Installment plan to pay for plasma/LCD set? (1 Viewer)

[Malik Richs]

Salutations,

I understand that plasma and LCD TVs are still expensive after years of falling prices, but if I want to buy a set, how should I pay for it? Should I consider paying through an installment plan ("Buy Now, Pay Latter"), where I can make monthly payments.

I need advice on whether I should choose the installment plan, or whether I should wait until I have enough money and pay for a plasma or LCD set and pay it in full.

Thanks

 

[Mort Corey]

The only way I would consider an installment plan is if it offered zero to minuscule financing. Even then, there are a lot of traps set in those plans....you're 30 seconds late on a payment and the rate jumps to 18+% and it's all do and payable retroactively......read the fine print.

If you wait until you have enough money, likely as not the price will be lower and the performance better.

Mort

 

[Ted Lee]

exactly what mort said.

bb (and other stores) sometimes offer finance promotions. bb often does two years no finance. as long as you pay it off within the time period, you won't pay any interest. if you're late though, they back-date the finance charges to the date of purchase. that'll kill you.

if you wait and pay cash, you'll probably be able to buy better technology for less money. but who likes to wait!

 

[Shane Martin]

Another option is if you have the cash just to bank the cash and take the No Payments/No interest for x amount of time then when you are ready to make a payment just pay it off. What little interest you earned is money you didn't have before.

 

[Trevor_J]

I haven't purchased electronics on any buy now pay later offers but I had done this when I was finishing my basement including the dedicated theatre. With the carpet that we decided to go with and the amount of sq. footage, it was the single most expensive purchase of the final project. I didn't have the money saved up so I took advantage of a promotion that HomeDepot was running at the time which stated that if you bought now you wouldn't have to pay for 1 year, interest free.

What I ended up doing was setting up automatic post dated payments through my online banking. Every 2 weeks, as I get paid $200 gets paid towards the carpet purchase. It's almost been a year and I'm still on track to have it paid off by the time the the interest will kick in. Since I paid the bill automatically I never really missed the money coming out of my bank account. I think if you treat your Plasma purchase this way you'll be ok.