Think back on the past year in your financial life: the money you received from work, loans or gifts, the purchases large and small, the bank deposits and withdrawals. Now imagine keeping track of every one of those transactions - regardless of your income level, it would be a mind-boggling endeavor.
Yet that's exactly what the U.S. Financial Diaries project has done - and not just for one person, but for hundreds. Undertaken by the Financial Access Initiative (FAI) at New York University, with the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Bankable Frontier Associates, the project was based on work that was done internationally for the book Portfolios of the Poor. It tracked the financial activity of 250 lower-income American households for a full year...
Click here to read the full story on NextBillion. To learn more about USFD and its initial findings, watch the interview with FAI's Timothy Ogden below:
Timothy Ogden, managing director of NYU's Financial Access Initiative discusses the U.S. Financial Diaries project, which tracked the financial activity of over 200 lower-income American households for a full year.
This post was written by NextBillion and the Financial Access Initiative. The views expressed therein are those of the author, and not necessarily of the USFD project or its funders.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to assume that you are seeing plenty of AI content (news and papers, not AI slop, though I’m sure you’re getting plenty of that too) from other sources, so I’m trying to think hard about the marginal value that the faiV can provide. As far as I’ve gotten so far: a) make sure that directly AI-related content does not take up more than 2 of the 5 items, and b) try to focus specifically on the cybersecurity issue for financial inclusion. Beyond that, I’m open to feedback on the value you get from the faiV in relation to AI to help guide us in the future. On a different note, I’ll be making a brief cameo appearance at the e-MFP Inclusive Finance Conference to moderate the opening plenary. If you haven’t registered, do so and I hope to see you there! - Tim Ogden