typically tell people that if you refer a friend at least every other month, you’ll end up covering the fee.

If you sign up using my referral link, you’ll receive $5 (and I will too YAAAY!).

Full disclosure, the Digit links in this post are affiliate links, meaning if you sign up, I get a few coins for referring you. It doesn’t cost you anything, it’s just Digit’s way of saying thank you to me for sharing the good news! And trust me, this is good news!

Do you already use Digit? Drop a comment and tell me about it!