DailyDirt: Saving For A Rainy Day
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Physical cash seems to be a bit less popular than it once was. Some European countries are even contemplating completely digital currencies to combat the potential side effects of negative interest rates (i.e. people taking out all of their savings as cash). At the same time, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could provide other means of payments without dealing with physical cash. So are we ready for a cashless society? (No, probably not for some time.) However, digital currencies could take away the importance of centralized banking, bit by bit. Perhaps some older forms of savings will make a comeback.- A sou-sou is a kind of informal savings club where a small group of people agree to contribute cash regularly and distribute lump sums on a schedule. This kind of arrangement is not uncommon for immigrants or people who can't build credit with centralized banking systems. [url]
- Lending circles or Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) is the academic term for a savings club like a sou-sou. Related savings vehicles are also called a huay, tanda or chit fund -- and some organizations are helping to document the transactions of these informal groups so that more formal credit histories can be established. [url]
- The tontine is an old kind of retirement fund (or financing scheme, actually) that was much more popular over 100 years ago. People would contribute money to a tontine with many other investors, get regular distributions... and each member's distributed share would increase as members died off (hopefully due to old age), so the longer you lived, the more you could profit. A new kind of tontine could be revived to replace the pensions and annuities that people nowadays don't seem to be participating in. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: alternative banking, annuity, banking, bitcoin, cash, chit fund, credit history, cryptocurrency, financing schemes, huay, investing, lending circle, p2p lending, retirement fund, rosca, rotating savings and credit associations, savings club, sou-sou, tan
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What a quaint article.
Yeah, these kinds of things have pretty much been outlawed these days.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What a quaint article.
But yeah, it's "illegal".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Even The Simpsons got in on this: the episode "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in 'The Curse of the Flying Hellfish'" from season 7 featured a tontine in which Abe Simpson and Mr. Burns were the last two surviving members. Naturally Burns sent an assassin after Abe.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"to secure continuous improvement, development, expansion well being of the YOURSURNAME family concept"
like everybody else does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_foundations
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]