This article is from WeChat official account:NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , author: Ya Ting, editor: Kimura week extension, the original title: “Millennials” loan “: life in lending in the general Young People”, head picture from: Visual China
498.2 billion on Tmall and 271.5 billion on JD. Both set new highs for the Double Eleven shopping festival over the years. In a year besieged by the epidemic and economic downturn, these numbers created by everyone seem to be able to obscure many moments of panic. For example, at the same time that set a record, how many people also borrowed more?
A week ago, Ant Financial’s abrupt end of the “world’s largest IPO” plan triggered some discussions on the phenomenon of young people borrowing and spending. But the “record” of Double Eleven proves that these discussions have not really aroused the vigilance of the consumer groups.
Take advantage of the timing of the shopping season, we interviewed three young people in their 20s who worked in first-tier cities and who were or were carrying loans. Their debt history and amount may not be as shocking as the members of the Douban group “Indebted Persons Alliance”, which appeared on Weibo’s hot search yesterday, but they may be more representative.
The fact is, this is an era when you need to pay special attention to it, so that you may not be in debt. At the moment when consumption and borrowing have become more convenient than ever, people who don’t use credit cards and various consumer credit products are even more weird. As long as you can stall your eyes, you won’t show your feet when you panic. For young people in this era, borrowing is more like a small problem most of the time.
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“Huabei’s repayment date was originally on the 9th, and then I moved it to the 20th. BorrowThe repayment date is the 6th, the installment date is the 19th, and the Jingdong is the 8th…” Luzi can’t tell how much she owes, but she can keep in mind the repayment dates of the various lending platforms. First In the calculation, her total debt was 50,000, and the number seemed to be closer to 70,000 when it was calculated again.
But this is not enough to become a crisis in Luzi’s life. In the few years when P2P thunderstorms were frequent, there was no lack of anecdotes of violent collection and family destruction in life. Luzi’s debts are all lent from “regular” platforms, and even if she never keeps the accounts, she knows that her daily expenses are nothing more than meals and taxis, and she can’t talk about paying for serious problems like gambling and drug abuse. It will not move towards a moment that can appear on the social news page.
In addition, Luzi has a “decent” fixed income in Beijing. Compared with the situation of many unfamiliar netizens with a monthly income of 5,000 but debts of hundreds of thousands on Douban Zhihu because of debts, whether it is 50,000 or 70,000, the current income makes Luzi feel that his debt has an end. of. And most importantly, “It’s not a big deal to owe money. Credit cards are so common. Many of my friends still owe more than 100,000 yuan for their glamorous looks.”
So, even if he knew his debt was more than 50,000, Luzi was not anxious. At least there is no need to rush to list the income and expenditure plan, and deliberately pay attention to the point of expenditure every month. “What am I doing with the plan? The plan can’t keep up with the changes. As long as people are alive, do they have to pay back the money on time and on time? I have such a consciousness in my heart.”
Film “Francis Ha” Stills
Working in Beijing for nearly seven years, Abby, who has debts of up to 80,000, has similar feelings. No one of her close friends has a deposit. The period when she has the most debt is also the day when she has the highest monthly income. She has gone through the stage of using loans to support the loan. When the East Wall was broken down to make up for the West Wall, she borrowed something from her friends. My friends understand very well, and the friend with whom she helps each other most often, “she earns more than me, and owes more than me”.
Zhang San owed nearly 70,000 in the first six months of working in Beijing. She didn’t know the exact amount. She only felt that the initial borrowing was some unexpected incidents that required a temporary expenditure of 3,000 to 4,000. The debt increased due to unexpected events. She also had panic when she accumulated to about 20,000 yuan, but the instalment repayment was only a few hundred a month, which was still affordable based on the income at the time.
Looking back now, Zhang San feels that the loan at her fingertips makes her “not feel that she is out of money, nor that she is spending other people’s money.” After Huabei’s quota was used up, she opened the online business loan, and her dilemma suddenly became clear again. “Seeing the online business loan of 60,000, I feel very relieved. I feel okay. I still have it. The money can be spent”.
In 2019, the Nielsen Market Research Company released a report on the status of consumer credit mainly for young people born in the 90s or 95s in China. According to this report, among young people in China, the overall penetration rate of credit products is 86.6%, and after deducting about half of them, only use their payment functions (only After using consumer credit and paying off in the month without interest), about 44.5% of young people still have substantial debts.
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On the day of Double Eleven, Douban’s Indebted Persons Alliance group appeared on Weibo’s hot search. This group was founded in December last year and currently has more than 17,000 members. Many people who posted for help have debts of more than 200,000, and some of them have broken millions. The debts have various reasons, ranging from addiction to luxury goods such as brand-name bags and watches, to serious losses due to fraud, gambling or entrepreneurship. In the quagmire, most people are in a state of life that is on the verge of collapse and cannot be sustained. Netizens expressed their shock.
Compared with the slightly extreme case of the League of Debts, the total debts of Zhang San, Abby and Luzi will not be so exaggerated. At the same time, they do not pursue luxury goods, nor do they have bad habits such as gambling and drug abuse. The total debt is quietly increasing in some seemingly normal consumer behaviors. This kind of quietness is subtle. On the one hand, it will not get out of control to the point of unsustainable; on the other hand, this strenuous balance and the slow and continuous occurrence behind fundamental changes to individual consumption habits. , Making its “withdrawal cost” higher and higher.
This may also be the lending norm that is happening to most young people: Debt stories are usually not started by an accidental, low probability event or a serious bad habit. Things will change from poor turnover. The chain of loan financing is often interrupted due to quota restrictions. The number of borrowing money from friends begins to increase. Salaries and other income are always almost all when they are received. Returned to a credit card or other lending platform, there is almost no money in the savings card, and daily expenses must be maintained by “borrowing”.
Film “Hundred Yuan of Love” stills
Abby recalled that the first time she applied for a credit card was because she graduated and traveled abroad. At that time, she didn’t go out for other reasons, but the credit card was kept. The initial limit was only 8,000, but last year the limit of this credit card exceeded 80,000.
I took the initiative to apply for the second credit card around 2015. Because I was interested in Weizheng, I did several projects and spent about 10,000 yuan. Abby paid with a credit card. He didn’t think it was a small amount of expenses. He thought in his heart that it was two months’ salary, which would be paid off in a few months.
That was also the second year Abby had just worked, and the economic situation was in the ascendant in the myth of the Internet. When she just graduated, her monthly salary was less than 5,000, and then gradually increased. After 2017, her monthly salary has tripled. After spending on micro-adjustment in 2015, she changed to a larger house, applied for a foreign language class and arranged a gym, she also raised a cat, and planned a trip for herself every year.
In those days, she had strong confidence in her ability to repay. However, over time, this confidence was gradually worn away by the fatigue that “disappeared” as soon as the income was received. At the most exhausting stage, she knew that she owed 4 credit cards, but she was not sure about the total amount. “It’s probably 80,000, and it must be more than 80,000. I don’t dare to add it when I add it, for fear of scaring myself to death.” .
Film “Over Spring” stills
Zhang San set the starting point for the rapid expansion of her loan amount in June 2019. At that time, she wanted to apply for a study program abroad and needed to find someone to do paperwork. Because she didn’t want to ask her parents for money, she chose an online business loan, and in order to be able to use it more for herself, she took a thousand more than the original price of the document. Later, the travel and renting expenses also took money from it one after another, plus her pets also accidentally got a cat passed on during this period. By the end of 2019, after half a year of drastic changes in her life or life stage, she roughly calculated that she owed a total of about 70,000 yuan.
Similarly, 70,000 is not a definite number. The reason for calculating an approximate total is because her “planned” lending platform suddenly dropped its quota, and the loan was opened up with loans, and she couldn’t find a platform to seal the gap for a while. live.
From that night, Zhang San began to calculate how much money he owed and how long it would take to pay off the money. “I realized that I didn’t want to use a loan to support the loan anymore, but it was actually a long time after that. , How long will it take me to pay off the money”.
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In Zhihu, Weibo, and Douban open topics and discussion groups about borrowing help, netizens with debt problems will actively disclose their debt amount, debt platform, and income level. Their ultimate goal is “Going ashore” (pay off all debts), but often feel suffocated by the ever-increasing debt collection calls and rising interest rates.
In addition to encouragement, other netizens will also give practical guidance based on their own lending experience. For example, how to complain about violent collection, how to negotiate with the platform to reduce interest or only repay the principal. Different negotiation and repayment methods will differ according to specific personal income and lending platform regulations.
But most netizens mentionedThe first step to land is to confess the debt to his parents and family.
For those who have savings in the family, in the early days when the amount of debt is not large, the family may be able to pay off the debt in one lump sum to reduce interest and prevent the snowball of debt from growing. For families who are incapable of repayment, confession with their parents and family members also means a kind of spiritual “salvation”. Release the pressure on the loan by facing the disappointment of relatives, and no longer escape the real situation— -To a certain extent, this is the true “mature ceremony” of many debtors today.
Regardless of family background, rich or poor, “confessing to your parents” is almost the first commandment for debtors to go ashore. But the difficulty or paradox of this matter is that the fundamental reason for many debtors to borrow money is the relatively tense family relationship.
Film “Miss Bird” stills
After Zhang San decided not to borrow money from the online loan, he only set aside 500 yuan for his living expenses every month, and all the remaining income was used for repayment. In this way, by the end of the year, she still has nearly 50,000 debts to pay off. She roughly calculated the interest of the online business loan. For a loan of about 10,000, she would pay more than 1,500 in interest every year. She decided to find a way to repay the debt first. gold. She told her mother that she had a debt of 20,000 to pay off and hoped that she could “support” 10,000. However, Zhang San’s mother said she had no money, and at the same time told her “Don’t tell Dad”.
Actually, telling his father about his debts was not an option for Zhang San. She knew that once she spoke, her father would definitely come out and help her pay off her debts, “but then he would be even more dissatisfied with me.” After graduation, Zhang San had a big disagreement with her family due to employment choices. Her father hoped that she could work in a state-owned enterprise in a southern city, but she had other things she wanted to explore and try.
Zhang San didn’t dislike the southern city much, but once he complied with his father’s arrangements, it seemed to mean that he would have to live under his father’s control in the future.The marriage partner must be arranged by his father. Before that, her father had asked her to go to a designated unit for an interview on the grounds of severing the relationship, and he never agreed with her current personal life plan.
In addition, considering that a financial project at the same time in the family was relatively difficult, she did not ask her parents for money for the rent, travel, and living and study expenses that were incurred due to instability during the graduation period. “My parents have asked me several times, but I said no. They thought I might be really rich if I had an internship and a job, so they didn’t give it back.” Once the established impression of “financial independence” is broken, parents’ perceptions of life planning will be greatly different.
Film “Deeper Than the Sea” stills
Luzi and Zhang San’s family situation is different, but she also explained her consumption philosophy from the growth environment. Luzi’s parents divorced when she was very young. She grew up with her grandparents and was estranged from her parents. Even when she went to university, the living expenses given by her parents were intermittent and unstable. Since college, she relied on friends for support when she had no living expenses.
Gradually, this developed into a kind of life philosophy, “If you want to borrow me, you can’t pay, but you can still give it to me.” Luzi feels that if he has to borrow money, it is easier to borrow from a “machine” than to open a friend, and the online loan platform is so convenient that there is no need to go to the bank to go through various procedures.
Because of the early working hours, Abby’s earlier loan channel was the credit card. After calculating the interest rates for borrowing and Huabei, she found that it was significantly higher than the credit card she used, so she decided not to use it easily. At that stage when borrowing was difficult, she could barely afford it herself, and she had never considered letting her family bear it. But the family knew that she had not made a deposit after working for so many years, and had been paying back the credit card, “always think I have a problem.”
The conflict between Abby and his parents is mainly focused on lifestyle, but the outbreak of these conflicts between them will eventually fall on money. Mothers who have always worked in state-owned enterprises often point outBlame Abby, because she did not live a routine life, so she would “cannot hold her head up” in front of other acquaintances. The quarrel between the two often started from why they didn’t get married and have children, never saving money and talking about parents paying so much for her, but Abby didn’t know how to repay.
In Abby’s impression, this rhetoric hasn’t changed much since she was adolescent, but when she was adolescent, her mother accused her of failing to learn so that she had no face. Abby felt that her mother wanted to use this statement to control and interfere with her life. When annoyed, Abby might even think, if she can pay off all the money she raised up, can she break this relationship.
Abby believes that the biggest difference between herself and the previous generation is that in the life of the previous generation, there was nothing but devotion and no self. She often tells her mother to have a life of her own, hoping that she can find new hobbies such as traveling or dancing to fill her life after retirement, and she doesn’t have to worry about what her daughter wants to live in to make her face. But every time she talked about this, her mother would ask Abby again, “Aren’t you going to control me?”
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Since the implementation of the family planning policy in 1978, most of the generations born in the 1980s and 1990s have begun to live as only children in the context of Gaoge’s modernization. During their childhood, this generation would be called the “little emperor” or “little sun” to symbolize the excessive attention and love received.
Feng Wen, an American anthropologist, once explained the parent-child relationship of the one-child in “The Only Hope-Growing Up Under China’s One-Child Policy”, which is different from the fact that children in a multi-child family rely on competition to win the preference of their parents. In this situation, the only child does not have to face competition for family resources from birth, and “as the sole focus of all the love, investment and hope of the parents, the only child has great power. Sometimes, the parents even fight for the love of the only child”.
When the only-child generation grows up, look back at the beloved ones at that time. The kind of “only” care, love and investment that embodies the “only” care, love, and investment, they have such a large family resource investment, they often bear more The pressure, relationship control, and expectation of return, but the reality does not always grow positively, but more and more cruel.
Nowadays, when searching for the title of “Young People Destroyed by Online Loans”, dozens of articles describing the harmfulness of online loans can appear with roughly the same content. These articles criticize young people’s money worship, consumerism, and over-inflated vanity, as if young people’s greatest source of harm is the young people themselves.
Follow BaoDelia’s theory of symbolic consumption means that in contemporary society characterized by abundance and consumption, the meaning of “things” is no longer limited to what was once, and the main feature is to satisfy people’s basic life needs, but more of the generality of symbols. feature. When people consume goods, they are essentially consuming the meaning of symbols, and at the same time they define themselves and identify with groups.
Rather than condemning young people, what is more interesting is that this generation of young people, at the risk of being “destroyed”, will also rely on borrowing to consume. What is the symbolic meaning? What do those worlds pointed to by consumerism and vanity mean?
In a way, that may be what our generation of young people has been promised since childhood. Growing up in the era of high growth, we were promised all prosperity and beauty. We were told that as long as we climbed up a ladder that symbolizes upward, we will eventually end up with a better future, where we will always Get the best things in your capacity as easily as possible.
The rewards of hard work seem to be so definite that it is not hesitate to sacrifice the entire family. A few years later, the picture changed. The pressure was transmitted from society to industry, to families, and then to individuals, forming a certain kind of tension at the bottom of the parent-child relationship, and planting the seeds for every young man’s story of advanced consumption and borrowing. .
The movie “The Night Sky Always Has the Largest Density of Blue” stills
Before Double Eleven this year, Zhang San had already paid off all online loans. Although a small part of it was temporarily borrowed from friends, she no longer has to bear ever-increasing interest rates, and there will be no new ones. Even Huabei turned her off completely. She originally planned to buy nearly two thousand skin care products on Double Eleven, but after careful calculation, she found that the real discount was not strong, so she gave up.
Now she has a plan to manage money and save money regularly. Her goal is to save 100,000 first. This year, a friend appeared a little bit after resigning nakedNot anxious, she thinks that the main reason is because that friend has a deposit of 100,000. 100,000 is not much, and it can’t do any major things, but it is a reflection of a sense of security. It seems that after 100,000, you can say goodbye to work and life that you don’t like.
Abby said that he was “a blessing in disguise” during the epidemic. During the epidemic, she was unable to travel abroad as in the past, and a lot of previous daily expenses were also saved. It was also during the epidemic in the first half of this year that she finally paid off all the credit cards. On Double Eleven, she only planned to stock up some cat food, and did a low-cost medical beauty project, mainly to please herself. The premise is that she has saved money, and there is still a balance in the savings card after these consumptions.
She hasn’t considered much about the specific financial management in the future, nor has she considered buying a house and other things, because that also means settling down. But as far as she is now, she is not even sure if she will continue to work in Beijing in the future. Abby smiled and said, “What if I marry a foreigner in the future? I really don’t know what the future will be like. It’s never too late to plan.”
Luzi’s debt situation hasn’t improved yet. She has no other plans except to find ways to repay the loan every month. In the interview in early November, she was not sure what she would buy on Double Eleven, and might buy a hat. She doesn’t have any financial plan yet, but she also said that she actually thought about buying a house. “Who doesn’t want to have a house, but do you know where I like the house?” Luzi pointed to the direction of Beijing CBD and said the name of a high-end real estate that she had visited before. The average price of second-hand houses there is now 120,000 level.
(Luzi, Abby and Zhang San in the text are all aliases) public channel number from the micro herein: North Park NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , author: Ya Ting, editor: Kimura circumferential extension