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I was thinking about just this today. There's an interesting corollary, though: just as it can be a vicious cycle downwards, it can also be a virtuous cycle u

• thephyber 9y ago
  > just as it can be a vicious cycle downwards, it can also be a virtuous cycle upwards. Hrm. I see how the two are _options_, but they aren't in equal proportion. Did Wells Fargo take the fees earned from the millions of accounts they created during their sales-quota scandal and use it to subsidize other poor account holders? More likely than not, they simply used it to pay into their capital reserves and redistribute to shareholders. I have the strong suspicion that there are mental blocks that prevent people from addressing their low balance (in addition to not being flush with cash). My father kept getting a very noticeable "overdraft fee" postcard in the mail. I offered to help him keep a floating balance just to keep him from paying the $25-50 per overdraft. He declined and continued to get a few per month. It was simply mentally taxing for him to move his money from one checking account to another in time for his checks and other payments to clear. I hope all of the {Facebook, Twitter, *gram, etc.} A/B testing programmers retire from "growth hacking" social media websites and start putting those psychology-manipulating skills to non-profits that help people train themselves to lose less money. I suspect one of the reasons many people are poor is because they simply haven't learned to "life hack" the small things that prevent you from losing money (as opposed to making more).