Yet all the ingenuity the poor employ to save may simply be a symptom of the fact that they don’t have access to the more conventional and simpler alternatives. Banks don’t like managing small accounts, largely because of the administrative costs of running them. Deposit-taking institutions are heavily regulated, for good reason—the government is worried about fly-by-night operators running away with people’s savings—but this means that managing each account requires bank employees to fill out some amount of paperwork, which can quickly become too burdensome, relative to any money that the
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