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?’”
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.
I think it’s a gray line for some folks. I recently got my first credit card and I use it for all day to day expenses. It’s amazing how easy it is to get side tracked while spending. You only having to down pay a certain amount of the outstanding credit and the limits are set by the provider not you. If i didn’t keep monitoring it I think it’d be really easy to get a bill one month that just eats out all my other income.
Apparently a lot of people are going into debt for the sake of “keeping up with the Jones’s”
They’re literally putting themselves into tens of thousands of dollars into debt for an iPhone or shit like that. It completely boggles my mind how you could destroy your entire future for extremely short term gains.
Instant gratification has gone too far too fast