Installment Buying in the United States

Archive Report

Instalment purchases of retail goods in the United States according to the best available estimates, amounted in 1925 to $5,000,000,000. One dollar's worth of merchandise out of every seven sold during the year was purchased on the partial payment plan.

Notwithstanding the substantial increase in the savings of the classes which have taken chief advantage of the instalment plan - the increase in bank savings alone nearly equalling the total of deferred payments outstanding at any one time during 1925 - the rapid growth of this type of buying in the years since the war, and particularly during the last eighteen months, has given considerable concern to economists, bankers and industrialists.

Is the practice of buying on time payments proceeding along sound lines?

Is it a normal ...

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