Starting high school is exciting. For parents, it’s also expensive.
Vianney Marzullo, a stay-at-home mom from Chicago, says she spent $480 on school uniforms and supplies for her 14-year-old daughter who’s starting ninth grade in the fall. To finance the purchase, she used a buy now, pay later loan, she tells CNBC Make It.
“We have the means to buy [school supplies] upfront,” Marzullo, 41, says. “I just feel it’s easier to do the payments versus putting it on my credit card.”
Marzullo puts any purchase over $200 on a buy now, pay later service because she says she prefers the smaller interest-free installments to one lump-sum charge on her credit card. This year, she says she used the service one other time to fund a trip to New York for her daughter.
Marzullo joins a growing number of Americans who are turning to the short-term loans that break purchases into smaller installments to manage their spending. In August, 21% of Americans surveyed by LendingTree took out a BNPL loan and at least 41% considered applying for one — the highest level since LendingTree began tracking consumer behavior around the service in 2021.
