{"id":132587,"date":"2025-08-09T20:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T20:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/132587\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T20:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T20:25:10","slug":"financial-expert-warns-young-americans-against-buy-now-pay-later-plans-as-shopping-tactic-growing-in-popularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/132587\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial expert warns young Americans against ‘buy now, pay later’ plans as shopping tactic growing in popularity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBuy now, pay later\u201d plans<\/a> are rapidly growing in popularity among young Americans, but not everyone is convinced they\u2019re a smart financial choice.<\/p>\n

Haley Sacks, a personal finance influencer with over a million followers online, issued a chilling warning about BNPL plans on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d Tuesday, calling the practice \u201cpredatory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy take is that you should not use \u2018buy now, pay later\u2019 at all,\u201d Sacks said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you need to finance something, use a credit card and a lot of credit card companies have \u2018pay over time\u2019 options with 0% interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacks argued credit cards offer important benefits BNPL plans don\u2019t, such as consumer protection and the opportunity to build credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBuy now, pay later\u201d services let buyers split purchases into multiple installments instead of paying the full price upfront. However, if users aren\u2019t careful to make payments on time, they may face late fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBuy now, pay later\u201d plans are rapidly growing in popularity among young Americans, where buyers pay with multiple installments instead of the full price upfront. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Haley Sacks, a personal finance influencer with over a million followers online, warns against the practice, calling it \u201cpredatory,\u201d and saying that it doesn\u2019t offer benefits like consumer protection that credit cards do. fizkes \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

They\u2019re expected to hit record transaction volumes this year after initially being marketed as lower-risk alternatives to credit cards. But financial experts warn that reliance on these payment plans can lead to overspending and a rapid\u00a0accumulation of debt\u00a0if consumers aren\u2019t on top of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A\u00a0LendingTree survey<\/a>\u00a0from April found that more Americans are using BNPL services for everyday essentials like groceries<\/a>, and that 40% of users admitted to missing a payment on at least one loan in the past year.<\/p>\n

Experts say the plans can lead to overspending and debt\u00a0if consumers aren\u2019t on time with payments.\u00a0 Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Factors that could be leading to the shift are elevated prices, high interest rates, and student loan payments, which resumed less than two years ago after a stop during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sacks says these factors are part of why these types of deferred payment plans have resonated with a struggling generation of young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGen Z is facing so much inflation, wages have not kept up, and this is a way to actually be able to get things that you want,\u201d she said. \u201cBut of course, then you\u2019re paying the price.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the LendingTree survey of 2,000 consumers aged 18 to 79, nearly half of American adults have used a BNPL service such as Klarna or Affirm. Millennials made up the largest share, but Gen Z and Gen X weren\u2019t far behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBuy now, pay later\u201d plans are rapidly growing in popularity among young Americans, but not everyone is convinced…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":132588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,29475,26448,79,525,816,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-132587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-credit-cards","10":"tag-debt","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-payments","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115000686948567440","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}