I'm Vince Staples, and before I was a famous rapper who plays a famous rapper on television, I was just a kid on the Blue Line trying to make my way through Los Angeles. The bus taught me some valuable life skills, but I had a

rigid schedule, not my own. That's what it feels like. The wait for payday: you work hard for your money, but you're stuck on someone else's clock. So why is that? To figure out why most Americans are stuck with bi-weekly pay, we have to go back in time, way back when

people didn't even use money. Back then, you handed over your chickens, and boom, you got a cow. No waiting around. Nice cow, man! But as economies grew, things began to change. Stores got bigger, and retail boomed with the Industrial Revolution. Small

businesses turned into factories. The factories needed workers, lots of them. To save time, bosses started paying everyone at the end of the week—convenient for them, but not so much for the workers. Then World War II hit, and the government needed money to fund the war and prevent

inflation. So they started taking more money out of workers' pay to cover these costs. Workers demanded pay slips to keep a record of what they were earning—or what they weren't earning. But these pay slips created more paperwork for the bosses each week. So, to lighten the load,

many companies decided to start paying people every two weeks. Fast forward about 100 years, and here we are today. So these pay schedules were created with the needs of companies in mind. Now, workers' bi-weekly pay basically means you're giving your boss an interest-free

Loan on your labor, and when your bills don't line up with payday, you're left waiting for your money. This helps explain why almost 40% of Americans were charged with late fees in the last year. In fact, in recent years, banks have made up to $14 billion annually in late fees alone.

And it's not just about the fees. With this outdated pay schedule, you can miss out on deals and other opportunities—like that flight on sale. If you wait till payday, those prices will only have gone up. The bottom line: our pay cycles are the result of an

outdated system that puts the needs of businesses before the workers. But while your pay schedule might be stuck in the past, new routes like MyPay from Chime are available today to give you more control over your money. MyPay lets you get up to $500 of your pay before

payday, so you get paid when you need it, giving you more ways to handle whatever life throws at you and jump on timely deals. And that's something we can all get on board with.

Vince Staples on the weird history of why we get paid every two weeks [Partner content from Chime]

Vox helps you understand our world.

Vox video is Bridgett Henwood, Cath Spangler, Adam Freelander, Joey Sendaydiego, Coleman Lowndes, Christophe Haubursin, Kim Mas, Laura Bult, Ed Vega, Rajaa Elidrissi, and with research support from Melissa Hirsch. 

Become a member today: https://www.vox.com/support-now

Check out our FAQ on permissions and licensing of our videos: https://www.voxmedia.com/pages/licensing

✉️ Write us: voxvideo@vox.com


Vince Staples on the weird history of why we get paid every two weeks [Partner content from Chime]

Scripts