‘Not the tacos on layaway‘: Woman uses Afterpay to put $11 order of tacos on a payment plan

You know that food inflation is getting bad in the United States when people are putting their food on layaway, like this Raising Cane's customer who had a hankering for a specific type of chicken fingers, but wasn't going to let a little thing like "insufficient funds" get in the way of them enjoying that.

Now, another person who decided to "pay later" for their food, a woman who bought some tacos using the popular Afterpay option, is being referenced in a popular TikTok uploaded by a user who goes by The Humble One (@yungblackandgifted).

While the TikToker found it funny that there are folks, such as the woman he's referencing, are putting their food on Afterpay, he says that he ultimately understood where she was coming from. If he has the option to pay off something in four payments, he says, why not hold onto his money for longer and make those interest-free payments later?

"Yo...girl just posted and said she's almost done paying off her tacos. What?" he says, laughing over a screenshot of someone's Facebook post. "Now, I done seen a lot of sh*t in my life. I ain't never seen nobody get on a payment plan for $11 worth of tacos. No shade, no shade. But this is, this is wild, this is what you call utilizing your resources."

The TikToker then concedes to the customer's idea. "Honestly, this is borderline genius," he says. "I mean honestly like, if I can go somewhere to eat—I wish I could go to Ruth Chris and be like, 'Yo, y'all take Afterpay?' But no it's deada**. If I walked into an establishment that sold food and they told me my total was $40, you can pay the $40 right now or we can just take $10 from you every 2 weeks until that $40 is paid, I'm going to do the $10 'cause I mean shit? That means I got an extra $30 at the moment to do something else with, you feel me?"

According to Investopedia, Afterpay's payment plans are entirely interest-free if those payments are made on time—the payments are broken up into 4 separate payments, where 25% of the entire purchase amount is made every time until the item's original price is fulfilled: "Afterpay buy now, pay later loans never charge any interest. These loans are interest-free with a 25% payment upfront and 25% payments every two weeks until you pay the loan in full. There are no fees on any Afterpay loan as long as you make your payments on time," the outlet wrote.

Even if payments aren't missed, Afterpay doesn't charge its users interest—it charges late fees instead. If what a customer purchased is under $40, all of the late fees are "capped" at 25% of whatever the original price of the product was as well and the maximum late fee amount for any product purchased with Afterpay will never be more than $68 per order, according to the service's website.

"For orders $40 and above, an initial $10 late fee is charged, and a further fee of up to $7 is charged if the payment remains unpaid seven days after the due date," the site reads. "Total late fees are capped at 25% of the order price, and will never exceed $68 per order."

So if you'd rather hold onto your cash for as long as possible but know that you will have the funding available to pay off the other 75% of an item over the next few weeks, then the TikToker's suggestion for paying off tacos in increments might be a good idea for some.

Unless you're the type of spender who, upon seeing they have money in their bank account and forgets that they have financial obligations to fulfill, will spend the cash they already have and forget that withdrawals need to be made the following week.

If this sounds like you, then Afterpay-ing everything might not be the best of ideas. Or if the nature of your work doesn't provide a steady paycheck, then you might want to hold off.

Some commenters thought that the TikToker made a great point in his video, like this one user who said that they enjoy "Afterpaying" their monthly grocery bill just for the mental optics of seeing a certain amount of money coming out of their account at a specific time. "I afterpay my Sam’s grocery order every month it makes me feel better to pay off 500 over the month rather then at once," they said.

Someone else said that using Afterpay isn't any different than "using a credit card for food"

@yungblackandgifted This how we using afterpay now?? ???? #springbreak #fyp #foryoupage #remix #ramadhan #lofi #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #content #contentcreator #roadto100k #comedy #jokes #laugh #xybcza #afterpay #tacos ♬ original sound - The humble one

There was another user on the application who suggested that the delayed-taco-purchasing-move could be a technique implemented by the user as a means of building up their ability to make larger purchases on Afterpay, which is something that they do themselves: "for the folks shading her, i put smaller purchases on mine to get my spending power to go up."

Someone else said that when they refused to finish paying off an Afterpay charge, that it ultimately ended up going to collections. "They send me to collections for 4.56 dollars. I'm making payments of .99 cents a month," they claimed.

For others, it just had to do with not having any money to pay for food, but wanting some grub at a specific time: "Listen man, we’ve all been there before. Life hits you hard sometimes."

The Daily Dot has reached out to Afterpay and @yungblackandgifted via email for further comment.

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