If this is what I recall hearing recently, it also had a very interesting, long segment with a professor who studied e.g. payday loans by having an in and worki

If this is what I recall hearing recently, it also had a very interesting, long segment with a professor who studied e.g. payday loans by having an in and working for 4 months at a payday loan business. She also did some other work pertaining to low income individuals' finances -- I don't recall exactly what, right now. Turns out, listening to people and their reasons and how it all works, that these people were not acting "irrationally" at all -- within their contexts. There were very valid reasons they did not have bank accounts nor rely on banks to deposit checks, etc. It didn't negate the expenses involved. But it provided a lot of information that balanced that not just against the sometimes unavailability of "traditional" alternatives but also against the unreported, undiscussed, perhaps too frequently not known or discussed downsides of those "traditional" alternatives. As just one example: You have to pay rent, or your workers, or whatever, today or tomorrow or soon. With the payday or check cashing business, you leave with cash in hand. With the bank, you have to wait for e.g. a client's check that you just received today, to clear. Up to three days. And if something doesn't clear or there's some other mistake, suddenly you have $25, or $50, or whatever amount of penalties hit your budget. That continue to accumulate until you can fix your cash flow. And, with software, banks have taken to deliberately, algorithmically maximizing those penalties. E.g you have $100 in your account, and three checks hit for $25, $50, and $125 on the same day. The bank will prioritize the $125 check first, so that you are hit with three overdraft checks, three sets of fees. Instead of e.g. clearing the $25 and $50 checks and leaving you with one overdraft. It can be argued, I suppose that the bank is minimizing its exposure in some combinations of amounts and overdrafts it decides to allow. But really, it is racking up the fees. And if you're on a very tight budget, these fees totally disrupt it. Say a check you deposited didn't clear or clear in the expected timeframe. Bam, now your budget has a big hole in it due to large, unexpected fees. People avoid this, instead paying the cut the the check cashing business. It was very interesting. And a lesson in the risks of just absorbing and parroting some often reported "common sense".