…
Ms Ellis works full-time as a nurse’s assistant and has a second part-time job.
But she needs to economise. She has switched stores, cut out brand-name items like Dove soap and Stroehmann bread, and all but said goodbye to her favourite Chick-fil-A sandwich.
Still, Ms Ellis has sometimes turned to risky payday loans (short-term borrowing with high interest rates) as she grapples with grocery prices that have surged 25% since Mr Biden entered office in January 2021.
“Prior to inflation,” she says, “I didn’t have any debt, I didn’t have any credit cards, never applied for like a payday loan or any of those things. But since inflation, I needed to do all those things…I’ve had to downgrade my life completely.”
The leap in grocery prices has outpaced the historic 20% rise in living costs that followed the pandemic, squeezing households around the country and fuelling widespread economic and political discontent.
Payday loans caused such a problem for young and dumb military members that there’s a law about how much interest they can charge military members, and subsequently won’t loan to military members.
We need those predatory interest laws to protect everyone.
But it’s depressing as fuck the rates are so predatory it literally had a negative impact on the US military.
Because the military is mostly young guys with no financial literacy who are suddenly handed more money than they know what to deal with. It’s just the extreme scenario of the average American. (Maybe your average person, or even your average animal, but I don’t know enough to say.)
Lol…
The military doesn’t pay that well. It’s just a steady paycheck.
The signup bonuses can be pretty large depending on your placement exam.
When I was a young dumb 18 year old that wanted to be a doctor, I thought the army would be a good way to do that debt free.
They offered me something like 25 grand if I signed up that day.
That’sa lot of cash for an 18 year old.
25k for enlisted is insane…
When I was in, they didn’t even give that much to nuclear engineers to do 6 years…
Was it like Sept 15th 2001 or something when you signed up?
Oh I didn’t sign.
Someone offers you a sack full of cash to do something, you better start finding a dentist to look at that gift horse.
A friend went through the army program starting at med school around 20 years ago. She just got her Oncology surgeon cert, which is ridiculously deep in the medical doctor qualifications.
Seems like the program was effective to me. She had to move around quite a bit, but she also got access to the best hospital programs.
I definitely was dubious about the entire idea of signing with the army, but it worked for her.
Yup. And for most of those guys, they haven’t had that before. (Also food and housing is generally free for junior enlisted, so they don’t really have much in the way of bills, either. Cell phone, Xbox Live, and that girl’s onlyfans who is really into me I swear)
Other people are just as vulnerable though why protect only some people?
It probably wouldn’t have passed if it wasn’t For The Troops™.
I do hate when laws cover specific groups when there is no good reason they can’t cover everyone broadly.