Idea: "Pay me not to...."

[beningreenjam (Ben Green)]

Yeah, I like the idea and thought of something similar a while back

Monzabit

I’ve been looking for incentives to help me control bad habits or start doing more of something good. One way that would surely help is if I were rewarded financially for every day that I’m good and incur a financial penalty for every day that I’m naughty. Maybe a shared central account for everyone taking part. Automatically paid in by the “naughty” people and automatically paying out the “good” ones. Fitness activities (e.g running or going to the gym) could be tracked via health kit or moti…

The downside is I couldn’t see any way for us to be rewarded without others incurring a penalty if they fail to do avoid doing their bad habit. I later developed a moral standing on the issue after coming up with this idea, in the same way interest is paid to users’ savings off the backs of penalties of users’ overdrafts.

Although your idea (back on topic)…

@JamesBell

Maybe part of someones budget could be ‘locked away’ and released as they avoid doing things (taking taxis, buying stuff from vending machine etc)

… would overcome this issue.

Not everyone can afford to have part of their balance locked away though so would need to a way of disabling it either permanently until choosing to reenable or in the event of a financial emergency. The argument to that though is that this very feature may prevent financial emergencies from occurring in the first place.