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?’”
I mean, we built some pretty neat sandcastles as kids with our hands. Dig a hole, put the sand in front of it as a barrier, scoop up sand+water from the hole and create “drip castles” with turrets and such that harden as they dry.
If you’re buying decorations, I’m thinking that it’s gonna be liable to wind up with plastic decorations or something left behind.
And in that case…I mean, the kid is 2 years old. I figure that she probably wants the best for him and all, but…I’ve seen a lot of 2-year-olds enjoy the box that a toy came in a lot more than the toy. I dunno if his sandcastle experience is gonna be so much more awesome with some kinda kit than just experiencing and learning how wet sand acts…