- payday loans for buying groceries ✅
- lenders are defaulting ✅
- loan sharks are going bankrupt ✅
- you can't buy eggs anymore ✅
- people are spending all of their cash when at payday ⏸️
- everything is getting more expensive by the hour ⏸️
close enough, welcome back brazilian hyperinflation
Huge difference between a business model based entirely on profiting off the loan interest vs lending money towards purchases of actual product that you make a profit selling.
Also Costco has tons of things besides food that people might actually want to pay later on if you own a business. I think this is one of the few places where it doesn't (entirely) reek of dystopian nightmares
A loan at 15% is predatory, a loan at 0% is a discount. A saavy consumer can simply finance their groceries and invest the principal in T-bills to arbitrage the rate difference. I actually did this when I bought my zojirushi rice maker. I probably saved a buck fifty
I don't think this is in any way intended to help poor people. They sell electronics and furniture that I'm sure is what they had in mind when making this decision. It's likely intended to be for people who are hesitant to drop $4,000 on a TV in one go even though they could save up to afford it
Haters will scoff at saving a buck fifty by signing up for a sketchy loan to avoid paying up front. here's one for you, haters; it's a picture of the twix bar I was able to enjoy by having strength of my convictions and the courage to follow through with them
I think this is retched, but also buying in bulk is cheaper per unit than buying one-off items, but often people can only afford the one-off. This could, theoretically, reduce costs if it weren't, well, evil.
Eggs are so cheap people are just walking out with dozens of hundreds of eggs. Just walking out of there. And you couldn't do that previously. I did that. But there's just no need to pay for them. I made them so cheap and it's been very hard work by me but I made them so cheap.
It amazes me that every other type of capitalist took until like 2001 to figure out that bank capitalists get infinite money without actually doing anything; but then ALL the other capitalists went in on it at the same time and now nothing gets done.
Based on how Klarna is doing I think they are going to lose loads of money on this.
The type of person to debt finance their groceries isn’t just bad with money where you can steal a few late fees and interest points here and there, they are flat out insolvent.
Businesses buying supplies are also one of their key customer bases. Makes some sense to finance a significant number of groceries if you are expecting to see some return from that spend.
Ya know.....we could maybe ...cut some military spending and not buy as many weapons of war or whatever the cocaine-fueled ideas DARPA and Lockheed Martin come up with? I'm in favor of modernizing the F-16......and the F-22...axing the F-35 entirely......and cutting spending back to...2 billion.
Whatever happened to layaway? Having an item set aside for you, and then if you paid for it by a certain date you get it, and if not then you don't get the item but whatever the money needed to get used for instead got attended to?
I don't expect a serious answer but it's kind of a serious question I have. When I was a kid, my mom used to buy stuff on layaway sometimes. I don't think that's really an option most places anymore. Was there an incentive to get rid of it? Wha happen?
If it's true they make all their money on members they could maybe actually do zero interest loans or something. And Costco sells a lot of big ticket stuff, appliances, tires.
That's my guess. Probably something more akin to no-interest payment plans, or literal zero-interest loans for necessities like groceries or utility supplies.
I mean, it makes more sense for them than most. If I'm getting a 6 pack of 4-month supplies of tide pods, spreading the cost of that out is reasonable.
One of the bad things about is this is those poor employee's who will get yelled at by their managers if they don't get a certain number of people each day to sign up for this program
You know we're struggling when we have to put groceries on layway. I'm lucky i got in a car accident when i was in 3rd grade so i could win $700k or so a decade later
To make this 100% crystal clear, I am extremely anti-credit cards but loans =/= credit cards. Credit card companies use people’s poor finance skills to keep them in eternal debt even if they can dig their way out. Credit score is further used to divide classes even further.
Slight difference in use-case, I would say. BNPL tends to have a 3 to 6 month term with no interest. If I held that balance on a credit card for that period I’d have to pay interest (outside of a 0% APR promotional period of course). Longer repayment term has its uses.
Comments
- lenders are defaulting ✅
- loan sharks are going bankrupt ✅
- you can't buy eggs anymore ✅
- people are spending all of their cash when at payday ⏸️
- everything is getting more expensive by the hour ⏸️
close enough, welcome back brazilian hyperinflation
Well, that seems like a shrewd business deal!
Yeah this feels like that, but for a Great Depression
the 70s are back, baby
Eggs are so cheap people are just walking out with dozens of hundreds of eggs. Just walking out of there. And you couldn't do that previously. I did that. But there's just no need to pay for them. I made them so cheap and it's been very hard work by me but I made them so cheap.
I give it three big booms!
Not now.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.
help me budget this
STONKS GO UP
Before you know it you've got 8 different $37 payments coming out on 5 different days for shit you didn't need and wish you hadn't bought.
The type of person to debt finance their groceries isn’t just bad with money where you can steal a few late fees and interest points here and there, they are flat out insolvent.
Buying $500 worth of stuff for months at a time
It's all a debt trap.
I say this as someone who used to get payday loans out to pay my rent every month.
Sometimes people absolutely do need these services.
But that doesn't make this whole set up any less pernicious.
Payday loans aren't credit cards yet even more predatory.