Buy Now - Pay Later

In Australia people spend a lot of money on buying new things every year especially at Christmas time. Parents buy new toys and video games for their children and these can cost a lot of money. Nowadays there are a lot of commercials on the radio and on TV telling people how easy it is to buy now and pay later. These commercials use attractive words like “Buy now and pay later”, “Pay nothing for 12 months – Yes you heard it right” or “No interest for 36 months”.
It is very tempting that you can get a new car if you have a small deposit of only $500. All you have to do is to go to the caryard and choose the one you like. Then you sign some papers and pay the deposit and in a few minutes you take the car home. After one month, you start paying monthly instalments for a few years. Many people do this because they can’t afford to pay all the money in one go.
Sometimes some people don’t pay the instalments on time and they start getting nasty letters from finance companies telling them to pay the money at once or they lose the items they bought. They may also get letters from debt collectors warning them to pay off the money at once or terrible things will happen to them like taking them to court and so on. Customers also start getting fines. The interest free period may end before they pay off all the due amounts and they start paying very high interest rates. These interest rates can be as high as 39%. This means that they end up paying more money.
Australians love using plastic money. They spend as if tomorrow will never come. They owe a lot of money to banks every year and they never stop shopping.
It is a good idea to read the sales conditions before you sign any contract. This applies to many things that you commit to, like signing up for a new mobile phone plan, buying a house or a car because it is never as easy as it looks.
One man bought a couch for $1500 and because he didn’t pay the instalments on time, he ended up paying $5000 for it.
The message is clear. Pay the required amount of money off before the instalment period ends or you will end up paying much more.