No money for coffee? Just take out a loan.

awesome, that will go nicely with my 6-month financing for last week's Papa Joe's pizza
- By next week you should be able to roll that over and get a second mortgage secured against the first pizza for a new pizza.
  
  luckily I don't have to eat every day!
  
  Pizza mortgage lmao
- Considering i don't plan on retiring, this is fine -- i will leave as much debt as possible in my wake when i move onto the great gig in the sky 😇
  
  Except for the fact that you'll eventually have everything you own taken away AND be put in jail.
  Debtors prison called debtor's prison might be illegal, but tons of de facto debtors prisons that de jure go by other names are becoming the standard way for US local and state governments to punish people for existing while poor.
  
  I don't have, and won't have children.
  When I get into my older years, I'm just gonna grab a couple thoussnd loans, and be done with life. Fuck it. I'm gonna spend my elderly years lonely, high off my ass, and giving the middle finger to society.
  I figure I'll go to base ball games, and start drinking lemonaide with tea in it. And also take some drugs.
  Look man. Don't even get me started about the damn 2020 rules that have stuck around.
  I don't understand why they felt the NEED to play baseball during a global health pandemic, but if we're starting out already establishing the fact that they had to play baseball in that....THEN I say the 2020 rule changes made sense. For 2020.
  But now??? Fuck the pitching clock. Fuck the extra innings man on second! I do NOT want my game sped up. I do not want a faster game. I want to sit in the sun, and enjoy a slow breezy summer day, in my happy place watching baseball. Look, I'll be 85. And now you're telling me my damn baseball ticket which cost me $30,000 because of inflation by 2067, now means I only get 2 hours of baseball??? Hell, thats hardly even enough time to find my seat! You know I don't walk so fast. I don't mean because I'll be 85. I'm 41 now, and I didn't walk so fast 20 years ago.
  But now you tell me, after 85 years on this planet. Living through 9/11, a global pandemic, 6 terms of a trump presidency, global warming making winter in the north 115F degrees, and after all that bullshit, you wanna make my baseball shorter??? Oooooooh, and you wonder why us old timers are cranky! Boy let me tell you when I was a young spruce, I'd have pounded 15 shots of whiskey, drank about 24 beers, and then proceeded to mop the floor with you! Well lucky for you, I've only had 10 shots of whiskey, and 15 beers, but I also took some other extra ciricular activities, and now I'm not sure if you're a person, or if I'm talking to a lamp post again!
  I'm gonna be a grumpy old man, who yells at the youth for not understanding things they weren't alive to experience.
  It's gonna be great!
- should have gone to Mahjong's Pizza, you would have got a lower APR
  
  Looking for angel investors for my new business idea: if we offer the lowest pizza down-payments in town, we can edge everyone else out of the market by 2034 and be the market leader!

Sponsored Lemmy Comment: Hungry for a can of beans? Sign up now and get $100 of debt in minutes!
- i think you mean $100 of beans
  
  Sorry no beans, just debt. And an agreement to terms and conditions that you must not poop for 72 hours.
- Due to inflation, I’m afraid one bean is all I can offer you…

Payday loans making a comeback, eh?
And because they don't appear on your credit check you can take a dozen out from different companies! What could possibly go wrong?
- They’ve been here to stay. They just yassified them and are now aiming them at a different demographic. They’re trying—against all logic—to gentrify poverty traps. Welcome to the future.
- Payday loans making a comeback, eh?
  They never left. The financial vultures just keep renaming them and finding other loopholes to skirt regulations and keep trapping victims in their endless debt spirals.
  
  It tends to move around from scam to scam.
  A lot of the payday loan companies seemed to disappear in the UK. The main one was Wonga, which went under after we made it so that companies lending money would have to pay compensation if they lent money to people who would be unlikely to be able to repay it.
  Then there was places like BrightHouse which specialised in selling basic household items to poor people with a 99% APR on them. So that £300 washing machine ends up costing over £1000 by the time they own it.
  The current one is places like Klarna, which is a buy now pay later system. Popular because it doesn't charge any interest (most of the money comes in fees from the retailers) and they don't put it on your credit history, but miss a payment and they'll be on you like a ton of bricks.
  It's just the same thing over and over, which a slight change to skirt any new regulations. It's still the same cash flow problems underlying it all.
- I've just got two kneecaps but those payday loan chumps will let me come back again and again! Sounds like a win for me

Now you too can easily make a ten dollar coffee cost twenty!
- Wow a 100% interest rate? What a bargain!
  
  For short term loans? You'd be so lucky to have it just double.

I wish Reddit wouldn't disable comments under ad-posts. Such a shitty website and so happy I left it for Lemmy.
- Same thing with YouTube. I wish I could vent to the people responsible for putting rubbish in front of me. They deserve to hear my opinion as much as they think they have the right to serve me that ad.
  
  They know exactly what they're doing and they absolutely don't give a flying fuck about what you or I think of it.
  
  You’ve discovered the reason why comments are disabled 😅
  
  For web, use Firefox (or a Firefox based browser, such as Zen) with uBlock Origin and sponsorblock extensions.
  For Android, use YouTube ReVanced (has ad blocking and sponsorblock built in)
  For Android TV/FireTV/Google TV use Smarttube (also has ad blocking and sponsorblock built in)
  If you're on iPhone/iPad/Apple TV you're still out of luck as far as I'm aware.
- I think ads on the internet should only be allowed if they allow comments, with extremely limited moderation capabilities so that they can't just delete all the comments they don't like.
  
  Just imagine the quality control we'd get on products. If people commented how your product fell apart after 6 months on all your ads you better bet things would get redesigned.
  Of course, this is exactly why we can't have those.
- I wish Reddit wouldn't
- There's so many ads now! It's crazy
- I barely go on X anymore, but I did the other day and saw a community note on an Ad and it virtually said it was a scam. I actually lol’d out loud.
  
  One of the few things decent about that site, ignoring all the potential misuses of community notes on other more serious topics.

I'm immediately wary of anything involving credit that I didn't seriously consider or plan for. I can't imagine going into debt because I'd rather drink coffee at Starbucks than at home.
- Do you mean wary or does it make you tired?
  
  Woops, yes.
- I'm the same way and I just had to sign up for a credit card specifically for vet bills because my dog needs emergency surgery. The vet told me the specific card isn't super predatory or whatever, but I didn't really have any time to think things over. I just want my dog better, and I know that I can't afford it on my own rn.
  
  Care Credit? If you have good credit when you sign up for it, its legit.
  Our Shiba Inu racked up a $20K surgery last spring, and $10K of it had to go on a Care Credit card. They gave us like 8 months 0% interest.
  You can use it for any medical bills, but thats now specifically our "Oh fuck a dog emergency!" Card.
- Sadly, with the lack of financial education, many people do not correctly assess their salary/expenses vs their real/perceived expense class
  Basically a lot of people are shitting way higher than their ass will allow them
  These are the kind of people targeted by these ads
  And it's all good in my books. If you are so DESPERATE for approval that you need to take in loans to keep up appearances, then good for you but don't complain about the consequences.
  No one forced you except your own inferiority complexes
  
  You don't need to feel sorry for them, but why are you pleased about the fact that people are sabotaging their futures?

I thought I was being advertised to on Lemmy despite my various ad blockers and was furious for about 10 seconds lmao
- Technically, you were.
  
  If this post had been an advertisement, do you think you'd be allowed to comment on it?
- Glad I'm not the only one getting mad when I see/hear an add now 😭

drained my bank account, maxed my credit cards, but credit genie was there to help me take on more short term debt.

This will be the new normal if we don't stop Capitalism now.
A world where you own nothing, and are expected to survive based solely on a debt that you are expected to pay back but it's an open secret that you never will.
- My first taste of pure evil capitalism was when my fast food job in college was forcing everyone to switch to getting a "cash card" rather than a check. That card had a $0.25 fee every time you used it.
  I don't know if it still exists or if sane politicians told companies that shit was illegal.
  
  They're trying to go back to the 1800s. The giant, old, textile factory near where I live had dorms where the workers would live on premises and were paid in script for the stores owned by the factory. Like coal villages. They converted them into luxury loft apartments now.
  
  Still exists. We took out the middle man between the payday loan people and the minimum wage employees. Private sector efficiency in action!
  
  I believe it is semi-legal where a card CAN be offered, but only as an alternative to direct deposit.
- Is this the latest hit single by Feudalism? I hate it.

Is that woman crying?
- Yeah. Probably, she read the terms and conditions.
  
  Rookie mistake. If you wouldn’t read a company’s legal teams’ diaries, you shouldn’t read their T&C (same thing)
- She's laughing to keep from crying.
- No.

So now they're getting free organic marketing by being a shitty ad? Reacting the brand would be better.

This is monstrous...
- Why? She needed a latte, and because she suffers from poor choices, she can now get a $8 latte that will cost $219 to pay back!

Gotta keep the wage slaves in debt so there's no upward mobility.

So glad I don’t use Reddit

phew crisis averted

remember the pay over time pizza thing?
- That's something that literally exists all over the civilized world were credit cards are used.
  You can pay your credit card debt in installments or portions/quotes
  It's not an earth shattering news
  
  yeah but it was a specific program from like dominoes or something. it was pretty effed up. all the same did not seem to take off so maybe they just wanted to propose something stupid for free advertising.

Did... did they just reinvent credit cards from first principles? Just without the card?
- Honestly these microloan apps are arguably less predatory than credit cards because they usually give you three months to pay and don't charge interest as long as you make those payments.
  It's still absolutely predatory as fuck, but if you are poor credit cards are just way fucking worse.
  
  How do these apps make money then?
- It's Uber all over again. "Disrupt" a market by doing the same thing but with an initial honeymoon period of benefits, then when people have gotten used to your service, rain down the enshittification. Fewer regulations and oversight greatly help this endeavor.

u/CreditgenieApp Promoted
Ewwww! So glad I had somewhere else to go after dumping that place!

If anyone is curious this is the process
Be fucked
Payday loan
Payday
600% are you fucking kidding me?
What's the minimum?
I'll pay this the rest of my life I guess
Be fucked by high interest loan
Beg for money from family, friends, co-workers
Thank God now I'm back to zero
Still exactly as fucked as before
The Old Poor standard method
Be Fucked
Beg for money from family, friends, co-workers, new GF, new GF's roommate, A dog owner you met at a dog park, Mormon missionaries, your landlord, your landlords ugly kid, your cousin, total strangers after you pretend you have the same name as them and act just JAZZED about it, anyone you suspect is sexually attracted to you, your nanna's bridge group, other poor people, the homeless, people who speak the same language you do and are having a celebration at a public park after you convince them your ''John's Kid'' or ''Tia Marta's thursday church preacher'' literally anyone.
Somehow still exactly as fucked as before but now you feel HELLA GUILT, because Tia Marta made you go to church on thursday and the preacher is very convincing. But at least you can't be LEGALLY obligated to pay a loan shark money, and you saved a lot of time.

I wonder how they interact with regulations of the payday loan industry.

I had to take out a loan to replace my water heater. The only reason I can afford the payment is because I just paid off my car. I need to keep that old car running but I already have car repairs piling up that I can't afford.
- We’ll have you ever considered that you’re to blame? You’re posting on lemmy, probably from an iPhone! you could have spent that .75sec working instead of eating your avocado toast! You probably have a refrigerator too! AND a microwave! How poor can you be if you have a car and a fridge and a microwave!
  (This idiotic argument was quoted from multiple, actually real sources, sadly).
  
  I appreciate your comment lol, it's great.
  And this isn't a rebuttal to you, butI've never had an apple product. I'm in Ohio so avocados are usually terrible, a losing gamble. I do have a refrigerator and a microwave, I think everyone who isn't homeless does. They're both partially broken though. Also my part of Ohio has no bike lanes or sidewalks or public transportation, so a car is actually the one thing most homeless people here do have. If you don't have a car you have to be really good friends with someone who does.

Seeing Amazon offering a 3 month payment plan for 25 bucks cat hair removers yesterday blew my mind.

I'm not sure if she's laughing hysterically or crying.

"Oh, he he, I'm so giggly. Getting coffee today is just sending me"

For anybody wondering what the cost is to using their service, this quote from their website about sums it up:
Credit Genie charges a recurring fee of $4.99 per month or $3.49 biweekly to maintain a user's bank account connection. Paying the bank connection fee does not guarantee approval for a Cash Advance.
So essentially, if you're borrowing from them, you'll pay $60/yr in fees if you can afford $5 a month, or, more likely if you're in the kind of financial situation where you're having to take out $100 micro-loans because your bank balance is consistently hitting zero, you'll get stuck with the $3.49 biweekly option that I'm sure they totally don't heavily push you towards. That's $90/yr.
You get charged the fee whether or not you borrow from them at all, and what do you want to bet they do nothing to notify inactive users of their recurring charges?
- So, $60/yr for a $100 line of credit…
  
  Shhhhh! Don't say that! Then they won't be able to as easily exploit poor people! /s

100$ for coffee? Someone has GOT to rein in Starbucks!
- There's millions of people loading 50 bucks on the Starbucks card for those sweet points gains

Brb, I'm gonna take one of these out and apply to Caleb Hammer

I feel sick, this is revolting

I don't have a single friend who takes loans for anything except morgage, wedding or an affordable car. I haven't met anyone who has said taking a loan and having a credit score is anything but bad.
- I haven't met anyone who has said taking a loan and having a credit score is anything but bad.
  Wut. How old are you?
  
  Tons of people have grown up taking financial martyrdom advice from reddit and don't understand the right way to use leverage.
  
  Don't know about them but I did once work with an old hippie lady who never had a car, credit card, anything like that. Story was at one point she was helping a friend get a loan and the bank asked how she could co-sign with no credit. She called her bank (was several years back) and had them read off her balance. Had well into the 6 figures just sitting in an account since she never spent on anything. Was the type that rolled her own cigarettes by hand and such.
- Well, it's not uncommon for poorer people to see payday loans as a bandaid. I took some out in my twenties and everyone in my family has at one point. I'm now in a position that I'd never need one but they're not targeted at people with money. Which should tell the public how absolutely predatory they are.
- The credit system is a game to get you stuck constantly paying for things you'll never afford. When I had no debt settled my student loans, and paid off my car, my CS was 630. Now I have 20 K of CC debt, a car loan, and a mortgage, and my score has never been higher.
  It's a bullshit system, and now that I have a house, I'm going to clean all that up and go back to never spending on credit again.