Young people trapped in consumer loans
Reporter/Huang Xiaoguang
Published in the 980th issue of China News Weekly on January 11, 2021
In the last month of 2020, 26-year-old Xiaoying finally figured out all her debts: 220,000 yuan.
"I am an employee of a foreign company with a monthly income of more than 8,000 yuan after tax. In the eyes of outsiders, my life is still very good. However, no one knows that I have a debt of 220,000." After passing WeChat friends, Xiaoying sent a message to reporters. This self-introduction.
She compiled the loan information of nearly 20 platforms and was shocked: "I thought I only owed a hundred thousand yuan."
This is a mess.
Xiaoying never understood why she owed so much money without significant consumption.
Since December 2020, she has stopped repaying her loans, and her loans have been overdue one after another. This is followed by a bombardment of no less than 20 calls a day.
The one-hour interview with her was interrupted by debt collection calls four times in a row.
"If I don't pay the money, I can only go to your family," said Chong Xiaoying, a loan platform called "Nine Fortune Wanka".
Xiaoying's experience is a microcosm of young people's borrowing and consumption.
If the pressure of the post-70s and post-80s comes from mortgages and car loans, the young people born in the 90s and even the 00s bear consumer loans.
"The role of consumption in China's economic growth has become increasingly prominent. At present, the post-90s and post-00s account for about 24% of the total population, and they will dominate the consumption pattern in China and even the world in the next 5 to 10 years."
Nielsen’s “Report on China’s Young People’s Indebtedness” released in 2019 mentioned that among young people aged 18 to 29, the penetration rate of credit products was 86.6%, of which consumer credit was the highest proportion.
According to data released by the central bank, as of June 30, 2020, the total amount of credit card outstanding for overdue six months in the country has soared to 85.4 billion yuan, more than 10 times that of 10 years ago. Among these overdue borrowers, the post-90s generation accounted for nearly half.
In the past few years, the lifestyles of young people have been changing rapidly. Whether campus loans, rent loans, training loans, beauty loans, or online shopping, game recharge, or live rewards, almost all life scenarios have derived corresponding borrowing and consumption patterns.
"With the help of new financial technology, consumer credit has developed very fast. Some of them are excessively inducing the younger generation to consume and borrow in advance. This is not only an economic and financial phenomenon, but also a cultural and demographic phenomenon, which may lead to Important influence".
According to Zhou Xiaochuan, the former governor of the People's Bank of China, the current situation of young people's excessive consumption and extravagant consumption by borrowing is worrying.
In this era of "lending at your fingertips", borrowers design traps and violently collect collections. Lenders use loans to support loans and maliciously escape debts, creating chaos.
The risks not only exist in financial institutions, but also in every household.
The "exquisite and poor" generation
"The Internet emerged in China in the 1990s and has become a tool and entertainment lifestyle for most young people to grow up together since childhood. Therefore, young people have a high acceptance of various forms of online behavior, and they have a sense of avant-garde, trendy, and fresh pursuit. Consumption consciousness".
The "Report on China's Young People's Indebtedness" mentioned that the penetration rate of credit products among young people was 86.6%, and the real debt group accounted for 44.5% of the overall young people.
On the eve of graduation in 2017, Xiaoying first came into contact with credit loans.
At that time, campus loans were popular, and many online loan companies hired students to issue leaflets on campus.
"There was a installment event, and I registered to deliver fruits. I rushed the fruits, and they gave me 10,000 yuan on the spot."
This quota soon came in handy.
She heard that many white-collar workers would go to fitness, so the first thing after graduation was to get a fitness card.
At that time, her monthly salary was only more than 2,000 yuan, but the fitness card she wanted to get was more than 5,000 yuan, so she thought of installment music.
"I borrowed 5,000 in 36 installments, and a total of 6,000 to 7,000 yuan was returned."
In the context of the popularity of e-commerce, the innovation of payment methods, and the loosening of online loans, Xiaoying's desire to shop has expanded rapidly.
After she paid off her first month's salary, the rest was used to buy cosmetics and bags, and the remaining installment quota was quickly exchanged into individual shopping orders.
In the first Spring Festival after graduation, Xiaoying's balance of payments was broken.
"I feel like I'm a member of society, and I'm arrogantly inviting guests to dinner at home, but I don't have much money in my hands."
In the second year of graduation, Xiaoying's debt accumulated to 140,000 yuan, and she has no money to buy tickets to go home for the New Year.
"I think it's too expensive for an air ticket of more than 600 yuan. The train takes a day and a night, and it costs more than 400 yuan. I still use a credit card."
"The more lost in life, the more out of control in consumption. The deeper and deeper the sinking, it's like a carnival before the end."
Li Qiyuan, who is one year younger than Xiaoying, is a northern drifter. On the phone, he summed up his consumption status in the past few years to China News Weekly-"I am a proletarian, but he has developed the consumption habits of the middle class."
In the past few years, Li Qiyuan has been alone in shopping malls in Beijing.
"Guomao, Sanlitun, SKP, Heshenghui... I often go out during other people's working hours, and I am always surrounded by shop assistants. Once I look at it with the mentality of a customer, I feel that the world is good for you." Li Qiyuan Consumption starts from imitation. He analyzes their food, clothing, housing and transportation according to the photo dynamics posted by the Internet celebrities he pays attention to, and then "satisfies himself with the same consumption."
"A pair of trendy shoes is more than six to seven hundred yuan, and a T-shirt is four to five hundred yuan. It won't hurt to buy clothes under one thousand yuan." Li Qiyuan said.
He also loves gourmet restaurants, "For example, I heard that SKP's "Youyuan Jingmeng" is the best Huaiyang restaurant in Beijing, so I made a special trip to consume there. Jinling roast duck, vegetarian goose, a plate of braised pork, a bowl of fruit For glutinous rice balls, I spent more than 200 yuan per person."
The biggest consumption is in a beauty salon.
Shortly after New Year's Day in 2019, Li Qiyuan received a massage experience coupon when he visited the mall.
Under the influence of the staff's words, he bought an experience card for 1280 yuan that day.
In the following six months, he was obsessed with massage, facial care and other items in this store and couldn't extricate himself from it and threw 20,000 yuan.
Behind the good life is a deficit.
In 2013, Li Qiyuan dropped out of a university in Beijing. After that, he moved to Nanchang, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Beijing, where he worked as a clerk in a fried chicken shop, SF Express, a drug tester in a hospital, a security guard at a garbage disposal plant, and a hotel waiter. It's a housekeeper.
Now he has been unemployed for almost a year, and he has a debt of nearly 100,000 yuan. He pays for Alipay Huabaiheborai, Jingdong Baitiao and Gold Bullion, Meituan Living Expenses, Weibo Borrowing Money, Baidu Money Flower, as well as Pudong Development, China Merchants, Industrial, and Everbright Many banks owe money.
"Why do people borrow from a credit company or use a credit card to make purchases regardless of their ability to repay? This is not just about vanity on the surface, but because of people trying to prove themselves in depression Psychology, prove that you can integrate into this society, prove that you are not behind, prove that you are not inferior to others."
The Japanese writer Shigero Saito’s book "Satisfying the Poor" describes those Japanese who no longer worry about food and clothing in the era of the bubble economy, but are still in a state of poverty and debt, as "satisfying the poor."
"Daily life is ordinary, I want to consume when I have time. The borrowed money comes too easily, and the money becomes unscrupulous." It is difficult for Li Qiyuan to figure out how much money he spent in a month.
In contrast, he said that his parents “will not spend money at all”: “They make more than 100 yuan a day, go to the wholesale market more than three in the morning to buy goods, and go home at five or six in the evening. Follow them, but in my heart I really hate this kind of life."
Different from the careful planning of the elders, more and more young people promote the consumption concept of "exquisite and poor".
"One is to buy as many things as you have, and the other is to buy what you want. This is a fundamental generational difference." Netizen Liu Xiang believes.
He made a statistical analysis of the 1,105 posts of the Douban group "Indebted Persons Alliance" in November 2020, and found that "advanced consumption" and "online loans" are among the most frequent words.
Huang Zhen, a professor at the School of Law of Central University of Finance and Economics and director of the Institute of Financial Law, analyzed China News Weekly. The new consumer group is mainly young people, and the younger generation is mostly only children, lacking independent character, and has developed a The large family dependence, when lack of funds, it is easy to turn to consumer loans that can be obtained in a short time.
Sometimes Li Qiyuan gets bored.
A quote from Zhan Qingyun, a contestant of "Wonderful Flowers", once troubled him: "On the surface, we live a glamorous life that we like. We rely on overdrafts in the future to borrow and consume instalments to maintain the surface delicacy. But every day we are Waking up in the morning, woke up anxiously with a string of numbers in our minds, do we really feel happy?"
Routine loans target young people
For young people, whether they are studying at school, training or seeking a job or renting a house after graduation, different consumption scenarios are intertwined into a big net.
Many merchants or platforms take the initiative to set up borrowing and consumption traps.
Sophomore student Xiao Mei likes animation. In November 2019, she saw an original painting course advertisement at station B and promised to provide students with a platform to make money after finishing her studies.
Xiaomei was attracted by a loan of 10,000 yuan to sign up, and soon fell into a predicament of rights protection.
The course provider is Hunan Tanzhou Education.
It is easy to see their advertisements on major social platforms-"A Xiaobai's landscape photography practice, learning dubbing, using your voice as a side job, or teaching painting, broadcasting, and dubbing with zero basics".
"In the past few years, the two-dimensional culture has risen, and what they have caught is those young people who like animation and are curious about dubbing." An administrator of the Tanzhou education rights protection group summed up the curriculum routines she knew to China News Weekly ：Preliminary false propaganda, promising high-paying part-time jobs; when students are hesitant due to insufficient funds, they will be induced to make loan payments on the grounds of limited preferential places.
Most of the course prices are more than 10,000 yuan, and the loan interest rate is generally above 10%; once the course is questioned, the institution will set up numerous obstacles to prevent students from refunding.
"The original price is more than 9,000 yuan. Now the registration is reduced by 2,000 yuan. The number of places is limited. Only the top five." On the second day after listening to the open class, Xiaomei opened Jingdong Baitiao under the guidance of Tanzhou education staff.
"For income, fill in 7000 yuan to 8000 yuan, register an account on Xuexin.com, and upload a screenshot." The staff told her, "When you fill in the information, you can apply for a higher quota."
Li Dan, who just graduated from university in 2020, fell into the "rental loan trap" of eggshell apartments.
Eggshell adopts the "high-income low-rent" model of long-term rental apartments—accepting the house from the landlord at a high price, then renting it to the tenant at a low price, and using rent loans to obtain cash flow when renting out.
When signing a contract with a tenant, Eggshell will provide the tenant with a cheaper annual payment price; if the tenant is shy, you can choose a financial institution that cooperates with Eggshell and apply for monthly installments.
Li Dan rented a 26-square-meter master bedroom in Beishatan, Haidian District, Beijing.
"When renting a house, I said it was good to pay one and one payment. I finally learned that I would like to take a loan after signing the contract. I don't understand rent loans, but I heard that it is prone to problems, so I am reluctant to accept it." The eggshell apartment housekeeper explained to him, rent. Loan is the company's first method for graduates, the price is more favorable, and the loan contract of others is provided for reference.
At that time, Li Dan had moved away from the student he was borrowing, and he hurriedly agreed to the rent loan plan—dividing the rent of over 20,000 yuan into 12 installments and repaying WeBank on a monthly basis.
The following story is well known. In November 2020, there was a thunderstorm in Eggshell Apartments. Tenants across the country are facing the dilemma of being swept out by their landlords, and Li Dan is no exception.
On November 21, Li Dan’s landlord posted a notice asking him to move out within a time limit. On November 29, Li Dan went to the eggshell headquarters to defend his rights but failed. The bedroom door lock was replaced by the landlord when he went to work the next day.
After an unexpected incident, a turning point occurred in the rights protection of tenants everywhere.
On December 3, a tenant in Guangzhou fell to his death. The next day WeBank issued a new plan stating that customers of eggshell rental loans would not continue to repay the loan after retiring the rent, but could settle the loan.
On December 12, in an interview with China News Weekly, Li Dan had applied for the interest-free extension of the remaining loans, but the confrontation between him and the landlord continued.
The difficulty of defending rights is a common dilemma faced by those who fall into the borrowing and consumption trap.
Some lawyers mentioned that there is usually no problem in the process for rent loans or training loans, and it is difficult to pass laws to protect rights.
In September 2020, Xiaoyuan, who had just entered college, applied for a course loan for Tanzhou Education without telling her family.
A few hours after signing the contract, she searched on the Black Cat Complaint Platform and accidentally found that there were more than 5,000 complaints against Tanzhou Education, so she applied for a contract cancellation refund on the same day.
After that, the negotiation with Tanzhou Education failed for three months, and she desperately sent Weibo for help.
On December 2, CCTV Finance interviewed her and exposed the aforementioned problems of Tanzhou Education. Only then did Tanzhou Education agree to a full refund.
The education problem in Tanzhou is not an individual case.
"Under the high training cost, in order to make consumers pay for it, training institutions often induce trainees to pay in installments to lower the entry threshold, confuse the concept, and conceal the essence of the loan."
The "Analysis of the Acceptance of Complaints by the National Consumers Association in the Third Quarter of 2020" issued by the China Consumers Association mentioned that recently, off-campus education and training institutions such as Weber English, Stone Touchdown, and Yousheng Education have been shut down due to poor management. There are many consumers involved, and similar situations are intensifying.
If Tanzhou education and eggshell apartments are over-induced based on real consumption scenes, while some fictitious consumption scenes and borrowing with the intention of defrauding loans have slipped into the illegal situation of routine loans.
"Recruiting assistant to the general manager, with a monthly salary of 80,000 yuan. To get this job, you have to do plastic surgery first. When you come to the designated medical aesthetic clinic, job seekers need to apply for loans ranging from tens of thousands of dollars. A word of empty talk, plastic surgery loans also need to be borne by themselves."
According to China News Agency, in August 2020, the Beijing police arrested more than a dozen "recruitment beauty loan" fraud gangs and conducted investigations on 9 medical beauty institutions involved in the case.
In the process of committing the crime, the recruitment gang and the beauty hospital cooperated with each other to form a complete chain of crimes in the recruitment, plastic surgery, loan and other links.
The comprehensive plastic surgery at the medical aesthetic clinic priced at nearly 100,000 yuan, and the actual cost is only more than 4,000 yuan.
Recruitment beauty loans pass on risks by extending the criminal chain, but they are not a new method, but a variant of traditional beauty loans.
The beauty loan market was opened in 2014, and it was accompanied by the plastic surgery industry.
According to statistics from the China Plastic Surgery Association, the size of the cosmetic surgery industry in China, which has just started in 2014, is about 400 billion yuan, and it will expand to 800 billion yuan in 2019, making it the third largest cosmetic surgery market in the world.
Under the high cost of plastic surgery, beauty loan came into being.
During the peak period, there were as many as thousands of platforms providing beauty loans across the country.
"The so-called beauty loan, the borrowing platform directly transfers the money to the hospital instead of my account. The hospital collects surgery fees, the intermediary takes a commission, and the lending platform earns interest." Li Mengxi, who just went to college, was doing double eyelid cutting and rhinoplasty. Surgery, debt of 64,000 yuan.
Similar to other consumption scenarios, she also encountered an inducement loan in a beauty salon.
She told China News Weekly that in order to successfully obtain the loan, the staff asked her to conceal her student status and fill in false job and income information.
The operation fee was 46,000 yuan, and Li Mengxi loaned 24 installments, with a total principal and interest of 64,000 yuan, and an annual interest rate of about 18%.
According to "China Youth Daily", many beauty loans set up a series of loans by removing head interest and deliberately overdue. Some girls fall into debt traps and even become long-term money-making tools for routine loan groups; driven by interests , Routine loan gangs adopt illegal collection methods and are not worried about overdue and bad debts.
Tragedies caused by routine loans are not uncommon everywhere.
In December 2020, the Ministry of Public Security disclosed the country’s first case involving pure online routine loans. Criminal organizations headed by Wang Moutao maliciously increased their debts through “borrowing new to repay the old” and “repaying the loan with a loan”. In 10 months, the investment of nearly 200 million yuan has made a profit of more than 2.8 billion yuan, and there are still more than 9.8 billion yuan of uncollected illegal debts.
In order to increase the collection rate, the group has signed contracts with 24 collection companies to outsource part of the overdue debts, using telephone insults, threats, and sending PS nude photos for collection.
Among the 475,000 victims, Wu in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, burnt charcoal with her husband due to inability to repay; and Rui in Xiningjiang, Qinghai Province, committed suicide due to the mental torture of repeated collections.
Gaze into the Abyss
Not long ago, JD Finance was criticized on hot searches for a loan advertisement video.
In the advertisement, a person dressed as a migrant worker asked to change seats because his mother was airsick, and the stewardess recommended an upgrade service to him.
The man in the back row relieved him by helping him apply for a JD gold bar loan of 150,000 yuan.
This type of advertisement is not the first of JD Finance.
In the "Weibo Borrowing Money" advertisement, a middle-aged man and woman went to a hotel to open a room. When the man found that the balance was insufficient when paying, he had an idea to open the Weibo reserve.
In the "360 IOU" advertisement, a ragged, short man carrying pork belly said that the stewardess would have a good life; the stewardess expressed doubts and asked the man to open the 360 IOU on the spot, and was pleased to see that he was approved with a quota of 150,000 yuan Yes.
"When you are young, you can spend it if you want to. It's a big deal to pay back in installments." In Ant Huabei's series of advertisements, couples borrow money to buy furniture, "community animals" borrow money to eat, students borrow money to travel around the world...
Professor Huang Zhen of the Central University of Finance and Economics believes that the distortion of values presented in such advertisements is likely to cause greater social harm.
"We are always advocating inclusive finance, but after a certain degree of inclusiveness, it has become a problem for inducing excessive consumption."
Huang Zhen told China News Weekly that the funding provider tried to provide more financial services, adapted to the trend of inclusive finance development, and served more people, which was a positive progress; however, funding supply is not a simple business. Behavior, also need to bear corresponding social responsibilities, in this regard, the relevant platforms are insufficiently considered.
Consumer loans usually refer to bank consumer loans excluding housing loans and car loans, plus cash loans and consumer installment services provided by consumer finance companies and various Internet finance companies.
Public information shows that China's consumer credit market has gradually started in 2012 and has shown explosive growth since 2015.
According to data from the People's Bank of China, my country's overall personal credit consumption balance rose from 18.95 trillion in 2015 to 43.97 trillion in 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 23.42%.
In the past few years, from commercial banks, licensed consumer finance companies to Internet consumer finance platforms, consumer loans and cash loans have blossomed everywhere.
Young people can easily borrow high loans regardless of their qualifications.
"Once you start paying attention to online loans, you will find that you open an app at random, urging you to borrow money." Le Su, 21, recalled to China News Weekly that one of her roommates was caught because she didn't get online loans in her freshman year. Exploded the address book" and dropped out under pressure.
"At that time, I felt that online loans were terrible, and I told myself that I should never be like this." However, Le Su, who is about to graduate, has debts of nearly 20,000 yuan because of advanced consumption and star chasing.
According to statistics posted by Liu’s Douban group’s “Debt Alliance” in November, 362 people mentioned the reason and amount of debt, with a total debt of 1345.4 million yuan.
Among them, the largest proportion is the debtors due to advanced consumption and game krypton gold. There are 158 people with total debts of 27.18 million yuan, with an average debt of nearly 170,000 yuan per person.
"All platforms lent out the money in floods, and finally violently urged it back. For people who are not ready for credit consumption, this is a disaster." Liu Xiangxiang said in China News Weekly.
"Many young people want to go quickly, but they don't know that borrowing money is just the beginning, not the completion, and there will be endless troubles."
According to Huang Zhen’s understanding, there are currently some unspoken rules in the business promotion of online loan platforms: one is bundled sales or embedded sales in scenes, allowing consumers to borrow without their knowledge; the other is predatory loans, which promote low interest rates. In addition, the use of credit evaluation fees, service fees, handling fees and other name inflated fees, and higher default penalty interest and late fees.
"Under the background of strong supervision, licensed financial institutions have converged, but small loan companies without licenses still have compliance management problems." Huang Zhen pointed out.
A former employee of the "You Me Loan" platform told China News Weekly that the capital cost and operating cost of small loan companies are higher than those of commercial banks, and those who choose to borrow from small loan companies are often not well qualified; here In the context, small loan companies often need to use high interest rates to cover high costs and high risks.
"This is an abyss staring at you," a member of the "Debt Union" wrote an article.
According to the rules, as long as the user repays on time, the system will encourage them to borrow more money.
If it is not possible to make a one-time repayment, the system will also provide instalment repayment service intimately.
This kind of installment repayment will further paralyze the judgment of the borrower, mistakenly thinking that the repayment is easy.
However, handling fees, installment service fees, and layers of profit in disguise are overweighted, which can easily drag borrowers who lack self-control into the abyss.
Taking loans and debts as cause and effect for each other is a labyrinth that cannot be walked out.
"In the past, credit cards had an interest-free period, and you might be able to transfer it with a loan. Now all kinds of consumer loans don't have an interest-free period, and the holes will become bigger and bigger. They will definitely not be transferred, and they may even collapse." Huang Zhen said.
Tang Long is 28 years old this year. Due to excessive consumption, he owed more than 80,000 yuan in loans at the highest point. He has been in the quagmire of online loans for many years.
He explained to China News Weekly the operational logic of using a loan to support a loan: "A certain amount of loan will be restored after a platform repays the loan. For example, if 1,000 yuan is repaid, interest will be deducted, and then 800 yuan will be returned to you, and you will use this 800 amount again. Go back to other platforms. If this goes on, the total amount will continue to decline, and you need to continue to develop new platforms."
"The rules are very complicated, it is very convenient to borrow, and it makes you feel harmless." Tang Long said, he formed an illusion in the process of "returning the loan": "After finally getting the money, he will think it is his hard work. It's the same. With money, why go to work?"
In the first year of graduation, Xiaoying's 10,000 yuan quota for installment music was quickly used up.
In order to avoid overdue, she applied for several bank cards one after another, the amount was accumulated to 30,000 yuan, and began to use loans to support loans.
At one time, Xiaoying had contacted more than 20 lending platforms, many of which have now closed down.
"In the later stage, if you can't choose the way, you won't care about the interest rate. Which platform will lend you the loan." At the most critical time, she found that it was not even more than 300 yuan, and resold the mobile phone for 1,000 yuan in a hurry. And took the risk to borrow the "714 high artillery".
"Gao Pao" is the jargon of debtors, which means online loans with a period of 7 or 14 days, including high "head-cutting interest" and overdue fees.
"For example, if you borrow 2000, you actually get 1500, and you need to pay 2500 after seven days. Overdue fees may be as high as 5000 if you are overdue for one month." Tang Long, who also encountered the "high artillery", said.
At this point, the debtor is almost exhausted and has no money to borrow.
In February 2019, a 21-year-old actress in Xi'an jumped off the 17th floor.
When her father saw the bill when he was packing up his belongings, he realized that his daughter had paid off the online loan for three years alone and still owed more than 100,000 yuan in loan before death.
In August 2019, a fresh graduate from Nanjing also chose to commit suicide by jumping off the building.
In the previous year, he had taken 36 loans from 10 licensed financial institutions and received a total of more than 72,000 yuan in loans.
In the days after his death, his family members continued to receive collection calls.
"We hope that he is the last child to die because of the campus loan." His grandfather cried to the media.
In October 2020, a college student couple committed suicide by burning charcoal during their internship in Nanjing. Police investigations found that both were from poor families in Baiyin, Gansu, and were involved in online loan disputes during their lifetime... The search found that young people committed suicide because of excessive debt. Come and continue to be staged everywhere.
Usury loans, routine loans, campus loans, "high artillery", beheading interest, violent collection... The chaos exposed in the past few years has caused the industry image and reputation of online loans to plummet.
The interviewed former employees of You and I Loan did not deny the aforementioned chaos, but he believes that these problems cannot be entirely attributed to the loan company: "The two ends of supply and demand are not completely separated. On the demand side, there are a group of people who specialize in stabs. Most of them are credit black accounts, and one person may borrow from dozens to hundreds to study how to not repay platform loans. This directly leads to violent collection and the high rate of platform bad debts."
How hard is it to get ashore
"For me, spending money is lonely, and paying back is also lonely. There is a deep sense of emptiness." Li Qiyuan told China News Weekly that every time he faced an overdue crisis, he went around raising money in a hurry. The ant on the pot, and then once the crisis is temporarily lifted, he will resume his usual consumption habits.
Now facing a full overdue loan, he suffered a "social death", but he was relieved and admitted that he had temporarily given up repayment.
Xu Shoucheng, who also gave up repaying the loan, had a very similar experience to Li Qiyuan.
Since graduating from university in 2015, he has done 8 intermittent jobs with a monthly salary of about 3,000 yuan and has been unemployed for three years.
"I have no online gambling, I have never invested, and I am purely personal in advance consumption." After adding WeChat, Xu Shoucheng said to himself without waiting for questions: "I live in a comfortable house with a monthly rent of 1,500 yuan. I order takeaways every day and never Look at the price, what to eat and which one to eat, every meal is thirty or forty, two meals a day, and often eat supper. Calculated, one month of food and accommodation is about 5,000 yuan, three years is 180,000 yuan." After years and months, Xu Shoucheng is now in debt. The amount is as high as 410,000 yuan.
Xu Shoucheng said that he is currently in a state of "drowning"-after experiencing the chaos of borrowing loans, he began to act on his instinct.
Indebted people are accustomed to describing paying off loans as "landing."
For the drowning people like Xu Shoucheng, the interest continues to roll and the landing is a long way off.
According to media reports, there are two main ways for the post-90s generation to successfully land ashore from the quagmire of "online loans": either do financial planning on the basis of their own stable work and pay off all online loans at once; or rely on their parents to "support" , And then forced a clean break with online lending.
In 2018, because of an overdue loan, the collection officer called Xiaoying's mother.
"My mother didn't have any money, so she gave me more than 20,000 yuan, thinking that my turnover was open." Xiaoying did not confess the true amount of debt.
In order to repay the debt, in July of the following year, she resigned from her hometown of Dalian and came to Shanghai.
In Shanghai, Xiaoying went to work during the day and stayed up late at night to take orders to write essays. She only slept for three to four hours a day, and almost all her income was used to repay the loan.
At the end of 2019, Xiaoying was close to breaking even, but unexpected changes occurred in her family.
"My mother also borrowed money because her income and expenditure were messed up for repaying me. I gave her the little savings, but it was not enough, so I borrowed again." The mother and daughter fell into a cycle of borrowing.
Xiaoying mentioned that there are many scammers acting as "debt ferrymen" in the Douban group "Debt Alliance".
"As long as someone stretches out a hand, the debtor can easily go to the hospital in a hurry and fall from one abyss to another." Xiaoying said.
The "Debt Alliance" posted a report post, which summarized several common tricks of defrauding debtors: “fishing” for income, borrowing money through private letters, providing negotiated loan repayments, supporting credit investigations, address book explosions, etc. service.
A Zhihu netizen told China News Weekly that after she was in a small debt, she panicked and scammed into a scam to make money by scamming orders. She borrowed 200,000 yuan from an online loan platform to "make up orders". Job debt repayment.
Witnessing the aforementioned chaos in the group, Liu Xiang emphasized that there is no shortcut to going ashore. Going ashore is actually not difficult. The key is to stop the "addiction to spending money" and resist the temptations from online lending platforms.
The uncontrollable addiction to games has dragged Haiying's boyfriend back into the debt quagmire time and time again.
"We have just been together for more than a year. He recharged about 200,000 yuan in the'Fantasy Westward Journey', using credit cards and online loans all the time. Later his parents paid him back about 100,000 yuan. After half a year, Once accidentally boarded his Alipay, he found that he was still constantly filling up money, and successively recharged two or three hundred thousand yuan." Haiying told China News Weekly that her boyfriend is actually very economical in life, but he is obsessed with it. The pleasure of dominating the game world.
Later, at her request, her boyfriend reselled the game account at a price of more than 20,000 yuan.
In order to break the debt cycle, in October 2020, Xiaoying's mother came to Shanghai and shared her loan repayment experience with her daughter-stop using loans to support loans and instead adopt the method of "saving enough to pay back the family".
"Now she is still repaying, but her mental state is very good."
Encouraged by her mother, Xiaoying reorganized her debts and suspended all online loan repayments from December, and went all out to repay credit cards.
"I have a monthly salary of more than 8,000 yuan, and every month I spend more than 6,000 yuan to pay off debts, leaving 2,000 yuan to live. After this calculation, it will take almost 3 years to pay off all debts." In order to break her addiction, she untied all the bank cards of online shopping platforms. , Asking myself to spend only cash from now on.
For Li Mengxi, a college student whose monthly living expenses are only 1,500 yuan, a beauty loan of 64,000 yuan is a huge sum of money. After 24 installments, the monthly repayment amount is more than 2,600 yuan.
She needs to work part-time as a tutor, and there are irregular classes on weekends, and she is exhausted.
Li Mengxi carefully restrained his desire to consume. Cosmetics only used eyebrow pencils, lipsticks, isolation creams and makeup powder. The facial cleanser was exchanged for a bottle of Meifubao for more than 3 yuan. He only bought clothes on Pinduoduo. "I bought two items this winter. A pair of trousers, a dozen yuan."
She wrote about her debt experience on the Internet. Some netizens were impressed by her. They wrote private messages and expressed their willingness to help repay the loan, but she declined.
Half a year later, Li Mengxi has repaid 14,837 yuan, which is still more than 50,000 yuan. She plans to go out to work during the winter vacation.
"I still want to take the hardest, but actually the most practical path, and save a little bit."
(At the request of interviewees, all debtors in the text are pseudonyms)
China News Weekly, Issue 2, 2021
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