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Comment by arlcode | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing inherently wrong with that but it's a lot more risky then saving up.

Say after 10 months an unavoidable bill of $4k shows up and I got to pay it. If I'm saving up I can redirect that money. It sucks that I don't get the camera when I planned to but otherwise I'm fine.

Under a BNPL plan I have no extra money to allocate and might have to dip into Credit (potentially with high interest).

In short: Savings are fungible, payments are not.

Studies show that huge percentage of the population doesn't have any savings. For them it's particularly dangerous to have more recurring bills.

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Your method is just as risky - say after you've just spent 5K on your camera an unavoidable bill of $4K shows up? Now you have no extra money and have to dip into Credit (potentially with high interest). Your best strategy would have been to have $5K on hand and still use financing if the terms are favorable - it keeps your funds at steady level, allows for future planning and gives you opportunities to invest or otherwise grow your capital. And yes, people without savings pay for that, it sucks to be such people but they are paying regardless if you take advantage of the financing scheme.

Then you sell the camera and pay off the bill. Sheesh - it's a camera, not a life support machine...

I think you might be overestimating the liquidity of the used camera market a little bit.

Does it matter? Even if he only gets half the price back, that leaves 1500 left of the debt he has to pay out of pocket. If he's paying monthly for the camera, he suddenly has a $4000 bill on top of whatever of the $5000 debt remains unpaid. I think I'd rather be in the former situation.

Even if not having any debt is extremely important to you then you are still out of 2500 on your camera transaction, which is pure loss here. However some people consider not just an amount of debt but its other qualities too and for them having debt of $5000 with 0% APR might be preferable to having $1500 debt with, say, 20%+ APR. At the end you need to count a monetary balance and compare a ($2500) loss on camera together with the interest paid on your $1500 loan against paying $5000 for the camera.

If math is hard consider your end state:

1. Without the camera, without $5000 + interest on the $1500 you borrowed.

2. With a $5000 camera, without $5000 you paid for the camera.

The state of the $4000 bill is the same in both cases, which state you prefer?

> If math is hard

Get fucked, mate.

> There is nothing inherently wrong with that but it's a lot more risky then saving up.

Cash is king. Assuming 0% interest, it's financially better and less risky to do BNPL. This is separate from all the other financial decisions like savings, etc...

It's similar with CCs. I love my CCs and get a ton of value and free stuff by using them. I also have never carried a CC balance in 20+ years. Someone who is financially disciplined is leaving money on the table when not using CCs.

>Someone who is financially disciplined is leaving money on the table when not using CCs.

The trick is knowing whether or not you're financially disciplined. And usually one finds out the hard way. It often involves a credit card or credit facility of some nature.

This here. Not everyone can do that. I personally can. I try to teach my friends and family to save a bit and use credit cards as a tool to get a small bit of free stuff. However, those things are deadly if you have no skill in saving in the first place. They will wipe you out with interest payments and then some. That method only works if you have the ability to save first and put off impulse buys. Even having something simple like a checking account can be bad if you have poor ability to balance your budget.

My wife for example does not have this ability, however I can manage it by basically controlling the amounts we have and putting restrictions on how money is spent that teach the lessons of saving that her parents for some unknown reason skipped teaching her. Lessons like 'you have X amount of cash lets save up for that thing you want' 'lets review our purchases and see if they make sense on the amount of income we have' 'yes, your friend has a need of 100 bucks and we can cover it but will giving them 100 just make them ask next time for 1000 and will it actually fix their problem or delay it?'

I think the ability to manage money well and not get screwed over by credit facilities is highly correlated with ones level of trait conscientiousness. It's less about skills per se than it is about that particular trait. I would wager those high in trait conscientiousness naturally tend towards frugality and budgeting and those low in trait conscientiousness tend towards impulse buys and poor financial planning.

My wife is 99th percentile for trait conscientiousness and I'm 1st percentile. I'm amazed at the amount of money she's able to save and her level of discipline and she's generally gobsmacked at the amount of money I waste and the random shit I buy.

Having the information about what one should or shouldn't do is only part of the equation. 8t also needs to be something you can apply, and sadly some of us just can't.

Why punish normies who have the same discipline with more expensive stuff?

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