It’s almost like we have no money and don’t have a choice because having ridiculous luxury items like FOOD, requires you know, money.
Just uh, stop being a poor!
Problem solved.
It’s not that difficult! Just borrow a few millions from your parents, and become CEO of your own company.
Rent some boot straps!
Try being born right next time sucker!
Jokes on me for not selecting “easy mode” on the start screen I guess.
Cost of rent is such a con. It continues to rise and been proven to be manipulated by software (RealPage). Then shrinkflation… and inflation… cost of energy. Cost of insurance. Literally everything. EXCEPT the one thing which SHOULD go up: wages.
But hey, corporations can just bake bread and be exempt from minimum wage increases; California and Panera, though they got in so much hot water it was backtracked… but holy fuck that’s the shitty weasel way of corps.
Don’t you just love rent/housing? Oh, sorry you don’t make enough money to qualify for a mortgage. But hey you can pay $1,500/month+ to pay your landlord’s mortgage!
Housing is a human right. Housing for all!
“people are too poor to afford to eat, come observe as we try and reframe this as a quirky habit of a younger generation instead of hilighting the fracturing of society as a whole!”
she suffers with a smile
Yes, I definitely volunteered to get an interest free loan on my groceries. It absolutely had nothing to do with my inability to pay in full immediately
From a purely mathematical perspective, if you are a perfectly rational consumer you would put everything on an interest-free buy-now-pay-later plan and then squirrel the money into a high-yield savings account, then pocket the interest.
But listen to our fun jingle!
Isn’t is nifty to get into debt before your brain has fully developed!
This is yet another massive sign of an oncoming recession in the next 6-12 months. Inverted yield curve, more part time jobs, layoffs, commercial real estate collapse, etc.
In September 2024 student loan payments start back up. They’re semi on pause if you have financial hardship, interest still accrues. 45,000,000 people with student loan debt.
That adds another one to the list. Unfortunately I don’t see a way we avoid a recession into 2025. It’s basically inevitable at this point given the conditions.
Commercial real estate collapse you say? I’m listening…
A lot of the knee-jerk reactions reek of avocado toast and bootstraps against The Youths™ and the article starts off a bit as living beyond your means, I shook my cane and felt it too reading the headline at first.
But honestly, think about how these financing options are smoothing out paychecks for young people and low income folks, giving them more of a buffer in actual cash to deal with day to day stuff that might not be covered by these services. And anything that can put the screws to credit card late fees and interest and the fucking scumball payday loan industry is absolute tits IMO.
I remember being poor and hungry early in life… absolutely would have taken advantage of predictable lower payments on as much as possible just to have more cash around because I knew just how likely it was to try cranking my junker of a car one morning and realize I’m walking to work for the next few paychecks.
predictable lower payments on as much as possible just to have more cash around
It doesn’t give you “more cash”. You are borrowing money and interest is definitely baked into it. Credit cards already let you borrow money for a month for free. Plus they have cash back / points and great fraud protection. Plus they help you build your credit score.
You can get a basic credit card for $0 per year with a low limit, even if you have no credit. Don’t ever use “pay later” shit. Why do you think they invented it? It’s better for them, not you.
I mean the one time I used one of these “pay in four payments” kind of things there was no interest added on. It just let me split up the cost easier rather than having to do it all at once and subsist on very little till I get money next.
I bought a fridge with a 3 month scheme when I was broke enough that a new fridge would’ve been the end of that month’s money. Zero interest.
Don’t think I’ll ever finance a pizza over 4 payments like some other comment said though. Unless it’s my last pizza before I decide to stop existing or something.
How old are Gen Z kids? 12-26 years old? Man, I was broke as shit from 12-26 too. Didn’t even have avocado toast money.
Poor man buys boots biyearly, rich man buys boots once. Guess who pays more?
This comment is just dripping with boot licker spit
So now they’ve made it easier to go in debt for lunch
How do you finance something for longer than a week that you need to buy every week?
Rack up credit card debt, flee to a different country when they start coming after you, repeat until you’re dead or in prison.
Or just starve.
Capitalism has been a resounding success, hasn’t it?
Every system must be tried and taken to the extreme where it eventually crashes and gets replaced. It’s the nature of things.
As a socialist, I’m still waiting for it to be tried.
I mean, the average human is better off than they’ve ever been largely due to profit driven innovation. So in that sense yes it has been. But yeah obviously capitalism will continue to slowly eat us alive unless we take control of it and better direct it’s benefits at everyone instead of just a few.
I don’t know the difference between this and using a credit card? You can extend payment using a CC, are the interest rates that much lower?
BNPL generally has a fixed payment schedule, while CC does not. It’s entirely feasible to use a CC and never pay interest by paying debts immediately (because you have cash liquidity). At that point, a CC becomes more of a low-friction “accounts payable” system for consumers than a financing scheme.
BNPL’s primary value is in making large purchases because of low cash liquidity. When consumers don’t have enough cash liquidity for FOOD, that’s a sign of bad times.
Or it means people are leveraging low interest loans to gamble their lunch money. Still not a good look.
Not much difference, but it’s usually fairly predatory.
It’s not that it’s a fairly new thing- it’s that people are having to do it for necessities. Which just makes everything more expensive as your (probably) now on a credit treadmill.
I saw a youtube video yesterday about a bank executive explaining banks in a humorous way, and the best line was
“you don’t need to afford the item, you need to afford the interest payments OF the item”
He’s not wrong, but this comes off as “it’s only a banana Michael”. If he’s talking about a house, then yes. If he’s talking about groceries, that adds up quickly. Don’t just pay interests on everything.
What’s the interest payment/cost for this kinda service? I’ve fortunately never been in a position to need it.
Little or nothing if you make the payments.
If you miss a payment, the rates go sky high.
I’ve used affirm a few times in the past for larger purchases. So I bought a $600~ table saw and you pick the length of the loan in months 3/6/12 whatever. I didn’t get whatever months interest free but the interest didn’t seem too crazy. It was like a couple of bucks every month and if you pay it off early you don’t have to pay the rest of the interest. It’s convenient for the purposes that I use it for. I’m really glad that I’ve not been in a position to need it for groceries.
I just want to say this is the default in brazil for poor people to get things they need fast, but it’s more of a thing for buying a fridge, or a phone, but food? Things are getting serious it seems.
It might now be the most common thing to use it for food in Brazil, but I’ve even seen pizza ads offering to finance a pizza in 4 installments.
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How is buy now pay later “niche”? There’s literally a scene in the bible about this practice. People have been buying things on credit for longer than money has existed.
Hi. Can you please tell what is that scene?
But into our religion and follow our rules now, so you can go to the happy cloud place later.
I am curious how much of this is just ease, like why pay upfront if I can get a 0 interest “loan” as long as I pay it off prior to any interest charges, can be problematic if you don’t have the income to pay for it of course.
