There’s something unsettling about the idea of buying groceries now and paying for them later. Buy now, pay later services were once more closely associated with clothing, electronics and other occasional purchases. Today, the broader question of using credit to cover everyday essentials is becoming harder to ignore.
For some people, spreading a payment might be a convenient way to manage a temporary cash-flow gap. For others, it might be the only way they can afford what they need that week.
The immediate response is often familiar: stop borrowing, make a budget and live within your means.
There’s sensible advice buried in that message. But it also assumes the problem is simply a lack of discipline, when the reality might involve rising living costs, irregular income, existing debt or bills arriving at the wrong time.
And sometimes, it’s a combination of all four.
When essentials become a financial juggling act
Recent Australian research illustrates just how difficult managing everyday expenses has become.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2025 General Social Survey, released in May 2026, found that 25.3% of households had experienced at least one cash-flow problem during the previous twelve months, up from 20.7% in 2020.
Meanwhile, Finder’s October 2026 household report found that 11% of surveyed Australians had gone into debt or used buy now, pay later to cover a bill as part of their response to household costs.
That doesn’t mean 11% are buying groceries using BNPL. It does, however, illustrate that borrowing to manage ordinary household expenses is part of the wider cost-of-living conversation.
And for Australians experiencing more severe hardship, the situation can be much worse. A 2026 Salvation Army report surveying 4,400 people seeking emergency relief found that 91% had skipped meals during the previous year.
That figure describes people already seeking emergency assistance, not Australians generally. But it’s a reminder that financial difficulty isn’t always something people can solve by finding cheaper groceries or cancelling a subscription.
The problem with borrowing from your future pay
Buy now, pay later can make an expensive week feel more manageable. Instead of paying the entire amount immediately, you divide it into smaller instalments.
The catch is that the remaining payments still have to come from somewhere.
Imagine a $160 grocery shop divided into four equal instalments. You pay $40 immediately and owe another $120 across three future payment dates.
That might provide some welcome relief today. But those future payments will be competing with whatever else needs paying when they fall due.
If another grocery shop comes around before the first purchase has been paid off, the obligations can begin to overlap. Add rent, transport, utilities and another instalment purchase, and the next payday can feel almost entirely spoken for before it even arrives.
It’s particularly difficult when you’re making each decision independently, without seeing how all those commitments fit together.
ASIC’s Moneysmart guidance on buy now, pay later, updated in October 2026, warns that multiple arrangements can become difficult to manage and that fees may apply. Late or missed payments can also affect a person’s credit record.
Australian BNPL providers have been subject to stronger credit regulation since June 2025, including applicable responsible lending obligations. That’s an important consumer protection, but it doesn’t remove the need to understand whether future repayments will be affordable.
What if the problem started weeks earlier?
There’s another part of this conversation that deserves more attention.
Sometimes people aren’t short of money because they’ve spent recklessly. They’re short because the money they needed for this week’s essentials was already used to meet another commitment.
Perhaps the electricity bill was due last fortnight. The car insurance renewal arrived unexpectedly high. Or an upcoming expense simply wasn’t considered when deciding how much of the previous pay was available to spend.
By the time the grocery shop happens, the pressure has already been building for weeks.
This is where conventional advice to make a budget can feel inadequate. A list of monthly income and expenses might suggest everything should balance, while offering little guidance about which paydays need to cover which expenses.
A more useful approach is to look forward consistently.
What regular expenses are coming up? When will they need to be paid? What has already been set aside, and what still needs funding?
The objective isn’t to predict every purchase perfectly. It’s to avoid repeatedly arriving at an ordinary expense and discovering that the money required should have been prepared earlier.
A plan shouldn’t need rebuilding every payday
This is one of the ideas behind PennyGo.
Rather than asking people to record every supermarket purchase or reconstruct their budget after money has been spent, PennyGo helps them establish an ongoing plan for known and expected financial commitments.
Regular expenses such as groceries can be planned using realistic estimates, while other bills, savings commitments and known repayments can be considered according to when they’re needed.
PennyGo works out responsibility, recognises money already accounted for and identifies what still needs funding within each planning cycle.
That can help make a recurring grocery allowance part of an ongoing plan, rather than something that has to compete for whatever money happens to remain at the end of the week.
If a BNPL repayment needs to be included, it can be entered as a known commitment. PennyGo doesn’t automatically detect BNPL purchases, provide credit or guarantee that future expenses will be affordable.
And where income genuinely isn’t sufficient, better planning can’t manufacture the missing money. What it can do is make that shortfall clearer, potentially while there’s still time to explore the available options.
Better planning isn’t the same as blaming people
There’s no reason to assume everyone who uses BNPL is financially irresponsible. Used carefully and with affordable repayments, it can serve a purpose. But regularly needing credit for necessities may indicate that something more fundamental needs attention.
For some households, that’s a timing problem. For others, it’s an income problem, a debt problem or a combination of circumstances that no budgeting app can resolve on its own.
Anyone struggling with repayments can contact their provider about hardship assistance. The National Debt Helpline also offers free, confidential financial counselling on 1800 007 007.
The bigger lesson isn’t that people should never use buy now, pay later. It’s that a manageable payment today can become an additional burden tomorrow if the rest of your commitments haven’t been considered.
And perhaps budgeting advice needs to spend less time asking why someone couldn’t afford this week’s groceries, and more time helping them prepare for the expenses that will shape next week, next fortnight and the months ahead.
Because managing money shouldn’t mean constantly trying to catch up with decisions that needed to be made weeks ago.
This article provides general financial information, not personal financial or credit advice. Borrowing arrangements, fees and hardship options vary by provider. If you’re having difficulty meeting essential expenses or repayments, consider seeking free financial counselling.