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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

But if you finance the computer (not hard to get 0% financing on consumer electronics), the price goes from $41 a month to $62 a month. It’s the same difference.

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For whatever reason, people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff.

To such a degree that they able to pay for a bunch of subscriptions they completely forget about.

The mental model of subscriptions and financing are totally different. If I'm paying a subscription I might cancel next month, and that's a sort of freedom. If I'm financing a piece of hardware I don't want to stop paying, I want that hardware, so that's a commitment.

The difference is that with financing you're stuck with it (and your credit rating drops, at least in the EU here). You're not stuck with a subscription. If your income changes and you can't afford it anymore then you can cancel your subscription.

In the US if you don't have any debt, that is bad for your credit rating. Perversely, the more debt you have, the easier it is to get more credit, at least up to a point.

Oh sure, my original comment’s point was just to allude to the point that costs are going up for all methods of compute, so that fact alone shouldn’t influence your buy versus rent versus finance decision too much.

This idea that there’s a conspiracy to take personal computing away from the masses seems far fetched to me.

> people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff

I'm not so sure, seeing the explosion of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms.

The common thread is that people are bad and saving and delayed gratification. The easiest path to instant gratification wins more often than not.

For some reason I think people are less likely to finance a computer, but maybe not, given that phone financing is a thing.

Just go to the Apple website and notice how every computer price has a monthly payment option in the same font size right under the purchase price.

Numerous places are advertising financing groceries and eating out these days.

https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/ways-to-pay/buy-now...

https://www.klarna.com/us/store/5130c1b0-9c21-4870-b7ed-b610...

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