In recounting her work as a check casher, Servon notes that she was initially confused by some of her customers’ choices. In one example, Carlos (Servon identified him only by his first name), a construction worker who stopped by RightCheck frequently to have his checks cashed, handed over a check for $5,000 for cashing, which required a 1.95 percent fee—$97.50. Servon questions why Carlos would willingly pay such a large fee—plus the $10 tip he leaves Servon—instead of just depositing the money into a bank account and retrieving the entire sum later for free. Her coworkers at RiteCheck explain why that might not be an option: Carlos has workers to pay, some of whom might require cash for a variety of reasons, including lack of documentation. If Carlos doesn’t get his check until Thursday, a bank likely wouldn’t have the entire thing processed and available by Friday’s payday—24 hours later. In another example, a RightCheck regular comes by to get cash in small denominations and pays a hefty fee for it—despite the fact that there are ATMs in the neighborhood that would charge less, or nothing at all. When Servon, again asks why, she’s reminded that ATMs often only dispense denominations of $20, and check cashing customers often have an immediate need for less than the ATM would allow them to withdraw—and no more. “They pay the two dollars to get the eight dollars now because they can’t wait until their account builds up to twenty dollars,” Servon writes. “This is logical, albeit expensive, behavior.”

In examples like these, Servon helps to dispel an all-too popular misconception: that poor people and people who use expensive, alternative financial services don’t have enough financially savvy to understand how expensive the services are, or that they don’t handle their finances well enough to have access to cheaper, traditional banking options. In fact, Servon finds, most people who use alternative lenders are all too aware of how finances work and are desperately trying to use a system bent against them. “Framing the problem as ‘banked versus unbanked’ has helped spotlight problems of financial exclusion, but it has also placed a value judgement on some people’s financial decisions,” she writes. “What if, instead of focusing narrowly on people’s ‘poor choices’ ... we worked harder to understand the options available to people and the context in which they make those choices?”

With payday loans, for instance, Servon notes that many people who rely on this pricey, short-term option actually have credit cards with lower interest rates that they haven’t yet maxed out. They choose payday loans over credit cards not because they don’t understand how interest works, she says, but because they’re smart enough to know that payday delinquency won’t be reported to a credit bureau in the same way late credit card payments are, thus preserving their credit score which can help them obtain a variety of other necessities including more credit.