Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

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Nobody wants to buy items for amounts two or three times what they’d cost at a retail store. But when Abbott did her shopping in February, she didn’t have the money to make even a small lump-sum payment for anything of decent quality, even on Craigslist. She couldn’t buy via a layaway plan; Wal-Mart offers that option only during the holiday season. Perhaps she could have saved up the money on her own, but whenever she has tried to do so, her stash has been wiped out to handle daily needs.

“Rent-to-own was basically all we could do,” Abbott, 33, said.

Yeah, I wouldn't do it either, but I'm not in their shoes and I don't need that $150 this week to make rent.

Meanwhile an entire industry is built that preys on people for whom this seems a good option. They're poor and they're misinformed - that sucks. And people make bad decisions all the time. But let's save our derision for the company gleefully charging a poor family four grand for a couch.

These companies are despicable, for sure, but they couldn't exist without a long line of poor suckers. Both parties are clearly at fault in different ways, but we can fix the problem without ignoring the poor or inventing significant new and complex laws to clamp down on bad actors: We invest in education.

When we have another sub-prime style meltdown we need to bail the economy out of, we're going to be wishing we invested in our schools and added basic life skills such as personal finance to the lesson plans. It's certainly cheaper to bailout schools than financial institutions.

Anything else will fix a symptom, not cure the disease.

How many times can someone make this mistake? It sounds like a good lesson the first time it happens. At some point, you learn to go on Craigslist and get a decent used couch (and fumigate it for bedbugs).

Having classes to teach people this in public schools sounds really condescending. Poor people can't be so stupid that they can't even learn from their own mistakes.

Many people do learn from their first mistake like this, but 1) there are always more fools and 2) for many, it's unrecoverable

As for the condescension: let kids test out. We really ought to abolish this entire notion of a class moving between grades together at the same pace, it's arcane.

I still don't get it. If they're paying $150 a week to finance the nice couch, why not stick it out for two weeks without a couch and buy the $300 one on craigslist?

My parents just took old couches in off the street, for the cost of dragging it down the street and up the stairs.

But when you're poor, you're more self-conscious about these things. What happens when your six-year-old son/daughter brings over their friends to play? Will they get made fun of for the old couch? What if there are hair lice in it? What if the kid gets hurt from it collapsing, and you have to take them to the doctor (which will cost hundreds out of pocket)? There are all sorts of irrational fears praying on the people in this situation.

Spot on I think. But are those fears 100 % irrational? Weatlthy people can build their own furniture with old wood skids, their neighbours will never raise an eyebrow. Try doing that if you are poor. You'll get child protection in no time.

"So Abbott and her husband walked into Buddy’s this past winter, hoping to replace the old sofa in their trailer, six years old, its wiring poking through the bottom, cutting gashes into the living room floor."

The easy and cheap option if you have springs poking into the floor is buy a sheet of MDF for $9.25[0] and a 20" hand saw for $20 (or less) [1] and the spring-destroying-the-floor problem is fixed for under $30.

It breaks my heart that these folks are so financially illiterate that they dig themselves into such terrible debt.

[0] http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-1-8-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-S2...

[1] http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-20-in-Saw-20-029L/1002432...

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