re: More Americans are financing groceries with buy now, pay later loans

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$70-$90k vehicles all over the road. $15 beers at events and everyone’s got one in their hand. Kids riding $10k golf carts to the neighborhood pool. People paying someone to cut their grass. Car wash subscriptions. I can list 100 more things.

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This is the problem. There's a term since COVID called "hate spending," it refers to the act of spending money out of frustration or defiance despite rising prices, often accompanied by anger or resentment toward having to pay more for goods or services that were previously less expensive. As more consumers have continued to "hate spend" they've been offsetting those marginal costs by putting them on their credit cards. Credit card interest averages somewhere over 22% right now.

What we're starting to see is more credit card delinquencies (90+ days) and more vehicle repossessions (even while new vehicles have continued to sell well). If you were to run the economic clock backwards toward the economic shitshow of 2008, we would be somewhere between 2014 and 2011 (depending on the category).

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We are a long way from hurting.

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Not as far as you think. Consumer debt is and credit card interest rates are at historic highs while personal spending stupidity seems to be running rampant as well. Once consumers start defaulting on their debt, they will lose access to credit. Losing that access means GDP starts going down, meaning a rise in Unemployment. Rising unemployment will feed more defaults, thus creating a snowball throwing us into a recession.

Those in an industry fairly recession-proof or with strong enough job security to weather the storm will make out well, the rest will need to do varying levels of rebuilding their lifestyles.

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Our daughter thinks NOTHING of ordering fast food from door dash. $20for a Chick Fila sandwich, fries and a drink. Its bad enough that it costs $10 if you go get it but toss in the delivery fees and tips and its outlandish. Starting around 10 AM every day of the week the delivery drivers starts showing up in our neighborhood....

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How old is she?

I’m too old to have grown up with smart phones, but even if I had, I feel like my parents would’ve never allowed this. But I see parents mention it all the time.

I mean, I guess once I started driving I did go eat places with friends so it’s kinda the same thing. But man. Mom would have lost it if we declined her cooked dinner while a delivery driver was at the door with a Big Mac.