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?’”

  • cybervseas@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Is there just some basic personality type that finds it hard to be responsible with money, or is this a failure of education somehow? I have ideas for how to help but help will be unwelcome by people who refuse to recognize that they have a problem.

    I think a few things come together to bring us here:

    • Modern education has completely abandoned teaching personal finance to kids.
    • Modern payment technology (credit cards, tap to pay, apple pay) have separated us all from the tangible feeling of spending our cash on stuff. Now we don’t even swipe a card or hand over a credit card to pay for something.
    • Influencers and social media create new, unrealistic expectations of lifestyle.
    • Highly targeted advertising on the web, in apps, and through paid influencers and social media, finds people at their most vulnerable moments and suggests that they buy stuff. Companies are targeting the weaknesses in our psychology and it’s hard to withstand that onslaught.