In the early days of the pandemic,

Bloomberg news reporter Polina Kachero found herself scrolling through Tik-Tock.

Yeah, part of it was Doom scrolling, but he was also looking for something escapist to watch.

And it was kind of fun to see all of these things that people were buying online,

everyone was online shopping.

You guys, after payday is finally here.

So let's recap all of the outfits

I purchased for vacation.

Paulina covers personal finance

and she noticed that more and more of that online shopping was done through apps that let you buy now and pay later.

From companies like Klarna or Afterpay.

Afterpay got me hell of spool.

I don't care if it's just $20, Karen. I said split it up into four

equal payments of $5. But then I started to see some problematic videos of, you know, younger borrowers talking about,

oh, I have, you know, this massive balance on after pay that I can't afford. Maybe if I just closed my account no one will find me.

Paulina knew she'd found a story, one about Generation Z and a new kind of debt.

While they were joking about it, this seemed to me to be a very real issue and this was a new,

trendy niche financial product, you know, that really made themselves out to be made for this younger

generation. But to me, as someone who, you know, was managed my own credit cards, taking on student loans, I was like,

these are loans and this is debt that you have to pay and it seemed like they might not

understand the consequences.

Today on the show, The Consequences.

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