Layaway doesn't make sense to me

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Well, I think I've learned here some good reasons for some people to use layaway. I've always been puzzled about it myself.

Once I met a man who told me that his father long ago ~before the years of discount retailers/big box stores, and before welfare existed~ had a shoe store in a very poor neighborhood. He said he knew that his father was sometimes criticized as exploiting the poor through his business. He did not go into detail and it was not clear to me what that was about. He defended his father, saying that his father had a layaway system in which he took as little as $0.10 per week toward a purchase. He said that his father was actually helping the poor this way....I did not understand. Some of the reasons given above might apply, I guess.

[disneysteve]

Maybe her monthly clothing budget is $50 and the item costs $100. She decides that she will forego spending $50 next month and instead combine it to get the $100 article. However, she doesn't have the $50 from next month yet, and by then the article will be out of stock. Layaway allows her to reserve it, and pay for it with cash originally intended for it in her budget. That would be responsible use of money and layaway.

That makes sense. Again, no offense intended. I just wasn't sure how to read your post.

As Joan just said, I've learned some valid reasons for using layaway in this thread, things that I never understood before. Thanks, all.

[swaymonae]

I think it's smarter than using a credit card. If it's in danger of being sold out and I didn't want to put it on a credit card, why not? As long as I can actually afford, however....

If I can't afford it, .. then I'm just not going to do it.

I'm the type of person who puts all her extra money in savings-- so it's out of reach, so I usually don't have a lot of "extra" money in my checking account. Furthermore, when it has reached my savings, it's there for good. I don't like taking money out unless it's imperative. So in this particular situation, it's not a bad idea.

[Ima saver]

I used layaway a lot when I was much younger. I would pick out christmas presents early and put them on layaway. Then I would go in every week to make a payment and everything would be paid for by christmas. There was never any fee. I also work as a teen in a dress shop and we had layaway there too. That is how I purchased most of my clothes, on layaway. (I started at age 12 and only made $3 a day)

[savingmama]

If I want something and don't have the money for it, I don't buy it. I save up until I do have the money for it. Then I buy it.

If you can't afford something, don't buy it. Save until you can. Then buy it. Why is that such a difficult concept for people to grasp?

sorry to go off on a tangent, but reading Steve's first post totally reminded me of the Saturday night skit called "don't buy stuff." It is pretty funny. You can watch it on hulu.com if you haven't seen it before.

[disneysteve]

sorry to go off on a tangent, but reading Steve's first post totally reminded me of the Saturday night skit called "don't buy stuff." It is pretty funny. You can watch it on hulu.com if you haven't seen it before.

I loved that skit. A classic when Steve Martin hosted a few years go.

[whitestripe]

If your budget is such that your wife is buying clothes that you guys can't afford to pay for at the time of purchase, isn't that a problem? My gut reaction to your post is that maybe your wife is spending too much on clothing and shouldn't be shopping in a high-end shop.

one thing i wanted to point out was that, while i agree that its possible there could be too much spending on clothes happening here, there's also the possibility that the wife DOESN'T buy a lot, and that when she does, she buys good quality clothing that may cost a bit more. i know a lot of people that do this - and they probably don't spend any more money than those who buy multitudes of cheap & crap quality clothing.
for example: i bought a gorgeous cardigan from Country Road that cost me $139. Expensive? Yes. I also bought a cardigan from Cotton On (a chain store) for $19. Both similar styles. The $25 i bought in august last year. The $139 one I bought in December 2004. I wear them equally. The $139 one looks like when I first bought it. The $25 one I now wear around the house because it is stretched and the threads are coming loose, and there are holes in the fabric that were not caused by anything other than being poorly made.


Sorry to go off on a tangent! but i just wanted to share my pov on clothing.

[bjl584]

Steve,
I work part time at Kmart. Having helped out in the layaway department during the holidays, I had a chance to talk to alot of customers that were putting things in and picking things up from layaway. While a lot of what you assume is true, that being that layaway is basically a credit card for people who can't get credit, there were several other reasons that people were using layaway. The main reason was that so parents could keep the Christmas presents out of the house so that there would be no chance that their children would find them before Christmas day. Another reason was that a lot of people were buying furniture and appliances when they were in the process of moving. They didn't want to pay for self storage and had nowhere else to put things, so they would leave it in layaway until they got moved into their new place. Finally, a lot of people put things in there when they were buying gifts for other people. They just figured that it would be better to leave it at the store instead of having to load it into the car and store it at their house until they finally gave it as a gift. This was especially true with large items like baby cribs, appliances, and tv's.