I dont think you are going to find many people who will invest the small amounts of money into anything long-term however if you could get them to pool it into a community project with a direct benefit then you can leverage the small amounts into something worthwhile.
I was thinking that it might be interesting if instead of giving Jim a $500 refund in the small town of ABC you might take the refunds for ABC town and start a solar energy project. If there are 20 people with refunds you can build long term on the small amounts of money by leveraging economies of scale. So instead of giving him cash you give him a discount on his electricity. Say over a 5 year period those refunds would have built up into something useful not only for the town but also gives him a bigger discount for each year that goes by.
Banking has a bad reputation and most of these small refunds will simply get spent instead of being invested. Just my idea of something that holds more promise than banking.
COMMENTS
BY Thantawan
ON April 18, 2015 08:53 AM
I dont think you are going to find many people who will invest the small amounts of money into anything long-term however if you could get them to pool it into a community project with a direct benefit then you can leverage the small amounts into something worthwhile.
I was thinking that it might be interesting if instead of giving Jim a $500 refund in the small town of ABC you might take the refunds for ABC town and start a solar energy project. If there are 20 people with refunds you can build long term on the small amounts of money by leveraging economies of scale. So instead of giving him cash you give him a discount on his electricity. Say over a 5 year period those refunds would have built up into something useful not only for the town but also gives him a bigger discount for each year that goes by.
Banking has a bad reputation and most of these small refunds will simply get spent instead of being invested. Just my idea of something that holds more promise than banking.