layaway

Layaway became obsolete in the bubble years, an anachronism from bygone times when many consumers couldn't access credit. In today's rough economy, layaway is making a comeback for the holidays. But for investors who hold certain retail stocks, this may mean lumps of coal in their portfolios.

With Americans' budgets squeezed, more consumers will turn to layaway programs -- which allow shoppers to make payments in installments -- this gift-giving season, according to a new survey.

Walmart is struggling to end its declining same store sales, which have faltered over the past nine consecutive quarters. It's no wonder: With massive unemployment, discount retailers have to pull out all the stops to win over new customers, or even retain the ones they have. Re-enter layaways, which Walmart shelved in 2006.

This holiday season, layaway is making a comeback at several large retailers. Layaway is the process of buying an item which you leave at the store and pay for over time, often with a one-time service charge but no credit check. It's not a perfect system, but here's why it beats those "no interest/no payments for X months" deals hands-down.

Walmart is bringing back something its customers have been asking for since the Great Recession: layaway. The world's largest retailer, which ditched the pay-as-you-go plans in 2006, is rolling out a holiday layaway option from Oct. 17 through Dec. 16.

Haven't decided how you're going to pay for your gifts this holiday season? Given that credit has become so difficult -- and expensive -- what about layaway? It was everywhere in the 1920s and 1930s, but after becoming virtually extinct in the 1980s (when everyone was using credit cards), layaway...

I'm old enough to remember when credit wasn't so easy to get. The only child of a single mother in the 1960s-1970s, things like credit cards or even apartment leases, were hard won in our experience. So when my mother qualified for a Sears' credit card, it was a pretty big day. At the time it was...

National Layaway Week has already come and gone (Oct 4- Oct 8 according to Kmart, which invented the event), a full seven weeks before Black Friday and 11 weeks before Christmas. But it's not too late to do your shopping now and have enough time to make the payments to get your items out of hock by...

If the recession isn't over for your household, the following may come as welcome news: Toys R Us is expanding its layaway program to include warm weather items. The goods include bikes, ride-on toys, swing sets, trampolines, pools, water slides and basketball systems. The idea being you can have...

Whatever happened to the idea that if you can't afford something, you don't buy it? Didn't living above our means get us into this recessionary mess in the first place? No, I'm not an anti-credit card fanatic; I just believe in paying them off each month. What I don't believe in is layaway. If you...