Families living paycheck to paycheck are one shock away from crisis, but saving feels impossible when every dollar is spoken for. Small, frictionless buffers can change everything.

Design a system that encourages low-income families to build emergency savings. Study who is affected, dig past the obvious symptoms to the real root causes, and design a solution that could actually work in the real world. There is no single correct answer — what matters is the quality of your thinking, the stakeholders you consider, and how clearly you justify your chosen direction.

• Who is most affected by this problem, and how did you account for them?
• What is the single biggest risk to your solution working?
• Which assumption, if wrong, would break your whole idea?