How I pay for my travels seem to be a common topic of
discussion among my friends, so I thought I would let you guys in on one of my favorite travel tricks: DIGIT!
This is language directly from their website: Digit is a journey aimed at refreshing the interactions between humans
and their money. Bad financial habits
create unnecessary hardship that derail us from living our life to the fullest.
We believe we can help people avoid some of these hardships by combining recent
discoveries in behavioral psychology with technology.
How does it work? Basically
you give Digit permission to make withdrawals from your account and put it into
your savings account. It’s not a set
amount of cash, it will be random amounts of cash that they “set
aside” for
you. Here are some things you should
know:
· Digit
will “analyze your income and spending, and find money it can
safely set aside for you”. I gotta tell you, sometimes
the amounts are small but other times the amounts can be larger. But you will always have control. You can text them and tell them to Pause Saving, or Speed Up/Slow Down your
savings. It’s completely up to you. Once they took over $20 out of my account a
few days in a row and I was like WHOA…a quick text and that was taken care of. Here is what my Savings Journal looked like
recently:
So some of these amounts are larger
than typical, but I have mine set to “save more” because I knew I was planning
for something.
· They
will never overdraft your account, they “never transfers more than
you can afford”. They actually have a no-overdraft guarantee.
·
You
can access your savings anytime! A quick
text message telling them how much you would like to transfer back to savings
and voila, your money is back in
your checking account the next business day.
So how do I use digit?
Usually I use it when planning for my longer trips. I will allow the savings to build up and I
don’t touch it – at all – for any reason; not even for a shorter trip (I use my
travel account for smaller trips). Now
I’m not talking about saving for the flight.
This is the cash I use for things like excursions, train tickets/flights
to other cities/countries during the trip, food or even AirBnb/hotel
costs. For instance, below was my digit
balance yesterday:
I will
transfer $700 back into my checking account next week and start booking excursions
for my upcoming trip to Barcelona and Rome.
I will also use this cash for food.
This is a MUCH BETTER option (for me) than using credit cards.
And there
you have it. One EASY way to save some cash for your travels! Now #GetGoing!
Angie, Founder
2 Girls & A Bikini
2 Girls & A Bikini
