How to Automate Your Travel Fund With Just $5 a Week

A 2025 Yahoo! Finance poll found that just 22% of Americans felt comfortable about the amount of money they’re able to stash in savings.

Does that mean that a travel vacation is out of the question for 78% of us (at least without racking up the credit card bills)?

Not necessarily. Read on to learn how you can build your travel fund with a “set it and forget it” approach to your savings.

What Does Set It and Forget It Mean?

The “set it and forget it” savings approach involves recurring, prescheduled, and predetermined transfers of money from a checking account to a savings vehicle, often a simple savings account.

All you have to do is establish the account and set up your automatic transfers. Your savings can then grow steadily over time and help you build your travel fund.

Many banks offer such automatic savings programs. They transfer the money for you whenever you make an identified deposit into your checking account, such as your paycheck.

Your employer may be willing to cooperate as well. Some will directly deposit a percentage of your pay into your savings account and send the balance to your regular bank account.

There’s no effort required on your part, and less temptation to immediately spend money from deposits. You’ll see the transfer from checking to savings in your online activity or on your monthly statement.

The upshot? You can watch your account balance grow (as long as you don’t dip into these funds) and start making your travel plans, knowing they’ll align with your savings (which you can estimate with confidence).

Advantages of Automated Saving

• Requires no effort
• Makes it easy and painless to save
• Supports disciplined money management
• Enables better trip planning because you can forecast how much money you’ll have, and when you’ll have it

Robert R. Johnson, PhD, CFA, and Professor of Finance at Heider College of Business at Creighton University, credits the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences winner, Richard H. Thaler, with shining a spotlight on behavioral finance, a core premise behind the “set it and forget it” savings concept.

“One of the biggest behavioral biases that humans succumb to is immediate gratification over delayed gratification,” Johnson says.

Automated savings plans help us bypass this behavior.

In addition, “The biggest advantage of automatic plans is the behavioral underpinnings…. Inertia and inherent laziness tend to work in our favor. That is, once enrolled in an automatic savings plan, people tend to stay enrolled.”

Automated saving definitely has its psychological advantages. You won’t have to worry about whipping out that debit card, making an impulsive purchase, and depleting your earmarked funds. That money isn’t in your checking account. It’s safely sequestered in your travel fund.

Of course, you won’t forget to make that transfer to savings, either. Your bank or your employer takes care of it for you. Moreover, some banks pay a higher interest rate to customers who set up this type of savings plan, subject to minimum deposits.

A Potential Disadvantage

Few, if any, financial plans are perfect, and this plan is no different. Literally forgetting your set-it-and-forget-it plan isn’t an optimal way to save.

You’ll want to keep an eye on your account balance and the interest rate that your account is earning. Do not hesitate to move your savings to another account or bank that offers a better rate and can meet your travel goals sooner.

Set-It-and-Forget-It on $5 a Week

Let’s say it’s been your lifelong dream to visit Madrid. You estimate that it will cost you $3,000 to indulge yourself. You don’t want to put the excursion on a credit card, so you’ll save for your trip.

You can’t put away much, but you understand the importance of getting your savings started no matter what. You consider $5 a week, which would be $20 or $25 a month, depending on the month.

Here’s how $5 a week could add up:

You settle on automated, automatic transfers of $25 each month. The savings account pays a 4.5% interest rate, and the interest compounds monthly (which means you’ll earn interest on the interest your deposits earn, boosting your account balance).

So that first $25 will earn you $1.12 in interest for a total of $26.12 ($25 x .045 = $1.125).

The following month, your next $25 deposit combined with the existing balance of $26.12 amounts to $51.12. Applying the 4.5% rate to that balance gives you interest of $2.30 ($51.12 x .045 = $2.30) and a new balance of $53.42 ($51.12 + 2.30).

A third month’s deposit of $25 would increase your account balance of $53.42 to $78.42. With interest, that would grow to $81.95 ($78.42 x .045 = $3.53; $78.42 + 3.53 = $81.95).

In three months, you’ve gone from zero in savings to $81.95. The combination of consistent, automated monthly deposits makes saving painless. It’s not a huge amount yet, but the point is, it’s growing. Keep at it and you’ll build that travel fund.

Here’s how $75 a week could add up:

Now, for comparison, let’s say that your salary is more substantial when you start your automated savings program. You can handle a larger weekly amount of around $75 if you cut back on some spending. You decide on automatic transfers of up to $300 each month.

You earn the same 4.5% interest rate as shown above. That means your first $300 will earn you $13.50 in interest for a total of $313.50 ($300 x .045 = $13.50)

The following month, your next savings transfer makes its way into your account. You now have $613.50 ($313.50 + $300).

To compute your interest, again multiply it by the 4.5% interest rate: $613.50 x .045 = $27.60. Now add that $27.60 to your existing balance of $613.50 for a total of $641.10.

In just two months, thanks to automated savings, your account balance has grown from zero to $641.10.

No, you won’t be hopping on an international flight tomorrow, but you’ll have that $3,000 within a year.

And remember that this is your plan. You can change your projected travel date and save less each period if you can’t spare $300 a month regularly.

Just be sure that the interest compounds so your money is working for you while you plan your getaway.

Saving Tips

It can be easier to build your travel fund if your saving happens automatically.

That’s not to say, however, that you won’t experience a strong urge now and again to tap into that saved money to spend on something else.

Chad Gammon, CFP® and owner of Custom Fit Financial in Cedar Rapids, IA, has a couple of suggestions for staying strong and motivated.

“Create a visual reminder of why you’re saving. This could be a picture of landmarks that you would see on the trip. Then track over the period of time to get to the goal and watch the progress over time.”

Another tip: feel the power of not spending as you envision getting closer and closer to your tantalizing trip to Madrid! Giving up nightly take-out dinners and Friday afternoon happy hours isn’t that bad when you see your goal clearly.

Keep in mind that you may be able to make additional deposits, beyond your automatic transfers, if you spend even less. So, try to cut back by focusing on how you’ll spend money in Spain instead.

Plan to dedicate all unexpected financial gifts and even a pay raise to your savings plan as well. PNC Bank suggests increasing the amount of your transfers whenever possible, even if it’s just by $5 a week or so. Every dollar counts.

Start Your Automated Savings Program Now

• First, determine how much you can comfortably save while still meeting all your necessary expenses. Compare your monthly income to your total monthly expenses.
• Assuming you earn more than you spend, the difference will be your potential savings. A budgeting app can be a great help in this area.
• See if your employer can deposit a portion of your earnings into the account every pay period. If that’s not possible, handle it yourself.
• Open a savings account (be sure to review the options offered by your bank) and arrange for automatic transfers from your checking account to savings when your paycheck is deposited.
• Set the recurring dates for your transfers and the exact amount to be moved.

Many banks provide apps that make setting up automated transfers easy.

The Bottom Line

Building a travel fund over time with a set-it-and-forget-it savings plan can be a sure pathway to making your dreams of travel a reality.

By automating transfers to your travel fund, even as little as $5 a week, you can simplify your savings effort and watch your account balance grow. So get started and get packing.