4 ms·

It‘s pretty darn smart. A lot of people I know play the lottery instead of putting a couple of bucks to the side. Seems like a win-win

• schoen 6y ago
  Somewhere I read an argument that numbers games (private, local lotteries, sometimes run by organized crime) helped some poor people by acting as a form of savings, except one that paid a negative interest rate and where you couldn't control the timing of when you got your savings out. That sounds like a super-awful kind of savings account, but I think this argument assumed that many numbers-game players' next-most-preferred use of the money they would bet on it was even less like savings, so it could still be helpful by pulling money away from other things. Of course, that's a pretty big and pretty specific assumption. This project and the idea that inspired it are a way better form of savings because the savers can actually access their principal and don't actually have to pay the bank.