Diarist 15 has been a regular and intensive user of loans and savings, as charts 03 and 04 show. At one time his wife had accounts at three MFIs, but had abandoned them by 2018, paying off the loans and taking the accumulated compulsory savings. Diarist 15 didn't like the way Grameen Bank pressured his wife to take a loan in late 2016.
Diarist 15 has long held an account at the Cooperative, which became his only formal financial partner and has been intensively used for both borrowing and saving. The Coop differs from the MFIs in being much more flexible (there are no fixed dates for repaying loans which can be repaid as and when the borrower desires) and offering a daily collection service at Diarist 15's workplace. Of all our Diarists, Diarist 15 has taken most advantage of this flexibility. He often repays loans in lump sums and immediately takes another, for example. He runs saving and borrowing alongside each other, often making a loan repayment and a savings deposit each day for days on end. He has made 1,687 daily repayments, and 2,881 daily savings deposits, during the period we have been tracking him up to the end of 2024.
The Coop loans he takes, and the savings he withdraws, are not used in his business, the costs of which are small. They go to his building work and other domestic needs, and the savings withdrawals sometimes go to pay loan interest and loan repayments. As of the time of writing he has around 12,000 taka in his savings account and no loan.
He also uses informal devices. For example, he takes howlats (interest free loans) from family and friends. There have been several instances of using the rehan device (see Diarists 10 and 14 for an explanation): for example in early 2021 he took a rehan loan, letting the lender use his land for a period, and using the money in the home construction work, before repaying it. He has also taken local informal farm loans to cultivate his land.
