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

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277 points cebert | 10 comments | 24 Jun 25 00:03 UTC | HN request time: 1.985s | source | bottom
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PostOnce ◴[24 Jun 25 00:47 UTC] No.44361768[source]▶
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.

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lm28469 ◴[24 Jun 25 08:48 UTC] No.44364104[source]▶
> the average person is using

The "average person" is told from birth to consume as many things and experiences as possible as it if was the only thing that could give their life a meaning. The entire system is based on growth and consumption, I have a hard time blaming "the average person"

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ljm ◴[24 Jun 25 14:36 UTC] No.44366742[source]▶
Wages for the average person (working class) typically remain stagnant while cost of living increases, particularly through inflation. I imagine minimum wage would be 25-30 bucks an hour if it did track inflation and that would only serve to keep your purchasing power constant.

Credit, in this sense, is also used to solve a cash flow problem. It’s a bad sign when that credit (or Klarna Pay-in-3 style setups) is applied to basic day to day expenses like buying groceries or other necessities.

Basically the market’s answer to increasing poverty: you’re not getting paid more, so how about we give you a payment plan to spread things out?

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bryanlarsen ◴[24 Jun 25 15:02 UTC] No.44367018[source]▶
That's not true. Wages have generally outpaced inflation as long as we've measured inflation properly. Up until the early 1970s this was very palpable, since the early 1970s the delta has been much lower, wage increases have been very slightly above inflation.

Why does it feel different? 1: the amount of stuff we buy has increased a lot. Anybody who owns what would be considered solidly middle class in the early 1970s will feel quite poor today. 2: financial security is way down.

In the early seventies a middle class family of 6 would own a 1200 square foot house, a single car, a single TV and a single radio would be the sum total of the entertainment electronics they owned, they'd have less than a dozen outfits apiece, they'd eat out about once a month, a vacation to a neighboring state would feel like a splurge, et cetera.

But they were relatively content. 1: they were much better off than their parents and grandparents, who experienced the depression & WW2. 2: they were "keeping up with the Joneses". 3: they had a feeling of financial security due to job security and the fact that serious health events were unlikely to financially devastating.

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kiba ◴[24 Jun 25 15:27 UTC] No.44367264[source]▶
Average American household budgets are dominated by housing, transportation and taxes.

Maybe some of that problem is about spending too much money, but it cannot be denied that housing are unaffordable and that transportation is inefficient and is a mess.

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9rx ◴[24 Jun 25 15:34 UTC] No.44367339[source]▶
> Average American household budgets are dominated by [...] transportation

Huh? Doesn't the average American live in a city? The whole reason for accepting being squeezed in tightly with other people is so that you don't have to worry about transportation; enabling everything you could ever want and need to be found in short walking distance.

Transportation is for people in rural areas. Yes, it is expensive, but that's exactly why most people left rural areas for the city long ago.

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smelendez ◴[24 Jun 25 15:41 UTC] No.44367424[source]▶
Most American urban areas are dominated by suburbs where it’s not practical to walk everywhere and public transit is very limited. So a car is necessary and often a car per working adult.
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9rx ◴[24 Jun 25 16:14 UTC] No.44367778[source]▶
Yes, but why would anyone want to live on what is effectively a farm, but without the benefit of separation from other people or land (read: income) that a farm offers? That completely defies the whole reason for the density. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I question why people are doing it.
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acuozzo ◴[24 Jun 25 16:44 UTC] No.44368125[source]▶
FWIW, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY. I know about both urban and suburban living. I now live in Columbia, MD: a suburb from the late '60s planned with high ideals.

My three children each have their own room. They can ride their bicycles on our sleepy street without having to constantly worry about reckless drivers. They can explore the walking trails and wooded areas our community maintains. They can play baseball in one of the nearby fields without having to worry about breaking a car window in doing so.

My wife has a large crafting area. I have an office. We have a home theater. We have a workshop in our garage. We have a large sunroom which opens to a large deck suitable for entertaining many friends at once.

Getting even a fraction of what I described above in a city would cost a fortune.

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9rx ◴[24 Jun 25 16:47 UTC] No.44368172[source]▶
The benefits of living in the country are obvious. And since the land provides income itself, the extra cost of transportation one has to assume to live in the country is well offset anyway.

Its the weird middle ground that has all of the downsides of the country and all of the downsides of the city all packed into one that we're talking about.

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Whoppertime ◴[24 Jun 25 18:39 UTC] No.44369359[source]▶
Some people really just want a back yard with a white picket fence their kids can play in
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1. 9rx ◴[24 Jun 25 19:06 UTC] No.44369764[source]▶
Sure, but outside of where that backyard is wanted to be hundreds of acres, then there is the density necessary to introduce amenities like jobs, healthcare, shopping, etc. alongside the backyard. At which point you no longer need transportation as you have everything you need right there.

But what happens in the places we're talking about is that the people accept a small backyard in order to keep everything close, but also work to ensure that amenities aren't welcome, only allowing other houses to be close. So you get all the downsides of the city, having to trip over your annoying neighbours, but also the downsides of living in the country, having to waste large amounts of time driving to do anything.

What do people see in these strange middle places?

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2. bluefirebrand ◴[25 Jun 25 05:20 UTC] No.44373854[source]▶
> What do people see in these strange middle places?

Not sharing a wall or ceiling with other people is great actually

I am constantly told that dense housing "built right" is quiet and peaceful and you never hear your neighbors through the walls, but my experience in apartments in my 20s was not like that

I constantly had neighbours that would play loud music at all hours, or get into fights with their partners or otherwise just be extremely disruptive and stressful to share a building with

I'll take the trade of having to drive a couple more minutes to get to a store if it means I never have to hear my neighbours having loud sex through the walls again at 2am when I'm trying to sleep

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3. 9rx ◴[25 Jun 25 06:13 UTC] No.44374106[source]▶
You've made a great case for living in the country, but not for the weird middle places.
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4. bluefirebrand ◴[25 Jun 25 15:00 UTC] No.44378136{3}[source]▶
Well the weird middle places are just a compromise between "having more space and more distance from neighbours" and "being far from amenities and city life"
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5. 9rx ◴[25 Jun 25 15:22 UTC] No.44378356{4}[source]▶
> and "being far from amenities and city life"

They close the distance gap, but thanks to poor civil design often (yes, there are exceptions, always) they don't close the time gap. I don't suppose it is being able to see a mostly occluded, hazy silhouette of the downtown skyscrapers is the appeal there. Surely this is about minimizing travel time?

A family member once lived in the suburbs of a large city. I live 50 miles clear of that city. It was always fun to razz them about the fact that I could be to the amenities in the city faster than they could. Many cities (not all, there are exceptions, always) develop as economic hubs, needing to get things in and out of the city as fast as possible, often at the cost of intercity movement. This leaves it more advantageous, if not in the heart of the action, to live outside of the city with respect to the matter of time.

Perhaps people just end up in the suburbs out of happenstance (e.g. they were born there) and never give it any more thought? It would be fascinating to hear from those who gave all three types of places a fair shake and still settled on the suburbs in the end.

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6. bluefirebrand ◴[25 Jun 25 16:02 UTC] No.44378792{5}[source]▶
> they don't close the time gap

During peak hours maybe, or in very poorly designed or overcrowded cities, but ultimately if everyone is using the same roads then you will eventually sit in the same traffic if you're trying to get to the same places? Travel time might not be that much longer but it will be longer

> It would be fascinating to hear from those who gave all three types of places a fair shake and still settled on the suburbs in the end

I am one of those people. I grew up in suburbs, my family moved to the countryside in my teens, and I spent my 20s in dense urban areas, settled in the suburbs now

When I lived in the country I did often joke with my friends that I could be anywhere in the city in 20 minutes faster than they could, because I could get far north or far south faster than going through the city

But the tradeoff was that 20 minutes was a hard minimum. I could not get anywhere faster than that really

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7. lotsoweiners ◴[25 Jun 25 16:03 UTC] No.44378810{3}[source]▶
How? I live in about the most typical suburb imaginable: ~2500 sq ft house on ~8500 sq ft lot. I never hear or am bothered by neighbors (other than early morning landscapers). I have 3 grocery stores that are around a 10 minute walk along with just about every other type business. Don’t understand what is undesirable about that to you.
8. 9rx ◴[25 Jun 25 16:35 UTC] No.44379187{6}[source]▶
> but ultimately if everyone is using the same roads then you will eventually sit in the same traffic if you're trying to get to the same places?

Once you get to the arterial roads that take the traffic to the amenities that's true, but it is often slow going just to get that far.

Fair to say that is less true if you are on the edge of the suburbs, but, for the sake of this discussion, are you really living in the suburbs if you are right beside the action? I think that goes against the premise presented in the beginning.

> my family moved to the countryside in my teens

Not to diminish or dismiss your experience, but can a teenager really give something like that a fair shake? Like you indicate, you ended up there because your family brought you there, not because you chose to go there to make your own life. Typically, teenagers have limited autonomy and really can't experience it for what it is. You had an experience, but don't you think it would be an entirely different experience if you moved to the countryside now when you can fully shape the experience into being what you want it to be, not what your parents (or equivalent) wanted it to be?

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9. bluefirebrand ◴[25 Jun 25 23:22 UTC] No.44382726{7}[source]▶
> now when you can fully shape the experience into being what you want it to be

Sort of my whole point is that there is no situation in life that we can "fully" shape into what we want, every situation comes with upsides and downsides which are often not really in our control, because we have to share space with other people

I grew into an adult and commuted to my local college from the countryside. I didn't live out there for long, but a couple of years at least. Long enough to realize it wasn't really for me

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10. 9rx ◴[26 Jun 25 07:53 UTC] No.44385176{8}[source]▶
> Sort of my whole point is that there is no situation in life that we can "fully" shape into what we want

I am not sure I intended for you to take it that literally, but to the extent that you can fully shape it within the constraints of reality. For example, it is abundantly clear that countrysides are not all equal. Even on the surface, countryside can vary from farmland, mountains, lakes, forests, etc. which each enable completely different lifestyles. Going deeper, the social experience can vary wildly from one countryside to the next. You get the idea. There are some countrysides I'd have no qualms about living in, and others I wouldn't even want to vacation in, let alone live there (even while others quite happily live there). That choice is something within your control.

> I grew into an adult and commuted to my local college from the countryside.

I assume this means that you carried on your stay still living with the same family? If so, I'm not sure that changes the calculus. It is not like something magical happens when you turn 20. The significance of being a teenager earlier was only in that it implied that you were following your parents around. If you continued that into your 20s, 30s, 40s, hell if you are 80 and living in a place of someone else's choosing rather your choosing then I'd say the same applies.

Let me ask this: If you, for some reason, were forced to move to the countryside today, are you choosing to move to the exact place your family chose all those years ago or are you going elsewhere? Assuming you give it some thought, my expectation is latter. The world is a pretty big place. The statistical likelihood that the place you ended up in as a teenager with presumably little to no input also being the best option you can independently find among all of the different countrysides is low.