When my wife and I started talking about me setting up my first savings account so many years ago (when we first started dating) I had just gotten my first full time, post college job and was also drowning in what seemed like an endless pool of debt. I wanted nothing more than the debt to go away and after starting on a plan to make that happen I realized that I had little money left for myself at the end of the month.
You have to start saving somewhere
I opened a savings account and put my first $100 in it knowing that I’d be putting $100 less towards my loans that month. At the time I hadn’t considered how much I would need to set aside for myself for emergencies (soon to be known as the “Oh Shit” fund). Although starting the account was easy, finding the money to put into it each month was difficult. My savings didn’t move from that initial investment amount for months and after sitting back down for another finance talk (Click here to read about financing and communicating), it became clear that 100 bucks wasn’t going to get me very far. So, the plan changed again.
I started researching ways to improve my ability to save without impacting my already tight budget. This is when i found Digit Co. Digit takes a small amount of money out of your account and transfers it to a separate Wells Fargo Savings account. It calculates how much to withdrawal using an algorithm that measure your spending habits, income, and internal savings. The nice things about that is that when my account gets lower toward the end of the month, the amount of money it transfers every other day decreases too. This helps make it not even noticeable when they do pull money out. If you’re doing really well one month, it pulls more. But it always tries to stay discreet.
Staying on top of it.
I also love Digit because it text me every day my current balance on my debit account. This helps me stay in control of my finances even more and is a quick look at how I’m doing rather than having to open up my banking app, waiting for it to load, logging in, and navigating to my account.
Withdrawing money from the Savings Account they’ve setup for you is easy too. Just a simple text, then tell them the amount you want to take out, and in 24 hours the money is back in your checking account (keep in mind transfers only go through on business days).
The Snowball Effect
After a few months of Digit doing it’s thing I was curious to see how much I had saved, I texted Digit “Balance” and it texted me back immediately with how much it had helped me save. Even though it had only been pulling a couple dollars here and a few cents there, it adds up! I had save over $300 without even noticing, without it affecting my daily life, without me having to change my budget around. Nothing. It was great. Three years later and I’m still using Digit, I’ve saved several thousand over the course of using them, have money that I’ve started investing with (click here to learn about how I started investing with nothing), and have another savings account that is doing considerably better than any prior attempt to save.
If you want to start saving use this link (digit.co/r/ZJNMI?sg)to get started and feel free to ask me any questions. Don’t worry about making a good salary to start saving, I have several friends who are both in school still, barely scraping by on minimum wage and started saving with Digit. Digit learns your spending habits, your income, and other factors to best fit you and your current circumstances. Give it a shot and let me know what you think in the comments below!