3 Programs I used that Helped me Pay for Christmas during the Pandemic.
By: Stephanie Rose
Tags: Toys, Christmas Gifts, Pandemic, Christmas, Money Management

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Since the start of the pandemic, many people have lost their jobs or are on a very limited income. A lot of us have been concerned about where we are going to buy food we can’t even think about how we are going to buy Christmas Gifts.

Even though I still have a job that pays me bi-weekly, many of my family members have been struggling to stay employed and keep the lights on. I often think about them as well as other families and how they are going to provide a wonderful Christmas for their kids.

I can usually set aside about $100 per paycheck to put towards anything that isn’t an expense or food. But I was still trying to figure out how I was going to pay for gifts and get my son what he wanted.

After finding a few gifts for that I could give my son for Christmas, I went to checkout and found that I had a few more options to pay with rather than to pay everything up front. I’m going to go through each one and share my experience with them.

Afterpay

The first one is Afterpay. Afterpay is a program that allows you to shop now and pay later using 4 interest-free installments. Which means, you can purchase $100 worth of merchandise and only pay $25 every 2 weeks. Of course your first payment is due the same day.

Once you make your payment, they will ship your order to you. You just have to agree to make the rest of your payments. If you don’t make on time payments, you will only be charged an $8 late fee.

You are able to sign up for free and look through all of the stores that are currently excepting Afterpay, without paying for anything up front.

I have to admit, there are many stores on Afterpay that I have never heard of. Once clicking on their site, I found that many stores are actually more expensive than I imagined. Though, you will find about 10 to 20 stores that you are familiar with and will make you have less worries.

One of the stores that I was about to shop with was “Old Navy”. I don’t often shop at Old Navy, but since they were offering installments, I figured I’d give them a try. Right off the bat, Old Navy had 30% off store wide, and then they sent me a 20% off coupon upon sign up.

Since I was able to stack those coupons, I ended up buying my son 9 shirts for $53. With tax and Afterpay installments, I only paid about $12 up front for the order . I was able to do this at a few other stores to get my son some new clothes he was desperately needing.

In the end, I paid about $35 for $140 worth of merchandise. I turned on the option for auto-pay so I didn’t have to worry about my payments. And I am putting aside $35 each paycheck to make sure that it gets paid.

Paypal

The next program is Paypal, believe it or not. Paypal now offers the option to pay in 4 interest-free installments. Unlike Afterpay, Paypal is offered at more locations. This means, if you are shopping at any store that accepts Paypal, chances are you may be able to pay via installments.

I didn’t find this out until I was shopping at Target.com. I was trying to find a certain game that my son wanted and Target had it cheaper than any other location. When I went to check out, it said “Pay $11 with 4 Paypal installments”.

I was so surprised that I had to go on the Paypal website and make sure that it was legit. This changed a lot for me because I know there are so many stores that offer Paypal. Right then, I left the Target site and started looking at all the stores I typically shop at to see if they offered Paypal.

My mind started working like clockwork, thinking about all the other gifts I could get because I have a wider range of stores to shop from and wouldn’t have to spend so much money up front.

Paypal is just like Afterpay with their installment payments. You will actually be taken to your Paypal account to confirm the installments then back to the site to place an order.

Your items ship once you’ve made your first payment. I was able to go back to the Target website and get a few more gifts for my nieces, since some of my family had fallen on hard times.

Affirm

Just like Afterpay and Paypal, Affirm also has many stores you can choose from to make your installment payments. I had found that Affirm offers a wider range of stores than Afterpay, most which are more familiar to me.

The only difference with Affirm is that they offer larger loans as well. Which means that you can make a larger purchase at some of their stores like Walmart and choose to pay monthly instead of weekly.

The purchases have to be over a certain amount and you must be approved for the loan. The only downfall I found with this was that you have to wait until the very end to see how much you’ve been approved for. I kept adding random stuff in the cart to see where it was going to cap me.

I found that I was able to purchase up to $600 worth of products shipped from Walmart.com. They were able to offer me 3 ways to pay; 3, 6 or 12 monthly payments. I had to pay a larger down payment because I decided to pay over a 12 month period.

Knowing that I had $600 to spend, I actually went all out and was able to buy great Christmas gifts for all the kids in our family. The kids really need it now; they have been stuck in the house for so many months, and they know that they may not have as great of Christmas this year.

Bonus

If you are an Amazon Prime member, Amazon offers monthly installment payments on some of the items they sell. So far, I don’t know how to tell which ones they are by searching. It will just show up in my feed.

Most of the products that will display this are products with Alexa. But I was able to find so many different products that offered it. This year, I was able to buy a new dresser, portable air conditioner and a new mattress and a few other things.

I bought my nieces this tablet last year and paid $12 a month each for them, because they were on sale. There is no threshold amount that is needed with Amazon, and I don’t now how they determine who is eligible for the installment payments. Don’t have prime? You can get a 30 day free trial here.

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