After racking up thousands of dollars in debt, some borrowers are deleting the apps from their phones to avoid getting prodded to spend more.
Many consumers find buying now and paying later a godsend when cash is tight. Others are wishing they’d paid upfront to avoid pain later.
Tia Whiteside, 27, knew she was spending more than she would have without buy now, pay later services — the popular loans that let borrowers split purchases into installments with little or no interest. Planning a day trip to the beach with her 2-year-old son last year, she spent $800 on Amazon purchases including a tent, new outfits and a high-end sandcastle kit with the BNPL provider Affirm.
Whiteside, a Greenville, South Carolina-based behavioral analyst who treats childhood autism, makes good money; she and her husband bring in about $110,000 per year combined. But the $6,000 in BNPL loans she’d racked up over roughly two years felt frivolous, she said, especially because they’re planning to buy their first home.
“I was just seeing my paycheck continually eaten up,” said Whiteside, “and I was like, ‘Where’s my money going?’”
Well if it isn’t then more than half the country is making bad money: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
More than half the country is making bad money! We’ve been ripped off since the 70s. There was a Time article a few years back that calculated how if wages had kept pace with productivity, like it did up until the 70s, then Americans would be $50 trillion richer. Instead that money went to the rich. The rich has scraped off the $50 trillion in wages from the working class and that’s why everyone is paycheck to paycheck.