The Unbanking of America Quotes

“Coleman has written an essay called “Let Them Have Bank Accounts,” in which he questions the fixed notion that the answer to poor people’s financial problems is to get them all to open bank accounts. “This assumption fails to frame the problem from the bottom up rather than the top down,” Coleman says. “It’s like providing pots and pans as the solution to hunger.”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

“nearly 11 percent of consumers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have more than ten overdrafts per year. No”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

“Some banks, like Wells Fargo, offered payroll-advance loans for a while. But once the media reported that these loans were basically the same as payday loans, the banks stopped offering the products. The risk to their reputation was too great. Of course, banks do offer all of us a short-term loan. It’s called an overdraft, and if it had a repayment period of seven days, the APR for a typical incident would be over 5,000 percent. Americans paid $38 billion in overdraft fees in 2011, more than they paid to payday lenders.”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

“The average household carries $129,579 in debt—$15,355 of it on credit cards.”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

“As Americans find themselves facing financial insecurity, many rely more and more on credit—and so-called “bad debt” in particular. The credit card industry has been more than happy to cooperate by providing credit to a growing group of consumers and using deceptive practices to increase their own profits. When the government began to crack down on these practices, credit all but disappeared for the financially vulnerable, leaving them with no good options.”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives

“Historically, banks made their money by borrowing and lending, which generated interest income. But events like the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when so many banks failed, illustrated how disastrous that model could be. In order to make banks less vulnerable to volatile interest rates, bank examiners encouraged them to find other ways to make a profit. That’s when banks discovered fees—the fees that anger and frustrate nearly everyone I’ve spoken with.”
― Lisa Servon, The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives