Coming from Europe, it would never occur to me to buy furniture on credit, is this something common in the US ?
People in low income communities find it very normal to buy on credit, often allowing you to buy now, pay in a year. My friends from higher income communities think this is a strange thing to do.
What I'm trying to say is that some of these customs might not depend on country, but even on groups within countries.
On a related note, I've personally noticed that here in the Netherlands, there's a pretty clear split between low income and high income, very tightly connected with education. In 'High School', lower and higher education are split in different classes and often different schools. So friendships are often formed within these groups and not across them (sports begin the exception). Because of this, a lot of people think something is normal in the Netherlands, but it's actually normal in their environment.
Worst case, I move the cash to a 2% interest rate bank account and let it sit there. Best case, there are other investments I can make now with that capital, and end up paying less overall for whatever I was buying because having the money has made me money in some other way. Lucky case, the company bankrupts and I don't end up having to completely pay for the thing at all.
Being also European, it is rare to be offered interest-free financing, and when you are, is because you are already paying a premium and could find the stuff cheaper somewhere else. But occasionally, some shops do have the cheapest price and still offer interest-free rates. I always take it, and have no idea why I wouldn't do that.
Disagree. This severely complicates my economy.
Instead just having X funds less available, I still have the same funds at disposal, but have to remember I owe X to Y which must be paid by Z.
Even just once this makes the simple question “How much disposable funds do I have?” hard to answer.
More than once and I will need a system to manage my own personal economy. That’s horrible!
When asked for credit I always answer no, because the small savings of delayed payment does in no way make up for the extreme complexity it adds to day-to-day economics.
Play with the transfer amounts to suit your budget. This helps you not have to think about spending money, or if you have enough to pay rent that month.
Back to the furniture example from grandparent comment, I simply ensure that main has enough in it each month to cover the monthly expenses. HTH
Some online banks have virtual subaccounts, which let you 'hide' money from your main account, if that's the way you are tracking funds available.
> More than once and I will need a system to manage my own personal economy. That’s horrible!
You already have a system, and it sounds like it's 'ask the bank how much money I have'. In the not too distant past, checking accounts came with a checkbook that included a register for you to track your expenses, but I guess humanity has declined.
In fact, if you aren't buying on credit your finances are more complicated because you have to plan ahead make sure you've got future major expenses covered.
I'm fascinated by this. Where do you find these sky-high interest rates in banks?
Ally Bank, wealthfront etc.
The key is to make sure they're FDIC insured.
Make sure you go past the "featured" ones :-)
And it's perfectly okay for example if you just bought a new flat and you're broke as fuck, because you spent all your cash on must-repair stuff, like getting the plumbing in order, but you also fancy a new bed, because you have none, so interest free bed it is!
Of course if you barely make enough to live month-to-month, then it's unlikely you'll be able to pay the monthly installments of the loan. (And usually you'll be declined even the in store zero-interest loan too.)
Furthermore the shop pays some service fee to the loan provider, and thus they scrape by.
I do agree with you, since I've done it myself. I've also taken furniture friends were going to trash. But I refinished and cleaned them. However I know not everyone has those skill sets.
But, is it right to say someone can't have something moderately nice? I couldn't afford to in the past and lived like that. I didn't like it, obviously. But I also had an "exit strategy" to that situation, which has decently worked out.
I'm just curious how I'd feel if it didn't work out. Even though I agree with you, that comment kind of stung oddly... I don't know...
If they can't reasonably pay for it, I don't see what other option there is for a responsible adult. Perhaps that is my cultural background speaking.
Sometimes cash flow is more important than final price. I haven't experienced it myself, but I heard that this is especially true for low income people who live paycheck to paycheck. The $300 couch you can get on a credit for 24 easy payments of 30 dollars is easier to afford than the $100 used couch.
Payday lenders don’t have limits on the amount of interest that they can charge for a given payday loan. Worse yet, loan applicants don’t have to demonstrate ability to pay the loan during the application process.
Legislation was recently passed to require payday lenders to loan only to those who could demonstrate ability to pay, but this was recently reversed after intense lobbying by the payday lenders.
Credit access is vastly predatory in the US, and feeds into our consumerist culture that believes in nice phones, watches, cars, whatever, and has created generations of debt slaves owing interest in excess of 20-30% that they’ll likely never be able to repay.
A former coworker once said to me: “those who understand compound interest earn it, and those who don’t understand compound interest pay it.” And generally, I’ve found this to be very true.
Furniture is high margin, low volume so furniture retailers have an incentive to spread out cash-flow and get consumers to buy more expensive furniture than they would if paying all at once.
That said, I suspect if your rand the numbers you'd find that the overwhelming majority of furniture (by units sold) is bought cash from Walmart, Ikea and the like by people paying cash.
But it's also pretty common for cars and houses and the like.
Ikea, and nearly any reasonably sized furniture store, has a financing arm. So I assume it's common (and a money maker).
Thing is, often these places offer 6 months interest free and what not, so as long as you pay off your debt in the allotted time, it's smarter than paying cash.
The discount is small, I agree. But it's always worth it. It's riskless if you have the cash anyway.
And regarding having cash: if you set aside the full amount in cash at time of purchase in order to reduce the risk of not being able to pay the rates, then you did win absolutely nothing. Opportunity cost of not having that cash available for profitable investments in case of paying in cash is what could possibly be the reason for the credit variant being cheaper in the end, but that of course depends on you investing the cash and divesting just when it is necessary to pay a rate.
[1] https://www.mysynchrony.com/mysyf/paymentestimator.html?intc...
Then I got smashed with a HUGE interest charge, they charge you ALL of the interest from the 18/24 months at the end of that time if you have a blance
I buy $300 couches from the clearance center now, in cash.
Typically it works like this: people simply try not to spend their whole income, and save at least some part of it. Then, when they arrive at a significant amount of it they sit down and think: what can we do with those money? buy a new car? redecorate our living room? And if they decide to redecorate they buy furniture or whatever is needed with cash. Buying stuff on credit is pretty much unheard of.