Literally what russians were doing while being loud on internet about how sanctions don’t work. You can look foward to anti theft tags on bread soon.
What about shaving items and deodorant?
…yup done already.
And butter locked up
Odd to think if you can’t afford food now you could afford it later plus interest.
Also odd to think people can put off eating until they have the proper funds.
I am talking more about the people lending the money, not sure why they think this would be sound lending. People will do far worse then default on a loan to keep eating.
Oh, I guess I was assuming the vast majority of these folks (I’m one of them actually) are using credit cards, so the loaners don’t really know ahead of time.
I can’t open the article (forbidden) but I am also assuming this is about the new DoorDash and others eat now pay later crap.
Yeah, “buy now, pay later” usually refers to installment plan services like Klarna and Afterpay. Credit card companies have a different business model.
The business model for those services is basically to do all the shady shit that credit companies can’t do anymore because they’ve been around long enough to become regulated.
Going back to the original point about thinking people will be able to pay later. I doubt that’s the goal. My impression is that their income is meant to come from two places:
- garnishing people’s wages forever and getting them on interest that they can never repay (won’t work on everyone, but maybe enough for margins)
- laundering and selling these subprime loans by bundling them with better loans, like the mortgage industry pre-2008
Yeah, you are getting nothing from garnished wages of a person who went into debt to buy food (people seem to think that you can just garnish 100% of someones income for some reason). You hit the nail on the head with the comparison to the 2008 mortgage crisis, these are very very very bad loans that they will try to bundle and sell. Another game of hot potato with a grenade.
Money is like stamina - you usually have much more than you think, but accessing it is not without a serious toll. Extreme example - you can probably sell an organ to cover your debt. And there is a wide spectrum of things you can do before reaching that point, many of them crossing the legal, ethical, and humane border.
The original BNPL creditors are not going to make you do them. They need to be legitimate, customer-facing businesses. But they can sell your debt to collection agencies, which will be more willing to put pressure on you. And if that doesn’t work - there are always gray market collectors to sell it to.
As someone who has worked a bit in lending (many many years ago), there is diminishing returns to bad loans. No one is sending people to “break knees” over BNPL loans, they charge so many fees just to cover the defaults. There is no real “grey market” to sell these bad loans to (at least for now). They harass and threaten a whole lot, but really don’t do much (due to cost not morals). At the point people are taking payday loans out to buy food, you have got to the point of trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.
First off, I fully agree with you. But how people are lured in is that there is no interest if you pay on time, so it’s advertised as interest-free. But obviously the business model is built upon people not paying on time, and as such one should calculate that cost into it…
This works when talking about seadoos and lifted trucks. When it is food the title of “fool” goes from lendee to lender.
…and the additional food then.
What makes you think they think that? Odd…
I keep on wondering who the fuck has the money to be using things like grubhub. I realize its a non sequitor for this article but I really don’t see how these businesses stay in business.
Credit card debt is a pathway to many abilities some would consider unnatural
My neighbor gets everything delivered, but I have no clue what he or his wife do. If my spouse made the same as I do, we could afford to do all that delivery stuff. But it still makes no sense
I have friends that talk about getting food delivered nearly daily, plus groceries and whatnot. I am so frugal it makes my asshole pucker to think about delivery fees PLUS them getting your order wrong so often PLUS the food is cold and takes way longer than simply driving there. And then in addition, we actually need the human contact. But I’m not gonna criticize my friends to their faces. Just here.
For me the best part of doing groceries yourself are the food expiring markdowns. I get so many meats and interesting things I could usually never afford by getting stuff that is going to expire that day.
Case in point, scored this 5 minutes ago, add some cheap sides and dinner sorted
That seems backwards to me, I would absolutely tell my friends if I thought their life choices were harmful.
Same. If my spouse made the same as me and did not have all the medical issues I guess I could but we would not. Likely would just live in a nicer place.
People who don’t really understand credit cards or have a cognitive disconnect between cost and value when fulfilling their sustenance need.
When people get hangry they don’t make good choices.
Roaring 20’s pt 2
I have used it a bunch over the years because I hate talking to people, but I never use delivery so I think it’s only a few extra dollars over calling it in in average, plus some places do offer “discounts” and Amazon prime allows grubhub premium for no charge which removes more fees and gives you credit for pickup orders. The discounts aren’t much but can bring it down to what it costs by phone and sometimes a little more. I used to throw a few bucks for tip, but i have decided not to do that anymore because I pickup and it’s mostly from pizza places which I wouldn’t tip if I call it in so why should I this way.
Of course, these days, I barely get takeout or go out anymore because, like the article talks about, money is too tight to reward yourself anymore…
My experience is that there’s always a hidden surcharge with DD or Uber eats. Like fries are $3 if you call it in yourself, but are $3.30 or something in an app. A couple years ago I had a $10 off $40 coupon and dash pass from my credit card. Total after fees for pickup was like $55 and just calling it in myself was $45.
Not saying it’s impossible to save using them, but good luck.
Yeah the place specific delivery is usually not to bad I mean in particular the internet ones like grubhub. Im sorta aware of the discounts but im fed up with that model. I do wonder if it will work for them long term as im not sure how many folks will do it without the discount whereas uber and airbnb that can sorta compete because they are a tax dodge there is no real tax advantage gurbhub and ilk can lean on to compete with folks just picking it up themselves. I think they are hoping to decimate the pizza and chinese places drivers.
I used to have lunch delivered where I worked through another local company, but the delivery was “free” because of a deal my workplace made with the company (it was actually not free, because everything was marked-up). It was more convenient than driving some place in traffic and being worried about time while out. Usually, I’d just take meals I preprepared to work though.
yeah I was at a place with that. The times I did not bring something I took the opportunity to enjoy walking to a place but it was a downtown job so no driving necessary.
never understood this. If you can’t buy it now will you be able to.pay later?! You need groceries every month
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, it takes one unexpected expense and suddenly you’re hustling to get food on the table. The cycle then repeats itself.
I’ve been there. It’s expensive to be poor with little to no way out.
You need a car to work. Cars are expensive. You get a old clunker.
You work and live check to check. Maybe $50 or $100 left over after taxes and expenses. Not really possible to have an emergency fund.
A single injury or car breaking down and you need to borrow money. From family, friends or some shitty company.Oh and then your yearly raise comes around at $1/hr that barely covers your rent increasing let alone inflation.
Whoops some bill auto-drafted unexpectedly
Your account is negative now, oh and throw a $25 fee on top.
Looks like you’re scrounging for dinner tonight. And the rest of the week. Maybe skip some meals because you have no choice.
Shit sucks ass.
Once I bounced a check to our water company and they refused to take checks or credit cards from me for a YEAR as a punishment. It was a one-time accident after paying on time for around seven years. I literally had to drive my ass down there with cash. It’s a small rural water service, not a big corporation - they chose to be complete assholes even after I explained the situation (we had a baby that month and forgot a monthly $ transfer in the chaos).
Same mistake probably cost us $120 in overdraft fees. Society financially punishes people who need money the most and rewards the people who have plenty. It’s ridiculous.
I once had my electricity bill bounce, and they forced me to pay a deposit of $250. So the amount I owed went from $100 to $350. Plus a late fee. And they never return the deposit until I had paid on time for 2 years.
That was a bad time.
Getting a checking account with no overdraft fees is definitely a plus in those situations
Recurring charges like utility bills are often processed regardless of overdraft protection status - ultimately at the bank’s discretion, and you can be sure they’ll pick the option that gets them the most fees. Overdraft protection only seems to stop you from using your card for a new transaction with insufficient funds.
Yeah I meant banks that allow overdraft but charge no fees, Ally for example.
Using a credit card is also a good option, just as long as the budget is managed correctly to avoid running up more and more debt.
Peanut butter and bread it is!
Food banks are a godsend in these situations. Don’t donate money. Find a local community center that offers assistance and donate foodstuffs. Things like rice, canned beans and mixed veggies are always welcome.
From what I understand food banks would rather your money than those nasty old cans in the back of the pantry
Actually, yes. Donate what food you can, but I promise they have enough cans of beans, bags of rice, etc to last until Jesus comes. Especially because different areas have different people - one local pantry might just need a little bit of everything, while another one on the north side of your city needs a lot of vegetarian and halal options because of the people it serves in that area. Especially, donating money lets that food bank get things that aren’t strictly necessary, but can make life that much more bearable - pastries, cookies, candy, snack foods, etc. Sure, it’s not healthy and I can hear you all sighing from here, but imagine this is your sole source of food for the month. Having a package of shelf-stable Little Debbies or whatever can seriously make your day just a little more bearable, instead of going “oh boy beans and rice for the 23rd time this month.”
Dog and cat foods are good things to donate, also sanitary items.
Get a less shitty bank
Thankfully, Obama did away with the onerous overdraft schemes that banks were doing… Oh wait nevermind, Trump just rolled that back.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Yep. This tracks.
My issue now with products is planned obsolescence. Any things aren’t made to last like they used to. They also have extra technology in them making them harder to repair. Appliances, cars and more.
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I understand the need but you just push the snowball hoping for a miracle.
If you are at the point where you are buying grocoeries in installments, who cares about paying it back. What good is a good credit score if you cant afford to buy anything anyways. Just survive any way you can at that point
Cost of living is too high, put it on credit.
Your alternative is starve now.
Either way, this is about to get a lot more bonkers in roughly the next 30 to 60 days as Just In Time delivery… kinda just, stops working, and grocery stores will have to both raise prices and ration items per customer per week to deal with shortages and try to minimize in-store injuries and deaths.
Go look up a compilations of black friday shopping stampedes.
Imagine that, but for groceries, every time a grocery store restocks… for the forseeable future.
Can you elaborate on this? Just In Time delivery? Is this a US thing?
Edit: okay, I looked it up and I understand it now. The ripple effect already happened though when big box stores told Trump to fuck off with the tariffs, because their shelves are empty.
Yeah, put super simply:
Minimize needed actual storage space and time a thing spends in storage… by relying on very frequent and consistent logistics.
Its very efficient in the sense of minimizing operating costs…
But it is also extremely fragile, a minor perturbation can fuck shit up for weeks or months.
… And we are getting… well basically the most major disruption in the history of JIT as a logistics paradigm.
Really thought we would have learned that JIT is a horrible strategy after covid… That was only a few years ago…
America follows Seinfeld rules:
No hugging.
No learning.
… Larry David is even writing poignant political satire pieces just right in the New York Times now!
There was an episode of Comedians in Cars like a decade ago now, Jerry just muses something like… God, is NYC just gonna be nothing but corporate coffee shops and banks?
Yes. Yep. That is what happened.
Some people don’t have the option, and end up relying on these services. It’s similar to the payday loan trap. Being poor is expensive.
Then you’ve never been poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
There are times when it’s either find a loan from someone or not eat for two weeks because something in your house broke and that’s unfortunately a reality for many Americans including myself at one time.
I understnd financing. The problem is financing groceries. So you cover the unexpected and finance groceries. what about next month?! Unless you get a way to make more money to cover the difference you going ro have to finance again plus interests
edit: I’m sorry, I’m not american and I was trying to understand some decision. I get it
Girl, if they don’t eat they won’t make it to next month! This isn’t a financial decision, it’s a survival decision.
Welcome to the Sam Vimes Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness.
That’s the kind of choice of surviving that comes with living while poor in America that happens way, way too often.
I am sure they are well aware of the issues with what they’re doing… It’s just desperation. They likely have kids to feed and shit.
Capitalism isn’t paying enough for workers to live off of and they system is papering over it with debt. Problem is debt isn’t a sustainable way to do it since it has to get paid back. We’ve been seeing sketchier and sketchier things happening in finance and when these loans don’t get repaid (and this article is a sign we’re getting close) the whole house or cards comes tumbling down
Capitalism isn’t paying enough for workers to live off of and they system is papering over it with debt.
There is also zero incentive to change any of this because it’s win/win for the people at the top: They get to underpay their workers (more money for them), and then they (or some others in their class) make absolute fortunes on selling and perpetuating that debt.
The idea is that if you are throwing a party or buying something big, then this will be useful for those purchases.
It isn’t a good idea, though.
Probably should not be throwing parties when they are poor
Yeah man, fuck people just trying to throw a birthday party for their kid. People need to suffer more
Also living miserly won’t actually get you out of poverty so what’s the point?
You can’t not live life. You can’t budget your way out of poverty
yes, however you absolutely can budget yourself into it.
This has major, “they shouldn’t be buying steak with food stamps” vibes.
The only time I’ve used these was on Black Friday, and ultimately, it was worth it.
But they are 100% predatory.
And people have an issue with dumpster diving. Fools
Steve Carrell: HEY… THERES A BUBBLE!
Putting food on layaway?
So much winning /s
