Making It Hard to Save

An annoying experience gives a financial writer an insight into why some of us are not saving as much money as we probably should.  Reprinted with permission from marklevinson.net

by Marc Levinson

Americans are famously unable to save money. The personal saving rate is a scant 5% of disposable income, and while two in three adults told Federal Reserve researchers last year they were “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” many of those same people apparently have no savings: 46% of respondents to the Fed survey said they did not have the cash to cover an emergency expense costing $400. Among people with household incomes below $40,000, only one in three said they could come up with $400 in cash.

Last month, I got an unexpected taste of why it’s so hard for people to save. My District of Columbia income tax return had an error. Rather than refunding my overpayment by check, the DC finance department sent me a Citibank debit card. I’d never used a prepaid card before, and the experience was educational. Moving the money from the card into my bank account, which is not at Citibank, turned out to be a major ordeal.

In theory, according to Citibank, it’s possible to set up a password on the Internet to transfer money from card to bank account. I followed those instructions, to no avail. The only way to get my money, it seemed, was to go to the bank.

But not to my bank, which wanted a fee to turn Citi’s debit card into cash. To avoid the fee, I had to take the card to a Citibank branch. I did so -- to be told that the amount on the card exceeded Citibank’s daily cash withdrawal limit. I took what Citi would give me, cautiously walked the cash down the street to my bank, and deposited it. The following day, I repeated the process. All told, between my attempt to set up an Internet password and my five visits to bank branches, it took two hours of my time to gain access to money that was already mine. Had the two branches not been close together, the transactions would have taken far longer, and I would have had to stroll through Washington carrying uncomfortably large amounts of cash.

This is the situation facing the millions of American workers, mainly in low-wage jobs, who now get their pay on a debit card rather than having it deposited into a bank account. Yes, I understand that paying wages via debit card may be useful to people who don’t have bank accounts, and I imagine debit cards are cheaper for employers or they wouldn’t use them. But as my experience showed, when you receive your pay on a debit card, you may well have a difficult time saving money in the bank. Which could leave you in a tough spot the next time you need $400.

The author has written several influential books on business and finance, including the very popular "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger."  His next book, "An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy," will be released in early November.