Going into debt to pay for groceries

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
The Marketplace Morning Report podcast is supported by Three Day Blinds. Shop for blinds from the comfort of your home with a local professional design consultant who brings physical samples, measures your space, and handles expert installation. See what works in your space before you buy. Book a free, no-obligation consultation and save with buy one, get one 50% off at threedayblinds.com/morning.
That's the number three, dayblinds.com/morning.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
This podcast is supported by Raymond James, a financial firm offering wealth management, banking, and capital market services that are inspired by people.
Before Raymond James' financial advisors build plans, they build relationships so they can craft individual strategies designed to achieve priorities and pursue what's possible.
That's the power of personal. Disclosures at raymondjames.com. Raymond James and Associates Inc. Member NYSE SIPIC.

**Neva Safa** (1:00)
Getting into debt to eat. A new report's stark findings.
From Marketplace in Los Angeles, I'm Neva Safa for Kimberly Adams. We'll get a number of inflation measures this week, including the consumer price index tomorrow.
It will include the latest on the cost of groceries. We know so far they're up more than 2.5% in a year. And a report out this morning says higher grocery bills are leaving more people in debt. They're using credit cards by Now Pay Later services and payday loans. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

**Nancy Marshall Genzer** (1:33)
The report from the Urban Institute crunches data from about 10,000 people and found more than half of low and moderate-income adults who use credit cards to purchase groceries face repayment challenges. Cassandra Martynchek is a co-author. She says almost one in 10 working-age adults used Buy Now Pay Later to purchase groceries. About a third of them missed a payment last year. Colleen Heflin studies food insecurity at Syracuse University and is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute. She was not involved in today's report. She worries that it points to problems.

**Colleen Heflin** (2:11)
While households may be able to meet their essential needs today, they're sort of on a precipice.

**Nancy Marshall Genzer** (2:19)
Some people have already fallen over the precipice, like 72-year-old Lori Lumbra in Rotterdam, New York. She's a retired teacher living on about $1,400 a month. Lumbra started putting groceries on her credit cards a couple of years ago, fell behind on payments and wound up owing about $10,000.

**Colleen Heflin** (2:38)
It gets very depressing.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:41)
You feel like you're just such a failure. I feel like I'm doing everything right and it's not working.

**Nancy Marshall Genzer** (2:46)
Lumbra sold her car to pay off her debt. Now she gets around on a bike. She cut up her credit cards and relies on food banks. I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:16)
Five years ago, at the height of the pandemic, a leading global company made a bold decision. Rather than simply react to disruption, it set out to remake its supply chain for a world defined by uncertainty.
Working with GEP, the company redesigned its operations around visibility, resilience, and efficiency. Today, as many companies continue to navigate tariffs, inflation, wars, and supply disruptions, that company is delivering double-digit growth and gaining market share.
It turned supply chain shocks into competitive advantage. That's the power of GEP's AI-native quantum intelligence platform and services. More than 7,000 employees across 30 offices support over 1,000 organizations worldwide, helping them anticipate disruption, reduce risk, and create value across their global value chains. Find out how to put agentic AI to work in your procurement and supply chain operations at gep.com.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:13)
The Marketplace Morning Report podcast is supported by 3-Day Blinds. We shop for everything at home now.
Why can't we shop for blinds at home too? We can now with 3-Day Blinds. Instead of wandering around a store, 3-Day Blinds sends a professional design consultant straight to you. They bring all the samples, help you see what actually works in your space, take expert measurements and even handle the installation. We've all bought something that looked great in store and terrible once we got at home. With 3-Day Blinds, you see everything in your actual light, with your actual furniture before you commit. Plus, whether you're at home or away, you can control your window treatments with the 3-Day Blinds app. So, for a free, no-charge, no-obligation consultation, head to 3dayblinds.com/morning for our buy one, get one 50% off deal. That's the number 3, D-A-Y, blinds.com/morning.

**Neva Safa** (5:07)
The Social Security Trust Fund is set to run out of money by 2032, according to the program's latest annual report. We've known about this funding problem for years, 41 to be exact.
And yet, the deadline keeps inching closer with no action from Congress.
Labor economist Katherine Ann Edwards wrote about this for Bloomberg, and she pointed to the gig economy as one weak spot in the way Social Security is structured and a potential source of at least a partial solution to its funding problems. Katherine joins us for more about how Social Security works for those who are self-employed. Good morning.