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?’”
$800 on a day trip to the beach?? Thats insane to me.
Also never understood why anyone would you those options, they have always seemed like trap. Have some self control
Why do you even need a tent for the beach? Are you camping out there overnight?
I imagine it’s more of a canopy than a sleeping tent. Something like an EZ up tent that provides more shade than just an umbrella.
I’ve used them and they’re pretty nice, especially if you’re going to be at the beach all day and don’t wanna get sun burned. That being said, it’s still a big purchase for just one day trip. I’d only invest in one if you were using it regularly, or had like a week-long trip planned.
I think I’ve seen those before. And I believe when I did, they were renting them out for the day like they do with chairs and umbrellas. Which I’m guessing is not uncommon at beaches.
Yeah, it would make much more sense to rent one for a day trip. Even a week vacation honestly.
A high end sandcastle kit?
I honestly don’t understand why anyone thought “buy now pay later” was anything new. Usury is among the earliest professions.
Says “no interest”, so it ain’t usury
$55,000 is good money?
Depends on where you live
I make $50,000 and I live alone in a 3 bedroom house (a fixer upper but decent enough) which I own in a decent part of my not even terribly small city (~50,000 people). And I live comfortably enough even though I put very little effort into budgeting. Only 3 years ago I was still living in the same house/area off of $30,000 and even that was technically livable. $55,000 in my area is decent money as long as you don’t go completely wild with it and it’s downright great in a dual income household. There are also areas of the contry that have an even lower cost of living than mine.
Once you get out of the metropolitan areas money usually stretches much farther.
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.
Idiots spend money they don’t have. News at 11.
ITT a breath of fresh air. I am not alone in having an interest in personal finance, and understanding the basics of it.
Most of my interactions on lemmy so far have been making me feel guilty (and downvoted) for saving some money like I was a dirty billionaire, and to invest in index funds, using capital to further oppress the masses.
The only purchase I’m willing to go into debt for is a house and a car. Anything else I spend on should be something I already have the money for. I don’t understand how some people are willing to take out loans for miscellaneous things that aren’t even necessities.
Well medical care is not house or car but needed.
For sure. I forgot to include that, since it’s a necessity after all.
People have completely lost track of what wealth looks like and it’s not their fault. Using UK numbers cause that’s where I live:
- salary for a 21yo in 1970 for a white collar job: £1861 - £24k adjusted for inflation. Pretty on par with today’s salary for a starting white collar job.
- price of the average house in the UK in 1970: £4378. About 3 times the above annual salary. Adjusted for inflation that’s £57,491. The average price of a house in the UK right now is £260,000 after dropping from 300 due to current market. 10 Times the annual salary.
You go to work at least 8 hours a day 5 days a week, in a culture that’s indoctrinating you that you should be thankful you even have these horrible work conditions and pay, you spend half of more of your income on a landlords mortgage payments + extra, and for what? So you can’t even afford to buy a damn games console outright and drown your sorrows in a virtual world?
Yeah no shit their overspending, they just want to live a little of their life when they can but they can’t even afford to do that.
And to everyone that’s about to write “well if they would budget better” kindly fuck into the sun. First of all not everyone should be an accountant in order to live comfortably. A lot of people simply don’t have the skills necessity to do it. But more important, a full time job should be enough to provide for yourself, your family (1 spouse 1 child) and a mortgage on a house or apartment suitable for this family of 3. Not because I feel like people are entitled to this, fast from it, but because this was the norm 55 years ago. This was the normal for my grandparents. Society is supposedly evolving. The first world countries where this was the norm have, supposedly, grown their economies by A LOT. How can it be possible that the majority is worse off than 55 years ago in a more modern society and in now a lot more advanced economies.
But the answer is very simple really isn’t it. You can’t afford a house or a car made in the last decade while the rich are having literally privatised space races. Space races were exclusively the hobbies of nuclear superpowers, funded by taxpayers. How exactly did private individuals summon up the funds to advice this?
Well, you fill in the dots…
