Like it or not, when you are poor or have bad credit, most of what you have to deal with are sucker deals.
$200 doesn’t sound like much, but when you are poor, its more than you know you are likely to be able to scrape together.
Financing of some sort is the only way you are going to get it.
Sadly if your income is low and/or your credit is poor, you won’t get financing for any reasonable means, and retailers know it.
Not defending their businesses but that’s the reality of the game. The idea of finding $20 a month for something vs a few hundred all at once is a big reality.
Yes, they’d be better off scraping up $20 a month for 10 months and going to buy it, but like most poor, if there isn’t a bill its dedicated to it will get spent on something else... and no not all of that is frivolous.
Same deal with the tote the not used car places... needs a car to get to work, but credit is terrible, so has no choice but to finance at rates that are insane.. as such spends far too much of their income on transportation, and this keeps them further down than they should be even though they are working.
Poverty is not a fun place to be, poor and bad credit is an even worse place to be.
I don’t think a refrigerator is a want, or a washing machine and dryer... do you absolutely need to own one? Nope, but you’ll drop far more of your time and money at a laundromat every week and living without a fridge is no fun either. Layaway is generally a better deal, but even that is rare to find these days.. KMart still has it year round, WalMart only brings it out around the holidays and doesn’t sell appliances etc.
I hear ya, but I gotta say, my wife and I live off my income which, while decent, is a far cry from pulling us out of poverty. We live cheap, we eat cheap and we sacrifice an awful lot. I have friends who use these services and eventually find themselves on hard times. I've watched many a friend have furniture, including couches, love seats and big screen TV's lose it when they fell on rough times.
We very briefly considered RTO, but fell back to our original resolve of, if we can't pay cash for it, we don't need it. I'm thankful we did. Instead, we saved until we had the cash and went and bought the freezer outright. At least now I know that, should we find ourselves in a bad financial spot, I won't have anyone coming to repo the freezer. Lol.
I think it's part of the bigger issue in America: We gotta have the best and the newest, we gotta go bigger than the neighbors, and we gotta have it now. All very false premises. We have done very well by taking the "can't pay cash/don't need it" approach. I think most would be much happier and less in debt if they did!
See #113.
Yes, some things (car) may be necessary for vital purposes (job). Some things (refrigerator) are practically necessary (food storage).
But some things (car, refrigerator) are best obtained in a humble manner (fewer features, used). And some things (new couch) aren’t necessary at all, and the inability to set aside money for such things is a Red Alert that you shouldn’t obligate yourself to getting one at an outrageous price.
Get a dirt-cheap used car, and pay yourself the “payments” for the upgrade.
Get an inexpensive no-frills refrigerator/washer/dryer/etc. Craigslist has people _giving_ them away just because they’re a hassle to move.
Build the couch yourself if you can’t afford one ... because you can’t afford one.