The other day I had mentioned that my wonderful honey wanted a TV for the bedroom for Christmas. No harm there. Since there is such a difference in picture quality from TV to TV, I thought I’d take him with me to check some out. Who wouldn’t love going to Best Buy to provide some Christmas present input?

I had no intention of purchasing a TV that day, I merely wanted to see which ones he liked best. So we’re looking around at the plethora of TVs and find a decent one. It was a 40″ Dynex LCD for $399.99 and it looked pretty good for the money. Of course we checked out the larger TVs, as well as the beautiful, amazing, tempting LEDs. That’s when the first vulture appeared. Within the first minute, he was trying to encourage us to finance a lovely television.

Vulture: You know, we’re currently offering 36 month no interest financing.
Me: Oh, no thanks.
Vulture: You don’t pay any interest for 3 years.
Me: No, that’s cool. I don’t like financing, I prefer to pay cash.
Vulture: No interest is just like paying cash.
Me: But it’s not cash, it’s financing.
Vulture: It’s a really great deal, you could get whatever TV you wanted.
Me: I’d prefer to only get the TV we can afford to pay for now.
Vulture: But there isn’t any interest.
Me: Doesn’t matter to me, but thanks anyway.

Oh my goodness, it was driving me nuts. Why are they so pushy with the financing? They aren’t paid on commission or anything, so how does it benefit them to keep pushing it? Aaaah! I was so frustrated, but thankfully he started talking about the difference between plasma, LCD and LED with my husband. A little while later, we went to check out HDMI cables.

The 2nd vulture came up to us while we were blankly staring at the HDMI cables trying to figure out the distance from my computer tower to where the TV would be mounted on the wall. He didn’t push financing, probably because HDMI cables can range from $20-$200-ish. But, he did try to up-sell us. I came to the conclusion that an eight-foot cable should be sufficient.

Me: I think an eight-foot cable would work.
Vulture #2: Well we have a 2 pack of cables for only $5.00 more than the 8-foot one.
Me: Can they be connected then or something?
Vulture #2: No.
Me: Then why should I buy it?
Vulture #2: It’s only $5.00 more and you get an extra cable.
Me: What would I do with an extra HDMI cable that I don’t need?
Husband Chimes In: I could trade it at work for a pot of coffee.
Me: What? No.

It’s crazy how so many people would listen to Vulture #2 and pay more to get more. If we needed an extra HDMI cable, than that would be a great deal, but we don’t. At least we have an idea of which cable we like, it was only $24.99 (or was it $29.99), I’m not totally sure right now. Next we needed to check out wall mounts for the TV.

Browsing around, dodging vultures left and right—we finally find the wall mounts. How convenient that they are right next to the most expensive TVs in the store. Oh, and there’s Vulture #1 eager to help. Best Buy had this really awesome display set up for people to see the real difference between the wall mounts. There this flat kind of mount, but that wouldn’t work for our situation. We want to put the TV higher up on the wall right across from our bed, so flat would be really awkward for watching TV in bed.

Vulture #1 immediately went to the super-dooper wall mount, it tilted, could be pulled out from the wall and angled any way you imagined and probably cooked dinner too, but I’m not sure. That one cost like a few hundred, and did way more than we needed it to. All we really needed was it to be flat against the wall and tilted down at us, nothing fancy. He tried to tell us how amazing the super-dooper one was, but I just ignored him and started checking out the tilt mount for different sizes. It’s crazy that bumping up from a 40″ to a 42″ can add an extra hundred bucks. I’m totally fine with 40″ and smaller.

Then husband and I decided to see if we could find me something for Christmas, I’ve really been struggling to find something. It’s really hard when you don’t need anything and don’t really want anything (affordable at least). We made a mistake, we happened to pause in the aisle and check out a TV. I swear Vulture #3 swooped in before I could even read the brand.

Vulture #3: Hi, is there anything I can help you with?
Me: No thanks, just looking.
Vulture #3: You know, we have 36 month no interest financing.
Me: NO! Cash only. *quickly scurried away to video games*

I might have been a little harsh with the poor guy, but I was sick of them trying to convince me to get financing and up-selling me. That’s one of the reasons we got into debt before, buying stuff we couldn’t afford. Spending more to get more (that we didn’t need) also helped us along the way. We’ve worked so hard over the years to pay off debt and start getting ahead.

Just because you can get financing with no interest doesn’t always mean that’s a good decision. If you can’t actually afford to buy something, maybe you shouldn’t. You can always save up the money to pay cash, put stuff on layaway or check out places like Amazon, Craigslist and eBay.

I’m not saying don’t use financing, but do so responsibly. If you have the money to buy something, it’s different. Sometimes financing can be a good way to build your credit, keep emergency money available or whatnot.

It’s all about being responsible. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to take home that 65″ LG LED TV, but we can’t really afford it without bailing on other priorities and our trip to Europe next year.

How do you feel about financing?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smb_flickr/2284421160/