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Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

Poor people (which generally includes young folks) simply do not have investments nor enough actual money to pay for two bank accounts. A bank account for poor people is a utility, not an investment. It keeps money a bit safer than keeping it on you at work (for example). It is only trivial when you don't need to spend all of your money each and every month.

Those same folks could easily wind up homeless if this happened to them.

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I've been poor. Six figures in debt with less than $10 in my checking account. I know what it is like. But there are plenty of accounts in the U.S. which have no minimum balance and no fee. You can have $5 in there.

But why? Getting your account randomly closed is not commonplace, and if you are poor, not having the $X in Account B when you need to pay for food from A is not just inconvenient, but also makes you pay more in overdraft fees. Yes, you can do it, but I’d say the disadvantages outweigh the benefits by a huge margin.

> but also makes you pay more in overdraft fees

Overdraft services have been opt-in only for over a decade: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/100...

Sure, not buying food at all is certainly better ;) or standing at the register and having to return items in front of everyone.

I've been poor, and no one would let me have even one bank account. On payday, two trucks would pull into the factory parking lot. One would cash my check (for 4% of it), and the other would sell me snow cones and hot dogs.

I would line up with the other poor people who were too stupid not to have multiple bank accounts, even though like me they may have had a bank branch a block from their apartment (that had already turned them down.)

I'm shocked that they gave a physical paycheck instead of requiring a prepaid card to deposit money on.

$5 doesn't pay rent, nor will it buy much food. If your main account gets closed, you probably won't get your next pay check because it takes time to switch the direct deposit. If you get something like disability, it might leave you a month without money.

You can be poor without debt, btw: I do not include debt in with poverty. Debt amount doesn't reflect your quality of life (though garnished wages sometimes might hint at it).

No poor person would get a $100k loan.

In general, I agree with you and I almost typed the same. Getting a car loan is absolutely difficult, hence the existence of buy here pay here sorts of places. Predatory loans are basically the only thing available in an emergency.

But I figure some fringe cases would absolutely make someone be both poor and that much in debt, generally stemming from things like a family losing an income after buying a home and to a lesser extent, things like student loans and medical debt - though I*m not sure either go as high.

$100k of debt for a poor person is not unrealistic, between student loans and/or medical debt.

This is a really odd definition of poor. Six figures of debt is almost nothing in the US, particularly if you have a real estate mortgage. You could have a six figure debt on a million dollar property for example.

Having $10 in your checking account, OK yeah that is weird. Considering just your liquid cash vs. your debt doesn't make sense. You have to take into account monthly post-tax income, monthly expenses, and the time it would take to pay off said debt using your remaining income.

It was a private student loan in the 90s with no asset backing it. I was in school so did not have to make payments at that time.

The truth is I should of never of been given the loan as my parents had very little income and no significant assets. It was ridiculous. But I was lucky enough to finish my degree in CS so eventually I was not poor and paid off the loan. But even with the CS degree and diligent saving it took almost a decade.

I guess I would say you were broke, but not necessarily poor. But I do understand the point you are making. Student debt is non-dischargable in the US.

Also congratulations on getting out of debt and having a career.

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