FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

Theoretically, credit should be used for one thing: to make more money. (not less)

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

For a lot of folks, credit is the only way they're surviving on something close to minimum wage. Or credit was the only "safety net" they had during a rough time. Almost none of these people have the kind of collateral needed to use credit to truly transform their lives, and the government assistance for that is seriously lacking in the US (SBA loans are terrible, and you need enough money to cover your own salary until your business gets up and running).

> credit is the only way they're surviving on something close to minimum wage. Or credit was the only "safety net" they had during a rough time

In my experience, the average American has no concept of saving money, and those below average even less.

It's funny to me that America gets flak from all over the world for having no social safety net; if this was actually true, you'd expect to see people put aside a bit of their income, however meager it may be, out of an expectation that they will need it. What do you see in practice? You see people dashing over to the nearest rent-to-own rims shop. (If you don't know poor people, you may not know such businesses exist.)

> Almost none of these people have the kind of collateral needed to use credit to truly transform their lives, and the government assistance for that is seriously lacking in the US

I doubt that greater availability of credit, perhaps facilitated through government subsidy, is what precludes the majority of such people from transforming their lives.

When everything around suggests that the system is rigged against you and care against you, it's no surprise that many people live for the moment and try to find some small bit of pleasure or joy in the moment without planning for a future that may not come.

It's easy to say "why don't they save more?" from an upper or middle class stability, but when the price of everything keeps going up, the police are out to get you, and healthcare is just a fast track to debt that will take away any savings or assets you managed to have, what's the point?

This is a bit too romantic imo. From my eyes, it's mostly:

"An old AMG at 20 is better than a new Ferrari at 60."

There's a slider for how well you want to live your early vs late life. If you work hard, you'll be better off later, and if you go crazy early on, you'll be worse off later. However, there is a point in that you can't catch up on 20-year-old sex, getting drunk or drugged up out of your mind or general fun with friends at 60.