I could buy two Mac Pro's without blinking, doesn't mean I am going to. I could buy my iPhone upgrade, in fact, my last major Apple purchases (iPhone X, Apple Watch 3, iPad Pro 2017, 2017 MacBook Pro for my sibling my 2015 MacBook Pro) were all one time purchases. But my most recent purchases: Apple Watch 7 for my late mother, iPhone SE, M1 MacBook Pro were purchased using installments. I could have bought all three outright, but the option was there for installments and like I said earlier, I don't like seeing large chunks of money come out of my checking one time. Doesn't mean I'm poor or don't know how to handle money. Find it so odd people are being stigmatized for their purchasing methods.
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Apple No Longer Offers Interest-Free Financing in Canada
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Whatever you say chief.
Perhaps you could share exactly how you achieve this with "little risk." "invest that money into something smart and get return on it (let's be conservative here and say 10%)" Making claims like you did is easy. Talk cost nothing. Facts please, not vague generalizations.
You said “nobody”, then put in your disclaimer to mean “nobody, except those who can get 0% APR”, and since this article was specifically about that group that originally had access to 0% and the change that is taking away that 0%, the entire article is about the exception you gave to your own rule. So in this case, your “nobody” was everybody. So what exactly was your point?
Wait, you feel like your $10,000 trip is free because you paid in advance? And you are giving financial advice?
In England, Apple routinely remove interest-free finance from their products. At one point it was normal that you could do interest-free on any item over £300. Because they no longer offer it, I went to a successful premium reseller here called iStore who offer the ‘Upgrade Programme’ for Mac - you get interest free finance for 2 years and at the end of the term you either pay the remaining balance or swap the Mac for a new model. So I’m paying £30 a month for a new Mac and Apple can’t offer anything close to a service that good!
I know it isn't free, but it was paid with money that I have put aside in the past just for that trip. Money that others may have spent on cigarettes in the same time. The result is that I did not have to pay any money from current or future income or savings. That feels pretty much as a free trip. When I paid for the trip, my bank account was not affected at all, because I had saved that money in a plastic box.
Right now I save for my next trip, which will be cheaper, but when I will do the trip, it will already be fully paid. That is MUCH better than having to pay for 24 months AFTER the trip.
I do the same with notebooks. If I feel that a new notebook is needed in two years or so, I start saving and when the day comes, I just have to exchange that money for a notebook.
Do you have more than one plastic box or do you use one general purpose one?
But cigarettes and pleasure trips are luxuries. A notebook could be a luxury, but often it is a tool, and a necessity like a business trip. I fully agree that it is better to have cash in hand to buy things because obvious is obvious, but sadly cash in hand is also a luxury for many. And there is nothing more fun for a person short on cash than being told they should have more cash by someone with a surplus of it. I find it amazing how much lack of comprehension of that fact there is, and assume it must speak to exactly how much a person has had to actually struggle in life, but I guess that is where the saying “read the room” comes in. But other than that, I fully agree with you that it is indeed great to have cash in hand to buy things, and do not disagree with your actual method. Cheers!
I have a few boxes where I save money for different purposes.
In boxes the money is safer than on a bank account, because a huge financial crisis could come within days or hours and then even rich economies might see bank runs and a limit on cash withdraws. In the end banks are a huge ponzi scheme that only works well as long as only a tiny fraction of people wants to access the money on their bank accounts. Even if just 10% want to withdraw their money, the whole system could collapse. And of course I will not put my money on a bank account as long as the interest rate is zero.
Too many people buy things they can't afford with money they don't have just to impress people they do not like. Some students really think they need an iPhone to belong to a certain circle. And even adults often buy a brand new car to hide financial problems. Every cent spent on bragging is a wasted cent.
I mean, this has always been true .... But it's just as true that MOST people just aren't disciplined enough with their money to actually take the funds that are freed up by not paying interest and putting them into treasury bonds or other investments.
It's really the same old story. The wealthier you are, the easier it is to keep creating more wealth. If you're a typical "middle class" type person working a full-time job and basically living paycheck to paycheck (but keeping all your bills paid including maybe a mortgage)? You probably see some risk in putting a big chunk of money into investments that tie the funds up (like savings bonds that you can't redeem for a minimum of 1 year). You might want those funds to be more liquid, in case you need a new central HVAC suddenly, or your roof leaks and needs replacing, or ?
Secondarily, there's the tax mess investments can create. If you do your own taxes, you can suddenly find yourself with 50+ extra pages of tax paperwork related to various stocks or mutual funds, if you bought and sold some of them. To some people, the small profits they're making off trading a few shares of this, and 8 shares of that are hardly worth all the IRS paperwork/hassle. (I wound up like that a few years ago when I started playing with RobinHood and bought random things including some overseas funds and gold with it. A little bit of "day trading" to grab a $50 profit here and a $200 profit there wound up causing 77 or so pages of detailed stuff I had to submit, including forms I needed from Fidelity that weren't available for months -- causing a delay in getting my taxes filed.)
People with a lot more money don't even care about such things. They just pay someone else to deal with their taxes, and they already have plenty of liquid funds in bank accounts to cover emergencies.
The best decision is the one that's based on the person's financial needs.
that's totally wrong on many accounts.
in particular, if you pay for certain expensive equipment upfront it won't be tax deductible (at least not in full and at least where I am). so even if you can afford to pay in full upfront, nobody in sane mind does it if they want to reduce their taxes. (obviously, it only applies to those who can deduct their equipment costs).