The financial diaries provide insight into the prices poor households paid for financial instruments, and the logic behind their financial decisions. Researchers revealed that surviving on small, irregular, and unpredictable earnings often generates financial behaviors that at first seem counter-intuitive—such as paying or borrowing to save. Through the financial diaries approach, researchers were forced to confront assumptions and take a fresh look at understanding the price of microfinance—paying close attention to what price means to poor households, the cost financial institutions assume in lending to the poor, and the universal tension between the impatience to meet financial demands today, and the desire to save for the future. This brief outlines these dilemmas and tradeoffs.

This is the eighth note in the Portfolios of the Poor Briefing Notes series. You can link to the other notes below.

Briefing Note 1: The "Triple-Whammy" of Poverty
Briefing Note 2: Borrowing to Save
Briefing Note 3: How do the Poor Deal with Risk?
Briefing Note 4: Research Methodologies
Briefing Note 5: Creating Better Portfolios—Core Financial Products for the Poor
Briefing Note 6: Portfolios of Bangladesh’s Poor
Briefing Note 7: Grameen II and Portfolios of the Poor
Briefing Note 9: Three-Country Analysis

These Briefing Notes were created as part of a toolkit of instructional resources for FAI and MicroSave’s June 8-9 virtual conference Reimagining Microfinance Around the World: Implementing Lessons from Portfolios of the Poor. Co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham A.N. Wright moderated the event and discussed with conference “attendees” how to turn lessons from the financial diaries into real, on-the-ground solutions for economic development. The collection of suggested readings and videos for the conference can be accessed on this page.