This might actually be a good way to teach kids about credit and interest. Let them borrow a small amount at a high interest rate and walk them through paying it off.
It’s one thing to tell them about financial responsibility. But watching a bad choice drain their piggy bank is the sort of trauma that leaves a scar.
deleted by creator
A couple dollars is a cheap price for such a valuable lesson.
If that was the reason for it then great idea. Having to buy icecream on a payment plan is just sad and more than a little crazy
Oh I don’t know if that was the reason for the one in the image. I agree with you that needing to finance ice cream is sad. I’m just thinking it could be a good intro to predatory finance for kids.
deleted by creator
Why even use credit at all? What is wrong with debit?
I use my credit cards for everything I purchase because I get some cash back or other incentives along with fraud protections.
My brother’s a psychopath who plays his credit score like it’s a game so he has like ten cards and a 800+ score he’s proud of.
I make nearly three times as much as him and it took me forever to get an 800 so maybe he’s onto something but fuck that game.
I believe when you get serious about the tactics it’s called churning and manufactured spending
Why even use debit at all? What is wrong with bank notes?
Why even use bank notes at all? What is wrong with precious metals?
deleted by creator
I looked into using this type of service to pay for a modest purchase. A luxury of sorts. Something I had the cash for, but felt weird about paying all $600 or so for. I thought, maybe an interest free loan would be cool?
So i start to pay for the thing with klarna or whatever. And I see it’s only a six week loan. Wait, my credit card is a free six week loan (give or take). Wtf. I’d have to pay the thing off faster than just using a credit card.
I talked myself out of buying whatever it was.
Six weeks seems very short, all the services I’ve seen are three payments over three months.
PayPal pay in 4 is 6 weeks. It splits into 4 payments, 1 due now, 1 after 2 weeks, one after 4 weeks and one after 6 weeks
I’ve used similar services to this in the past; not because I couldn’t afford something up front - but because I wanted to amortise the purchase across a pretty short (8 week) period.
Why not just use a credit card? I did. As a semi-regular user of the service, it was set up in such a way that it would bill the first 25% of my purchase after 2 weeks, and again every 2 weeks after that.
So not only was I getting an additional interest-free time stacking the 2 week period with my CC’s billing cycle; but I was earning loyalty/rewards points with both programs simultaneously.
Credit seems like a tax on the poor.
You don’t have to use credit, taxes are taken from you by force. Not comparable imo.
Being able to live isn’t a choice.
Are you saying you need credit to live? Because that’s not true. Lot’s of people live that way, but it’s not necessary.
Have you ever been poor? Yes, sometimes you need credit to live. I’m still paying off debt from 2020 that I only acquired due to desperation and the threat of homelessness
The only people who don’t need credit to live are rich enough that money will never be out of their reach.
You also don’t have to pay taxes. Plenty of rich people don’t
The richest Americans lobbied the government aggressively to pay less taxes. They’re all skipping out on their fair share and foisting the burden on everyone with less than 100 million in the bank.
This is why we should eat the richest person each year and re-distribute their wealth.
Imagine all those greedy fucks using their vast wealth to investigate and call out the real wealth and scummy accounting of the other ultra wealthy.
$8 for a McFlurry sounds absurd
What’s more absurd is that there are people willing to pay that.
What’s even more absurd is that there are people willing to finance that
A lot of our financial fuckery is due to the fact that we have so many financially illiterate people, that companies can impose bullshit like this and get away with it. So in the end we all suffer because we can’t put financial pressure against said companies since they can wait us out, surviving on the stupid.
This applies to a lot of stuff, from streaming to the to fast food to groceries.
I agree but let’s be real the he real absurdity here is that the ice cream machine wasn’t kneecapped by it’s own manufacturer …
Most of the time, these come with zero interest. I’m not sure where the money is for the companies doing these finance options, but if someone did this for a joke, it’s not that big a deal.
these come with zero interest
$8 McFlurry likely has the financing baked into the price of the product.
You’ll occasionally see businesses (SPEC’s is the local shop that leaps to mind) that will give you a discount for using a debt card rather than a credit card. That’s because the credit card company tends to charge a 2-4% transaction fee on the purchase. SPEC’s can save money by offering to discount their merchandise by some portion of that transaction fee.
The reverse is also true. A retailer that works with Klarda or some other DeFi platform can simply raise the price of all its products to cover the (typically much higher) transaction cost.
This defers the credit risk (if there’s a 12% surcharge, you don’t mind when 10% of the bills go unpaid) in a system that is highly punitive for debtors and tax-favorable to creditors.
Basic financial education is a tough one.
Micro-financing is a concept that should be violently uninvented.
Payments Processing is its own niche highly lucrative industry. And options to convince people to finance every fucking thing are largely just rent-seeking schemes intent on nickel-and-diming the transactions of the poorest people.
At least it should be paid off by now
