Layaway

It’s the holidays again, and this year, all our nephew wants for Christmas is a new bicycle. “We’re on it,” we tell our sister, and we head off to the store to buy the kid his bike. But we’ve got a few obstacles in our way. First, bicycles are expensive. Second, we don’t make a lot of money and tend not to have a ton of cash on hand at any given point. And third, our credit isn’t exactly awesome, so we can’t really finance the thing.

So...how are we going to pay for this bike?

Well, if the retailer offers the option, we can put the bike on layaway. A layaway plan basically allows us to put down a deposit on and make payments toward a specific item—like, say, a bicycle—and then pick it up once we’ve paid it off. Sometimes there’s a small fee associated with it, but it’s usually not exorbitant. This is great for us, because if we put the bike on layaway in September and spend the next four months making payments on it, we should totally be able to pay it off and pick it up in time to wrap it and stick it under the tree for our little nephew. And that will make everyone happy come Christmas morning.