As the idiom goes, don’t judge until you’ve walked in someone else’s shoes. The Wallet Pop blogger found himself walking in the shoes of a payday lending customer and, not surprisingly, his opinion of the business changed.

 He writes about it in his latest post

For years, I’ve lived by a couple rules. For instance, I never eat yellow snow, and I never step foot inside one of those payday lending establishments.

Like many Americans, I’ve never had a high opinion of payday lending loan establishments, but earlier this year, utterly broke, I finally broke down.

And what did he learn from his experience?

What I do know is that as lousy as the payday lending industry’s reputation is and as distasteful as their interest rates are, I was glad to have the option of going to a payday lending store when I needed one.

That, however, may not be the case much longer. Payday lending establishments are being put under the microscope by a lot of state governments lately, and there’s a lot of talk of trying to regulate them out of existence.

Once upon a time, I would have said, “Good riddance, get rid of them, all of them.”

And yet — I’m finding myself rethinking all of this and wondering if perhaps the credit card industry and banking industry should be examined more thoroughly first, since those are generally the first places where Americans tend to get into financial trouble. After all, a lot of people use payday loan stores, and it’s likely happening now more than ever. Nationwide, in fact, Americans pay about $5 billion a year to borrow more than $40 billion from payday lenders. So if payday lenders are run out of town, what will happen to people who feel like these places are their last options?