Financing can actually be an incredibly good idea if you expect inflation to increase at a greater rate than the interest. It literally saves you effective money.
That said, it also tends to involve a credit pull (which hurts said interest rates) and becomes a monthly bill.
So if you can afford the monthly bill AND it is a meaningfully large purchase AND you have every reason to expect inflation to increase more than the interest rate? It is actually a pretty good idea.
What’s also kinda wild is how those plans often have 0 interest rate as long as you’re able to pay the installments on time. Which means in theory you MAKE money by using them because you can earn interest with that money in the meantime.
It ALSO means they know the people using those services are so bad with money that they can sustain themselves (and make a nice profit) purely by their clients failing to pay on time and then selling the debt to debt collectors. It’s absolutely disgusting how predatory this is, making their money mostly on the people who’d need such a system the most (and to a smaller amount, on people who don’t care).
Or just don’t finance any non-essential purchase. The idea of financing anything smaller than a couple thousand dollars is just wild to me.
Financing can actually be an incredibly good idea if you expect inflation to increase at a greater rate than the interest. It literally saves you effective money.
That said, it also tends to involve a credit pull (which hurts said interest rates) and becomes a monthly bill.
So if you can afford the monthly bill AND it is a meaningfully large purchase AND you have every reason to expect inflation to increase more than the interest rate? It is actually a pretty good idea.
For even a 200 dollar battle pass: no, it is not.
What’s also kinda wild is how those plans often have 0 interest rate as long as you’re able to pay the installments on time. Which means in theory you MAKE money by using them because you can earn interest with that money in the meantime.
It ALSO means they know the people using those services are so bad with money that they can sustain themselves (and make a nice profit) purely by their clients failing to pay on time and then selling the debt to debt collectors. It’s absolutely disgusting how predatory this is, making their money mostly on the people who’d need such a system the most (and to a smaller amount, on people who don’t care).
“What?! We help people budget!”
“What?! We help people when times are tough!”
“What?! 73% of our customers pay us zero interest!”