“The repayment date for Flower was the 9th at first, then I moved it to the 20th. The repayment date for borrowing is the 6th, installment is the 19th, and Jingdong is the 8th. ……” Midori couldn’t say how much she owed in total, but was able to The first time she counted, she was able to remember the repayment dates of each lending platform. The first time she did the math, her total debt was 50,000, and when she did it again the number seemed closer to 70,000.
But this is not enough to be a crisis in Midori’s life. In the years when P2P mines were frequent, there was no shortage of violent collections and the odd death of a family. The debt is all from the “regular “Even though she never kept accounts, she knew that her daily expenses were just meals and cabs, and she didn’t have to pay for serious problems like gambling and drug addiction, let alone a moment where she would appear in the social news.
In addition, Midori has a “passable” income in Beijing In addition, Green has a “decent” income in Beijing. Compared to the situation of many strange netizens on Douban Zhihu who are vocal about their debt, earning 5,000 a month but hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, whether it’s 50,000 or 70,000, the income now makes Greenie feel that there is an end to her debt. And most importantly, “owe money is not a thing, credit cards are too common, many friends shiny also still have to owe more than 100,000 “.
So even knowing that she is over 50,000 in debt, Midori is not anxious. At least not to the point where you have to list your income and expenditure plan and deliberately focus on expenses every month. “What do I need to make a plan for? As long as we live, we have to be practical and pay back the money on time and on schedule, right? It’s enough for me to have such an awareness in my mind.
Abby, who has worked in Beijing for nearly seven years and had a maximum debt of 80,000 yuan, has similar feelings. She went through the stage of loan to loan, tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall when the turnover can not be, she borrowed some with friends. Friends are very understanding, and the most often and her mutual help of that friend, “she earns more than I do, but also more than I owe “.
Zhang San just arrived in Beijing to work six months owed nearly 70,000, the specific number she is not clear, only that the beginning of borrowing money are some temporary to spend three or four thousand unexpected events, due to the unexpected increase in debt accumulated to about 20,000, she also had a panic, but the installment repayments spread to the month is only a few hundred, to the income at the time or can afford.
Looking back now, Zhang San feels that the loan at her fingertips allows her to “not feel like she has no money, and not feel like she is spending other people’s money I don’t feel like I’m spending other people’s money. When she ran out of money, she opened her online business loan, and her dilemma became clear. can spend”.
In 2019, Nielsen Market Research released a report on the current state of consumer credit, mainly among young people after 90 or 95 in China. According to this report, the overall penetration of credit products among young people in China is 86.6%, and after deducting about half of them who only use its payment function (using only consumer credit and paying it off in the same month without incurring interest), there are still about 44.5% of young people with substantial debt.
2
On double 11, Douban’s Debtors Alliance group made it to Weibo’s top search. The group was founded in December last year and currently has over 17,000 members. Many of the people who posted for help had debts of more than 200,000 or over a million, for a variety of reasons, from small addictions to luxury goods such as designer bags and watches, to deep mud due to fraud, gambling or business losses, most of them were on the verge of collapse and could no longer sustain their lives. Netizens have expressed alarmed.
Compared to the extreme cases of the Debtors’ Alliance, the total debts of Zhang San, Abby and Midori would seem less exaggerated. At the same time, they do not pursue luxury goods, nor do they have bad habits such as gambling and drug use. The total amount of debt is quietly increased by some seemingly normal consumption behavior. Such quietness is subtle, on the one hand, it does not get out of control to the point of being unsustainable; on the other hand, the balance of this strain, and the slow and continuous occurrence behind it, the fundamental change to individual consumption habits, makes it The “cost of withdrawal” is getting higher and higher.
This may also be the norm for borrowing that is happening to most young people: the story of debt is not usually kicked off by an occasional, low-probability event or a serious bad habit. Things change first from a lack of liquidity, the chain of loans is often forced to interrupt because of the limit, the number of borrowing money with friends begins to increase, salaries and other income is always returned almost in full to credit cards or other lending platforms as soon as it arrives, savings cards are almost empty, and daily expenses have to rely on I had to “borrow” to maintain my daily expenses.
Abby recalls that she first got a credit card because of her graduation trip abroad, but she didn’t go out for other reasons, but the credit card was kept. The credit limit at the beginning was only eight thousand, but last year the credit limit was over eighty thousand.
Abby used her credit card to pay for her second credit card around 2015, when she was interested in microdermabrasion and had a few projects done that cost about 10,000.
It was also Abby’s second year of work, and the economy was still booming in the mythical story of the Internet. Her monthly salary was less than 5,000 when she first graduated, but it gradually rose and tripled after 2017. 2015 saw her get a bigger house, enroll in a foreign language class and arrange a gym, get a cat and plan a trip for herself once a year.
In those days, she had strong confidence in her ability to repay. However, as time went on, this confidence was gradually “disappeared” as soon as the income arrived The weariness of “disappearing” as soon as the income came in was worn out. The most exhausting stage she knew she owed four credit cards, but was unsure of the specific total that added up, “about 80,000, definitely more than 80,000, I added to this and did not dare to add, afraid to scare myself to death “.
Zhang San set the starting point for the rapid expansion of her borrowing amount in June 2019, when she wanted to apply for a study program abroad and needed to find someone to do the paperwork. Because she didn’t want to ask for money with her parents, she chose to take out an online business loan, and to be able to use more for herself, she took out another thousand more than the original price of the paperwork. Subsequent travel and rental expenses were also taken from which one after another, plus the pet she had during this period also accidentally got a cat transmission abdomen. By the end of 2019, six months into a dramatic change in life or life stage, she did some rough math and found she owed a total of about 70,000.
Again, 70,000 is not a definite number. And the reason for doing a rough total is that her “planned The “planned” lending platform suddenly lowered the amount, so the loan was opened up a mouth, and she had no way to find a platform to seal the mouth again. From that night, Zhang San began to calculate how much she owed, how long it would take to pay back the money, “I realized that I did not want to use the loan to feed the loan again, but at that time actually calculated for a long time did not figure out, I actually have to use How long will it take me to pay back the money”.
3
In the open threads and discussion groups on Zhihu, Weibo and Douban about borrowing help, netizens with debt problems are actively disclosing their debt amounts, debt platforms and income levels, with the ultimate goal of “getting off the hook” (paying off their debts in full), but they often feel suffocated by the ever-increasing number of debt collection calls and the still-high interest rates.
In addition to encouragement, other users will give practical guidance based on their own borrowing experience. For example, how to complain about violent collections and how to negotiate with the platform to reduce the interest rate or just repay the principal. The different negotiation and repayment methods will vary according to the specific personal income and lending platform regulations.
However, the first step to the shore mentioned by the most users is to confess the debt to your parents and family.
For people who have savings at home, in the early stages of the amount owed is not large, family members may be able to pay off the debt at once so as to reduce interest and keep the snowball of debt from rolling. For families without the ability to repay, confessing to parents and family members can mean a spiritual “salvation The “mitzvah” is a way to release the pressure you’ve been under by taking out a loan and stop running away from your real situation – to some extent, this is the real “mitzvah” for many debtors today. “rite of passage.”
Rich or poor, “coming clean to your parents ” is almost always the first commandment for debtors heading for the shore. But the difficulty, or paradox, of achieving this thing is that the root cause of many debtors’ move toward borrowing is relatively strained family relationships.
Zhang San decided not to borrow money from online loans, only 500 yuan a month to their own living expenses, the rest of the income is used to repay the loan. So by the end of the year she still had nearly 50,000 debts to repay, she roughly calculated the interest on online business loans, about 10,000 loans to pay more than one thousand five hundred interest per year, she decided to find a way to pay off the principal first. She told her mother that she had a debt of 20,000 to pay off and hoped she could “support The first thing you need to do is to get the money. However, Zhang San’s mother said she also had no money, and also urged her to “not tell dad “.
In fact, it was not an option for Zhang San to tell her father about her debts. She knew that once she asked, her father would definitely help her pay off the debt, “but then he would be even more unhappy with me. But then he would be even more unhappy with me.” After graduation, Zhang San had a big disagreement with her family over her employment options. Her father wanted her to enter a state-owned enterprise in a southern city, but she had other things she wanted to explore and try.
Zhang San did not hate the southern city, but once she complied with her father’s arrangement, it seemed to mean that she would have to live under his control from now on, from how to socialize with leaders and colleagues to marriage partners, all arranged by her father. Before this, her father had asked her to interview for a job at a designated organization on the grounds of severing her relationship, and never agreed with her existing personal life plan.
In addition, she did not ask her parents for money for rent, travel and living and studying expenses that she spent during that time of graduation due to instability, considering that one of the family’s financial projects during the same period was rather strenuous. “Mom and Dad asked me a few times, I said no, they thought I had internships and jobs may really have money, and later did not give “. The already established “financial independence Once the impression of “financial independence” is broken again, there will be a big difference in the parents’ perception of life planning.
Midori’s family situation is not quite the same as Zhang San’s, but she also explained her consumer philosophy in terms of the environment she grew up in. Midori’s parents divorced when she was very young, and she grew up with her grandparents, who were estranged from her parents, and even when she went away to college, her parents’ living expenses were intermittent and unstable. From the beginning of college, she relied on friends for support when she didn’t have money to live on.
Gradually, this developed into a certain philosophy of life, “to say borrow I can’t pay back, but have to give I can still “. Midori felt that if she had to borrow money, it would be easier to borrow from a “machine The platform for online loans is so convenient that you don’t have to go to the bank for all kinds of procedures.
Because she was working early, Abby had earlier access to credit cards. She calculated the interest rates for debit and credit cards and decided not to use them after she found that they were significantly higher than the credit cards she was using. At that stage, she could barely afford to borrow money on her own and did not consider asking her family to bear the burden. But when her family knew she hadn’t made any savings after working for so many years and had been paying off credit cards, “they always thought there was something wrong with me “.
Abby’s conflicts with her parents are mainly focused on her lifestyle, but the outbursts of their conflicts about these also end up coming down to money. Her mother, who has always worked in a state-owned enterprise, often blames Abby for not living according to a routine, so she “can’t hold her head up” in front of other people she knows. The mother, who has always worked in a state-owned enterprise, would often accuse Abby of not living her life according to a routine, so she would not be able to “hold her head up” in front of other acquaintances. Their arguments often started with why they didn’t get married and have children, from not saving money to the fact that her parents had given so much to her and Abby didn’t know how to return the favor.
Abby’s impression is that this line of argument has not changed much since she was an adolescent, except that during her adolescence her mother accused her of making her lose face by not studying well, and Abby felt that her mother was trying to control and interfere in her life with this argument. When she got angry, Abby even thought that if she could pay back all the money she had grown up with, she would be able to break off the relationship.
Abby believes that the biggest difference between herself and the previous generation is that the previous generation’s life was all about giving and no self. She often tells her mother that she wants to have a life of her own and hopes that she can find new hobbies like traveling or dancing to fill her life after she retires, so that she doesn’t have to think about what her daughter has to live like to make her look good. But every time she talked about it, her mother would ask Abby back, “Do you not want to care about me anymore? “
4
Since the family planning policy was implemented in 1978, the two generations of post-80s and post-90s have mostly lived as only children in the context of the high-sounding modernization. During their childhood, this generation would be called “little emperor ” or “little sun to symbolize the excessive attention and pampering they received.
The American anthropologist Feng Wen has explained in “The Only Hope – Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy” about only-child paternity that, unlike the situation of multiple-child families where children have to compete with each other to win parental favor, only children do not have to face competition for family resources from birth and “As the sole focus of all parental love, investment, and hope, the only child has tremendous power. Sometimes, parents even have to compete for the affection of their only child.”
And when the only child generation grows up and looks back at the time when they were highly favored, the kind of care, love and investment that unites the “only” and enjoys such a large family of resources invested in them, they are often burdened with more pressure, relationship control and expectations of return, and the reality does not always grow positively, but is increasingly cruel.
Nowadays, searching for “young people ruined by online loans Nowadays, if you search for the title “young people ruined by online loans”, you can find dozens of articles with roughly the same content describing the dangers of online loans. These articles attack the money-grubbing, consumerism and over-inflated vanity of young people, as if the biggest source of harm to young people is young people themselves.
According to Baudrillard’s theory of symbolic consumption, that is, in a contemporary society characterized by abundance and consumption, “things ” is no longer limited to what it once was, with the main feature of satisfying people’s basic needs of life, but has more of a symbolic general character. When people consume objects, they are essentially also consuming the meaning that the symbols have, while at once defining themselves and identifying with the group.
More than condemning young people, it is interesting to note that this generation of young people does not hesitate to risk “being ruined What is the meaning of the symbols that this generation of young people borrow to consume, even at the risk of being ruined? What is the meaning of the world to which those consumerism and vanity point? To some extent, that may be exactly what our generation of young people has been promised since childhood. Growing up in the high-growth years, we were promised all the prosperity and goodness, we were told that if we climbed hard enough up some symbolic ladder, we would eventually end up with a bright future where we would always have the best things within our reach as easily as possible. The rewards of effort seem so definite that the sacrifice of an entire family is not spared. Some years later, the picture changed, and the pressure spread from society to industry, to families, and then to individuals, creating a certain underlying tension in parent-child relationships and planting the seeds for each young person’s story of overspending and borrowing.
This year, before the Double Eleven, Zhang San had already paid off all her online loans, although a small part of them was temporarily borrowed from friends, but she no longer had to carry the ever-increasing interest rate, and she would not have any new loans, and she had even turned off her charm completely. She had planned to buy nearly $2,000 in skin care products on Double 11, but after doing the math and realizing that the real deals weren’t that great, she called it quits.
Now she has a plan to manage her money and save it regularly, and her goal is to save 100,000 first. The main reason is that the friend has 100,000 yuan in savings, which is not much and can’t do anything big, but it’s more or less a sign of security, and it seems that after 100,000 yuan you can say goodbye to the job and life you don’t like.
Abby said she was “blessed by the disaster” during the epidemic. Abby says she was “blessed with a blessing” during the epidemic. She was unable to travel abroad during the epidemic, as she had done in the past, and saved on many of her previous daily expenses. And it was also during the first half of the year during the epidemic that she finally paid off all her credit cards. Double 11 she was only going to stock up on cat food and do a medical beauty program with low expenses, mainly to please herself. The premise of all of this is that she saved money, and there is still a balance in the savings card after these purchases.
She hasn’t given much thought to the specific financial situation in the future, nor is she thinking about buying a house or anything else, because that would also mean settling down. But as for herself now, she is not even sure if she will continue to work in Beijing in the future, Abby laughs, “What if I get married to a foreigner in the future? I really don’t know what the future will be like, so it’s not too late to plan for it when it’s all said and done”.
Midori’s debt situation has not improved yet, and she has no plans for the time being other than to find a way to repay the loan every month. Interview in early November, she said she could not say what she would buy double 10, there may be a top hat. She does not have any financial plan for the time being, but also said she actually thought about buying a house. “Who does not want to have a house, but you know where I like the house? “Midori pointed in the direction of Beijing’s CBD and said the name of a fancy property she had been to before, where the average price of a second home is now 120,000 a square foot.
(Midori, Abby and Zhang San are pseudonyms in this article)
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