BIDENOMICS: Americans are racking up more ‘phantom debt’ — why that’s a problem.
Some types of debt can haunt you.
“Buy now, pay later” loans, especially, can be hard to track, making it easier for more consumers to get in over their heads, some experts say — even more than credit cards, which are simpler to account for, despite sky-high interest rates.
Over the holidays, the use of installment payments hit an all-time high, up 14% year over year, according to Adobe’s latest online shopping data.
Buy now, pay later is now one of the fastest-growing categories in consumer finance, according to a separate report by Wells Fargo.
“Because no central repository exists for monitoring it, growth of this ‘phantom debt’ could imply total household debt levels are actually higher than traditional measures,” said Tim Quinlan, senior economist at Wells Fargo and co-author of the report.
They keep telling me the economy is booming but all I see is mountains of debt — private and public.