This past week, my wife and I attended a sales pitch at our local DirectBuy. For those familiar with it, skip to the next paragraph. For those who are not, the concept is this: you pay to join the DirectBuy club, and you basically pay factory cost + shipping + taxes for all sorts of things. They can't publish their prices, because the traditional brick and mortar stores will throw a fit and dump the manufacturers. You have one chance to join ever.
The cost of joining the club is $5k (!) for the first four years, then $300/year after that. I can conceive of a time in our lives when it *might* be worth it to join, say about 10 years from now when our kids will be old enough that we'll feel comfortable replacing the carpet and some furniture and finishing our basement and repainting the house, etc. But not at this point in our lives. We told the sales guy that, and he started giving us the hard sell: (paraphrased)
SG (Sales guy):"What if your HVAC goes out in the next few years?"
Us: "Well, we have money set aside for things like that."
SG: "So you *do* have enough money for the membership?"
Us: "Yes, but it's allocated to other things."
SG: "But you could do the installment plan!"
Us: "We don't go into debt."
SG: "What will you do when you have to buy a new car?" etc.
Us: "Matter of fact, we actually just bought one last weekend. Paid cash."
SG: (dumbfounded look) "So you don't have any debt at all?"
Us: "Other than the mortgage on our home, no."
SG: "So you *do* go into debt."
Us: "That's the only debt we do."
On our way home, we couldn't stop laughing about the presentation. The whole tone of the evening was "because it's cheaper, we could buy more/nicer things!" I turned to my wife and said, "did he even SEE the kind of car we drove up in?" ('95 corolla with close to 200k miles and peeling paint on the hood) Of all the furniture in our very unmustachian-sized home, we've only purchased about four things brand new.
Here's another funny thing: there's also the "online-only" option (order through the website without access to their showroom) for $3k, OR $300 down and $97/month for 3 years (total cost: around $3800). So.....people want to save money by joining the club, but can't actually afford it, so they end up spending an extra $800 for the installment plan!?