I really thought these companies would get slaughtered by interest rates, fraud, and young people just never making the payments.
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.
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.
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.
2008 will be just a little slump compared to the upcoming crash. hope this time we’ll end up with a “burn down the wall street” movement, not “occupy wall street”
Burn down the gdp and everyone’s current retirement money? Great idea.
Wall street forced this entanglement to make themselves look valuable. We need to disentangle from their bullshit.
GDP is fake and moneyless tribal societies were able to invent mechanisms of caring for the elderly sometimes more considerate than what industrialized societies have
I dunno, the way the world is hurling to a climate catastrophe. Money isn’t going matter. This is just smart financial planning.
I sincerely hope this is sarcasm
So now they’ve made it easier to go in debt for lunch
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.
Commercial real estate collapse you say? I’m listening…
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.
I thought they started already? I’ve been getting statements since October '23
October '23 was the official end of the moratorium. I believe unless you were able to prove financial hardship, everyone restarted their payments. However, when those payments did resume, there were immediate defaults.
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.
Welcome to the company store where you can buy today’s necessities with debt against future wages.
“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.
That’s actually what I do lol. Unfortunately, I live paycheck to paycheck, so it only makes me around $10/month, but hey, it’s something.
You get $10 of interest per month on a month’s expenses?
$5-10. I have no idea how they calculate average balance for the month, but the good news is that I’m very, very slow saving money.
Don’t fuck up. Seriously. These products exist because, on average, they make money. They make money because, on average, people fuck up.
But listen to our fun jingle!
Isn’t is nifty to get into debt before your brain has fully developed!
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.
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?
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.
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!
let’s lynch the landlord!
Just uh, stop being a poor!
Problem solved.
Try being born right next time sucker!
Jokes on me for not selecting “easy mode” on the start screen I guess.
It’s not that difficult! Just borrow a few millions from your parents, and become CEO of your own company.
Rent some boot straps!
I legit had an acquaintance ask me why I don’t just ask my dad to buy me a house and get into real estate investing.
Well, what was your excuse?
S/
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.
I don’t know the difference between this and using a credit card? You can extend payment using a CC, are the interest rate 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.
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.
