Julie Morgan

The Fed's latest information about the economic well-being of U.S.

households was published last summer for 2024.

It showed that 19% of 18 to 29-year-olds have used Buy Now, Pay Later.

The same percentage holds true for those 30 to 44.

The number drops to 16% for those 45 to 59, and 8% for 60 and older.

How many of them made late payments on a Buy Now, Pay Later program?

For the youngest demographic, 32%.

The next oldest, 25%.

For those 45 to 59, the number drops to 21% who said they made a late payment.

And for the oldest demographic, 12% made at least one payment after the due date.

There's a question about whether the consumer's financial house is in order based on their use of Buy Now Pay Later.

So first of all, it definitely looks by the behavior of consumer that the consumer might be weaker.

That's Julia Ostian, an analyst at Seeking Alpha.

She suggests that not everything is as straightforward as it appears.

A firm CEO confirmed this on its Q2 earnings call earlier this month, saying the consumer they're seeing to date is quite healthy.

They're borrowing money and they're willing to pay it back.

The New York Fed found that about 72% of financially stable users and 89% of financially fragile users had made multiple buy-now-pay-later purchases in a 12-month period.

They caution that this puts the consumer at risk for overextending their budget.

The reasons for using these services include the fact that the payments are spread out, zero interest, the loans are easy to access, it's convenient.

Which brings us to the investment side of things.