The official word is that the economy is great and America is back and the good times are here.
Except:
On Cyber Monday alone, Adobe Analytics says U.S. shoppers made more than $1 BILLION in "Buy Now, Pay Later" purchases.
More and more Americans are relying on payment installment plans (which often include financing fees) in order to afford ... well, everything.
Particularly younger shoppers.
The same glut of "pay later" schemes was popular in the 1920s, and boy oh boy did Americans pay later.
Back to Adobe:
After a strong Cyber Week showing, Adobe expects the full 2025 holiday season (Nov. 1 to Dec. 31) to hit $253.4 billion online, up 5.3% YoY.
60% of Americans don't have $1,000 in the bank for an emergency.
Last year, credit card debt hit a record $1 trillion.
Yet a bunch of Americans (and/or aliens) are spending for Christmas like the sky is the limit and there is no tomorrow.
More about where our country stands economically:
From Newsweek:
Americans are defaulting on their debts at near-historic rates, a collision between long-term structural strains and more contemporary financial pressures that some believe could shake the entire economy.
The issue was put into sharp relief by the New York Fed's most recent Household Debt and Credit report, which showed that household debt hit a record $18.6 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, having climbed $228 billion from the second quarter.
Credit card balances alone jumped $24 billion, reaching an all-time high, while the share of balances in serious delinquency — 90 days past due — climbed to a nearly financial-crash level of 7.1 percent.
Auto loans tell a similar story, with serious delinquency rates at 3 percent, the highest since 2010. And a spike in resulting defaults has triggered a wave of repossessions in 2025, with 2.2 million vehicles already repossessed, per figures from the Recovery Database Network (RDN), and forecasts of a record 3 million by year's end.
In addition, the jobs market is cooling (??), with mass layoffs and high unemployment among young men with college degrees.
Over all of this looms 38 trillion in national debt, soon to be $40 trillion, and the ever-present question of when that old saying will come true:
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