Back in 2015, when this type of thing was still novel, I participated in an ISA program that required a $3,000 deposit. It was refundable if you failed a (demon

Back in 2015, when this type of thing was still novel, I participated in an ISA program that required a $3,000 deposit. It was refundable if you failed a (demonstrably) good-faith effort to applying for jobs, or rolled into the payment once you landed one. This was a substantial amount of money for me at that time, but I probably wouldn't have applied for the program had it not been for the ISA. I was unwilling to take on new debt, and I didn't have enough money for an upfront payment. The deposit seemed like a reasonable expenditure to save toward precisely because the ISA showed that the program itself had skin-in-the-game.