Let's Talk Afterpay

 Here is something a little different. It seems like layaway has grown up or at least changed a little bit. Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay is the new credit/layaway type of deal. The retail scene has changed over the past 30 years. Online shopping, recessions, credit card meltdowns and now the pandemic has changed things.

For a while, I kept seeing Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay being offered when I've been doing some online shopping. I've always been a little curious on how those things worked and what they were. After checking them out, I liked the concept of them. I'm working of paying off credit card debt and trying not to use credit cards so much. It's not an easy thing to do. But I was ready to give Afterpay a shot.

Outside of an initial down payment of whatever I am buying, I have 3 more payments to make every 2 weeks before whatever I bought is paid off. The first place that I tried out Afterpay was Ulta. They were running some sort of sale type of things and I decided to bite the bullet and just try it out. I figured that if I didn't like Afterpay, it wasn't a huge deal, the balance wasn't huge and it would be paid off fairly quick. Yeah, I had bought another bottle of Chanel no 5 and something else that I really needed. After I made my initial payment, what I ordered was shipped to me. Layaway used to be that you had to pay the entire balance off before you could get your items. Afterpay doesn't work like that, after the initial payment is made, said item is shipped. I did like that aspect and I also like the e-mail and text reminders of when the next payment is due.

Besides Ulta, FragranceNet and Luckyscent both offer Afterpay and I think that I really shouldn't have looked to see who else might offer Afterpay. I think that it would make things a little easier to spend way too much money but I am working on using Afterpay sparingly. I will admit when Christmas rolls around, having something like Afterpay as another form of payment might come in handy. Especially since Afterpay doesn't charge interest and only an $8 late fee if you forget, even with reminders. I haven't forgotten payments but I was curious in the off chance that I forgot or a big bill just popped up. Even though my limit is up to $600, I do have the chance to have that limit increased but in my case, that might not be the wisest thing to do but if I ignore that and not use Afterpay too much, I think that it won't be a huge problem.