Pack Your Bags, This New Company Offers Layaway Plans For Plane Tickets
Oh, the places you'll go...
It's pretty easy to get sucked into an Instagram vortex when you're looking at stunning snaps of dreamy destinations. From the sandy white beaches of Fiji to the mysterious canals of Venice, suddenly the desire to skip town becomes dire—so that's when you start searching every metasearch engine to find the best airfare deal, only to come to the conclusion that $1,500 isn't exactly the "deal" you were looking for. Fear not. There's a new service that makes it a little easier for those with an insatiable wanderlust (or someone seriously in need of long overdue vacation) to skip town without out-turned pockets like the Monopoly Man.
It's about time you became acquainted with Airfordable.
This savvy new company offers a layaway service for plane ticket purchases—because not everyone has a spare thousand-plus dollars lying around and credit card spending can be dangerous if you don't have the funds to pay it off right away.
To get started, all you need to do is register on Airfordable (it's free) and then start searching for your plane ticket. You can book as soon as one month in advance for any one-way, round-trip, or multi-leg trip—multiple tickets included. Next, upload screenshots of your flight details from your flight search or airline website. In order to receive a payment plan, you have to make sure your screenshots include all the pertinent information: flight number, airport, dates, flight times, airline and ticket price with tax.
Once you're approved, you'll receive a payment plan (up to three months) that starts with an upfront deposit and ends with a final payment sometime before your trip. Next, Airfordable will email you a confirmed e-ticket for the trip. Should you not be able to complete the payments, the ticket is canceled. For now, the company is using its own funding to front your dream trip but it's currently looking for a financial institution to back them up.
If you want to try and budget before you go through the process of searching for a flight, there's a calculator on the Airfordable website that helps you do just that. For example, I put in travel dates for a December trip with an estimated cost of $1300. The calculator churned out what my downpayment would be (around $400), as well as the following two payments, complete with due dates.
There's a catch, but it's nothing major.
The company charges 10-20 percent for the service based on the date of travel and ticket price. But even though your $1,200 plane ticket just became less, um, airfordable, the company's co-founder, Ama Marfo, says that the fee is high for people who don't understand the value. Not to mention, your credit score isn't checked, so that college debt won't hold you back from sipping a damn margarita in Mexico.
So, where are you headed?
Clearly, the fee isn't rubbing eager travelers the wrong way—about 10,000 people have used the service so far. In the future, the company hopes to expand its offerings to include plans for vacation packages and hotels.
Here's to hoping you have a job with a really amazing time-off policy.