My husband and I are considering a move to Arizona. Among the excitement about the adventure of living in a new state, I am anxious to have a gas clothes dryer again. I am not even a little bit dreading shopping for new appliances. Sears is running a commercial offering layaway on major appliances and it makes me a little nostalgic.
My family took advantage of layaway a lot while I was growing up. With layaway you could put a deposit down on your purchase and make payments at agreed upon intervals until the purchase was paid for. When the final payment was made, you took your merchandise home. This was much better than using credit because there was no interest. There might be a fee for layaway, but it was still better than paying interest.
When the topic of saving interest comes up, you may think to save the money in an interest bearing account until you have the funds to make the purchase yourself. This is a great idea! However, the items you are trying to purchase may no longer be available with this method. Saving for a larger purchase like a car instead of buying on credit makes more sense than as an alternative to layaway.
It’s unfortunate that more stores aren’t offering layaway anymore. It would seem to be a situation that is completely in the store’s favor. If the customer doesn’t pay the layaway balance by the due date, the merchandise goes back into inventory and the store keeps the money already collected. There must be a bigger downside to not offering layaway than the space needed to house all the items. I wouldn’t have as much jewelry as I do if my wonderful jeweler, whom I’ve used since I was 18, didn’t offer layaway.
I’m all in favor of bringing it back.