Lloyds TSB Loans

Some Years ago we decided we needed a new sofa, 2 to be precise. We shopped around & the best one we found was at Jessops (known as John Lewis). Unfortunately at the time our cash was tight & we could not afford £1000 up front.

We happened upon DFS, you know the store on TV that always has a sale that must end on Sunday. Well they had some sofas that were returned unwanted by a previous customer & were on sale for £1000.

We enquired about how to pay - there were 2 options. Pay cash now, or buy now pay later over 3 years Interest Free!!!.

We elected to defer starting payments for 6 months, but you can elect upto 12 months & we paid the loan over 2.5 years. At a cost of about £30 per month we paid the £1000.

Now if we had paid in one go, the loss of interest to us by taking £1000 from a typical savings account that offers say 4% interest would be £120 over the 3 years we elected for. If you went for the full 4 years of the loan it would be £160 loss of interest - that's more than 15% of the initial £1000 to buy the sofas

I am a avid user of interest free loans they provide the less well of with nice things at cash price over a number of months or years.

So if you are going to buy a sofa i recommend DFS, or another outlet that allows interest free options.

On a negative note - Black Horse do try and sell you other loans with interest. We got letters near the end of the interest free loan and now it's finished. But it's no biggie just bin them straight away.

Happy spending.