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Over a year ago my wife and I watched a demonstration of the Rainbow Vacuum cleaner in our home. Impressed by its filter-less system and wowed by the power it seemed to have, we wanted one– but had no money to purchase one.
Never the ones to pass up a sale, they had multiple plans for us:
- Buy it outright
- 90 days same as cash
- “One of our great financing plans”
- Become a Demonstrator yourself
It was the last of these options that appealed to us. We didn’t want any more debt and those things are expensive. However, we were already looking for something that my wife could possibly do in her spare time as a chance to get away and help the family bottom line, and since it could be done at her leisure after earning the vacuum cleaner we signed up.
One of the things that she went on to learn is something for us to consider now. The story of how long it took to get our money will be a story for later. 🙂
The big thing that she learned, and we’ve seen many times before, is that if you don’t make the sale that night they won’t call back. It’s actually been proven scientifically that we can be impacted by something new and get a high from it such that we may make unwise decisions about purchases simply because it is new (and then get buyer’s remorse later).
The whole point of getting debt free isn’t so much about the money of it– though it certainly a part– as much as it is getting into a lifestyle of paying for things instead of borrowing against the future. The former (though it takes time) means that you actually own the thing. The latter is laced with danger– as you do not know the future or if you will always have the income that you have now.
People will try many ways to justify debt. “I can’t get X with cash.” “I get cash back or money off of X that I don’t get with cash.” “I get a special card that I can hang on my key ring!”
However, logic says that credit card companies wouldn’t be giving out cards if everyone was only paying minimum (granted that there is some money paid them on the transaction, but I believe a large percentage comes from interest payments). Otherwise they’d just offer all 0% cards and make money on the transactions! They figure that something will come up and that we’ll get in the habit of using credit. All it takes is one big purchase, not having the money on hand, and then our mind will say “Well, I’ll take the $30 hit this time– it’s worth it to have this brand new thingy.”
This is why it’s so important to change the way we think about debt– to run from it and not give it a place in our wallets. So we rely on God and the money we have.
Yes RUN… RUN RUN RUN… lol…
I personally can’t wait to be out from under the debt of a mortgage. I can’t wait!
I would love to live on cash. I like money in cash, cards just seem so surreal to me. Like fake money!
Meg
I liked that quote too, Mrs. Meg. Great post, MIn. Deborah and I were just talking about how it seems like we’re on the way to being a cashless society. Scary.
For us, it was a Kirby vacuum demo that had me salivating…I needed a vacuum so badly, and the salesman finally got it through his thick head that I wasn’t buying that night, so he suggested a refurbished Kirby. I ended up waiting about 5 months, called him back (he was no longer selling Kirby vacuums, lol) so I went on the net and got a great refurbished one for a fraction of the price (good ole ebay) and it came with a warranty! It’s been an awesome vacuum for 6 years now…
My parents had a Rainbow vacuum, one of their church members sold them. It worked great, though I remember disliking the chore of emptying the dirty water tank!
You can get there, Meg. It just takes time, will power, and the desire to get out!
Mary, it definitely seems that many people want us to be cashless– with both the ads to get you to get cards that “are better than cash” (you’ve seen the ones where having cash slows the payments down). Then there are keep talking about how much money it costs to make money.
We had a long Kirby demo once– which lasted really long since they kept lowering the price. We have a rainbow, and sold them for a brief time. I’m guessing I’m going to have to write about that adventure soon…
LOL. My aunt/uncle use to own a RAINBOW company such as you mentioned. They did really well selling those. One summer I tried selling them with no success. I guess I always gave in too easily when the customer said they didn’t have the money. I never tried to convince them they could afford it! I’ve been out of credit card debt for about 4 months now and it feels great. I have student loans to tackle and as Dave Ramsey says, “it’s almost like a pet”. He is coming to speak at my church in a few weeks and am excited about this!
Well, one of the only reasons that we got into the Rainbow business was because we couldn’t afford one and the salesman said this was a good way to get one. So, we tried, and we won’t be going back there any time soon!
Same here. I’m just not in to sales and didn’t have the heart to force someone to buy something they couldn’t afford.
Be praying for Mrs. Meg Logan and I. With the upcoming move, I’ve really been praying that we can buy a house with cash. I’m not really sure if we’ll be able to do it yet. We might have to get a small loan that can be paid off in 2-3 years so we can afford a house that is remotely livable. We’ll see. Through Christ all things are possible ;-).
It would be such a great thing if you could buy your house debt free! We’ll be praying!