[kamaal]

>>But what a better solution might be is to teach people to create a savings account and budget themselves.

You will be surprised how bad people are at this. In fact this app aims to do what a person must be doing naturally. And don't ever think that this is a problem only with the poor. This is an issue faced by many people. Failure to understand how money loses value(Inflation) and how it multiplies(Investments) lie at the core of why people get into financial issues. Ideally speaking you can get rich if you understand how investments work on long periods of time even on moderate salary. A lot of people do it. Unfortunately such people routinely branded as being miser, or frugal or worse; these days the cool kids call them as 'people who don't enjoy life'.

Every body can benefit from learning how to save and invest. Especially salaried large company folks.

I don't understand why that is so difficult. I'm here in the US for a short term work assignment and getting a checking/savings account was the best experience I've had so far. All I had to do was to walk into a bank with valid identification and they had it done within 30 minutes. And the best part of it, they explained me how checking and savings accounts work. All I do these days is allocate myself a budget at the start of the month and put that in the checking account. That basically now becomes my threshold of spending per month. Plus I see food is really not that expensive in the US if you cook at home. Buy a good pair of shoes, good jeans and you are all set. Though I agree rent rates are atrocious in the Bay Area. But with sharing rooms with a friend I was able to tame that part of expenses too.

It just can't get more easier than this.

Allocate budgets, save the rest. Learn to invest and bootstrap your way out of your problems.

[orionblastar]

The problem is that high schools don't teach people how to live on a budget and save money.

When people file for bankruptcy, they are given a three hour video course on the Internet and have to take a quiz to learn how to budget their money and save for emergencies. This sort of thing needs to be taught in public schools for free as part of the math classes or something that teaches life skills.

The app that 'solves' this problem costs $158 year to be a member, and holds surplus money to give it on bad weeks when they don't earn as much to have enough money to live on.

[modfodder]

This needs to start long before high school (much of a person's personality, including how they view money, is already locked in by that point).

Personally I believe elementary is the place to start education about essential life skills, which include dealing with money (budgeting, saving and investing). And that education should continue throughout until high school graduation.

[orionblastar]

Perhaps add in critical thinking, study skills, social skills, people skills, as well as anger and stress management to elementary schools to help out later on in life?

[modfodder]

Absolutely (still amazed study skills aren't a continuing topic throughout education). Maybe it's just my memory, but really don't remember receiving much of any life skills after pre-school/kindergarten. I know we learn much of it practically, but that leaves a lot of room for uncorrected errors that become bad habits.