The festive season is just around the corner, which means it’s time to spruce up your house!
But let’s face it, getting new furniture is not cheap. Even if you can afford it, you are also looking at other holiday expenses like travel, food, and new clothes. Clearly, anything that can be done to spread the costs out will be appreciated.
Luckily for you, there are many ways of getting installment plans on furniture and household appliances. Most large chain stores have their own financing programme, while Maybank also offers Ezypay – which turns purchases into instalment plans without any additional steps.
Courts
Courts has always been the winner when it comes to slashing prices during festive seasons. Remember those catalogues you can’t resist going through and making circles around your favourite items?
Their FlexiCredit instalments plans are very generous. You can get pretty much any home or lifestyle products you want at monthly repayment rate, with a term charge of 1.25% monthly. This is actually the highest interest rate available among the major competing stores.
The tradeoff is that Courts offers purchases with zero deposit and also allows you to stretch your monthly payments to up to 60 months. In theory, this means that purchases from Courts could have the lowest monthly payments; albeit at the expense of paying more in the long run.
Harvey Norman
Harvey Norman’s Easy Payment Plan is only available through the online store. This exclusive instalment option provides a financing tenure of up to 12 months with no added charges. It literally just spreads your bill over a longer payment period.
There are no additional fees or charges either. All that’s required to qualify is a single receipt of at least RM1,000.
You should take note that the Harvey Norman EPP only accepts Maybank and Citibank credit cards (both Visa and Mastercard).
IKEA
You can’t leave out IKEA when it comes to shopping for household items. They have every household item you can possibly think of, making it the perfect one-stop location for your Raya shopping.
Best of all, they also offer instalment plans for bulk purchases. There are two plans you can opt for:
- Stretch your payments up to six months if your purchase is RM500 and above.
- Stretch your payments up to 12 or 24 months if your purchase is RM1,000 and more.
All of these plans feature 0% interest, and all you need to do to qualify is to inform the checkout counter that you would like to opt for the instalment plan. It’s that simple.
The flexible payment options are reserved for CIMB, Citibank, RHB Bank, Maybank, and Maybank American Express credit card holders.
Singer
Singer provides the widest available range of instalment plans on this list. Accepting credit cards from 11 different banks, including Maybank, Alliance Bank, HSBC, OCBC, Bank Rakyat, and Bank Islam.
Financing options also range from between three and 48 months. The tenure depends on the value of the purchase and which bank you’re using. Depending on your credit card issuer, your minimum purchase to qualify ranges from between RM500 and RM1,000.
There is no deposit necessary, and Singer is offering these instalment plans at 0% interest.
However, Singer also has the most complicated application process for its easy payment scheme. Requiring customers to provide their latest pay slips and utility bills in order to be approved.
Maybank Ezypay
Maybe you’ve seen the perfect display cabinet to complete the living room; but it’s not in a large store. Instead, it’s a much smaller furniture shop. In this case, Maybank has your back.
The Maybank Ezypay system allows you to create an ad hoc installment plan with any of its participating merchants. These plans have 0% interest and offer tenures of up to 36 months; all without any extra effort from you.
It applies to all Maybank Visa, Mastercard, and American Express credit card holders.
Maybank has a huge list of partners, and it might be easier for you to just ask the store in question if they are part of the programme.
Just remember…
Installment plans are not discounts, no matter if a majority of them offer no down payment and zero interest. You’re still spending the money; so don’t go overboard. Budget carefully and stick to it.
Only choose this path if you’re confident that you can stick to the payment schedule. Otherwise, it’s more financially prudent to skip buying new furniture and save up for next Raya instead. It might not be the most festive option, but it will give you long term peace of mind.
