I agree, it's not the 'perfect' savings model, but it is one way to look at it.
I don't think a normal 'savings' account would work; that's basically just staking without getting the HP, which seems to defeat the purpose of Hive.

Everything is still hard for new users; hopefully we can make the whole process easier overall. And as for auto voting, i'm not a fan in general, it does help smaller users if they can find a trail to support them, but overall, I think most user actually lose value by having trails voting for them. It means a lot of curators who would vote on your post don't bother, as they've already voted as part of a trail, normally at a fraction of what they would vote.

Autovote is only really good if you won't be active for a while.