Make the payments on what you want, to yourself at 0% interest (or even earning interest), and then pay cash for what you want. I know that at first glance this seems to go against the fondness shown for instant gratification but it doesn't have to. I'm not going to talk about the evils of instant gratification because I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I'll explain why.
When you work the Success Warrior Plan for Financial Freedom (a cool name that I just now made up), you are going to have some extra cash from the start. This means that if you want a TV, you may have to save up for a few months but look at these scenarios.
Let's say that the TV costs $1,000 and you are able to save $100 a month. Easy math shows that you'll have your new TV in 10 months. Instead of that, you decide to finance it with the company at 8% for two years. Your payments will be about $54 and you'll pay around $1,300 dollars for a TV that should cost $1,000.
Maybe that doesn't seem terrible to you but let me show you something else that is so important. Let's say that while you are either saving for the TV or paying your installment payments, you blow out a tire on your car and it has to be replaced. If you are making installment payments, you may only have $46 dollars cash to play with. Maybe enough for a tire but you might be forced to put it on a credit card instead. If you are making the payments to yourself, you have $100 in cash to fix the tire. It might put the purchase of the TV back a month but that's how life goes.
People are putting themselves into debt to the point that they can't deal with "surprise" expenses. I put surprise in quotation marks because if you are alive and drive a car and own a house, it really is no surprise at all that you are going to get sick, have car repairs, and need to make home repairs. There is no surprise that these are going to happen, we just don't know when they are going to happen. That's the surprise part of it but it doesn't excuse us from being prepared for them.
Tomorrow: more on the TV, three to six months into the plan