SO I lay-byed something last week.
Since then, I have been noticing lay-bye signs everywhere.
Have they always been around and I’ve just not been paying attention, or is the lay-bye making a welcome return?
What happened to the lay-bye? Where did it go?
Was it in hiding all these years; strangled by the credit card and six months as cash?
There was a time when every big purchase we made was done on lay-bye.
It was the big purchase language of the day; the poor man’s credit line and I miss it.
Kids, let me explain. Lay-bye was when our parents would put down a deposit on an expensive thing, say a TV.
The TV would stay in the store and our parents would pay an agreed amount of money every month or week, until it was completely paid off.
And only then would the TV come home. Sometimes this would take three months and sometimes six. This is how my mom managed to afford to buy me a Donkey Kong game when I was a pikkie.
Lay-byes required a lot of patience and taught the value of delayed gratification.
I knew that Donkey Kong game was coming and when that bright orange console eventually arrived, I burst out of my skin and I treasured it for life.
But, most importantly, lay-byes meant that everybody got what they wanted and nobody got into trouble.
If you didn’t honour the agreement, you simply didn’t get your goods.
And sometimes the small shop owners were so nice, that they would give your money back, if halfway through you could no longer afford to pay the rest of the lay-bye. It was the perfect arrangement.
You didn’t have to take your ID and fill in forms to apply for credit. You didn’t have to bring a salary slip. The shop owner could bank your monthly payments and earn interest on it, which means you paid the advertised price, no extra service fees.
And no “private number” phone calls from people threatening us with blacklisting, unless we make an urgent double payment. Oh, and the fee for the lawyers’ letter they sent us.
So, what happened? Instant gratification is what happened!
The chance to have stuff right now and not having to wait for it at all. We have happily reversed the way we get to own the stuff we want.
Previously we had to save, or patiently pay and wait.
Now we first take the stuff home and pay for them later.
And when we can’t afford it anymore, we get blacklisted and can never buy anything ever again – I’m overstating, of course. But the point I’m trying to make is that lay-byes may, in fact, be the “Right Now Generation’s” punishment for our own impatient excess and conspicuous consumption.
There are many people with bad credit ratings spending all their available cash on paying for gadgets they don’t even own anymore and fancy clothes that have long since faded.
But they still need to buy appliances, like fridges, satellite TVs and home theatre systems.
I believe lay-byes are the answer. It will also teach us to have more patience.
Finally, why is it called lay-bye, anyway? Shouldn’t it be called lay-buy?
Come to think of it, you are saying goodbye to your hard-earned cash, so maybe it is correct!