The buy now, pay later holiday debt hangover has arrived, as consumers wonder how they’ll pay bills

cnbc ^ | 01/21/2024 | Gabrielle Fonrouge

[ChicagoConservative27]

When she started shopping for the holidays late last year, Kelly Andersen was struggling to buy her loved ones gifts. So she turned to a novel solution to get through the season: Buy now, pay later.

The 31-year-old freelance copywriter from Los Angeles used Klarna and PayPal to split a variety of purchases into four interest-free payments spread out over a series of weeks. At the time, her upfront cost was about a quarter of the overall purchase price.

But now that January has arrived and the other installments are starting, Andersen isn’t sure how she’s going to pay them off. She’s never missed a payment before and treats debt seriously but has found herself buried under a mountain of micropayments, wondering how she’s going to cover her bills.

[OldMissileer]

My wife and I were married in the early 1980’s. At that time we made an agreement we would only use what cash we could afford to buy presents for each other and eventually our children. We never had a bad birthday or Christmas for any of us and we never had to worry about forthcoming bills in the mail.

In December of 1999 I paid off and closed our last credit card and we only had our mortgage outstanding. We’ve paid cash for everything since, including autos.

It has been relaxing knowing that everything we have is ours with no debt. Sure, we have done without some things but we don’t care.

[BipolarBob]

Which reminds me I need more storage buildings to store all of my junk stuff.

[Harpotoo]

Hey just buy stocks or havent you heard that the markets are booming lol.