Rent-To-Own Bad Idea?

[mclawdawg]

Hi all,

Has anyone here Rent-To-Own appliances or anything that they need while in a Chapter 13? I know this is typically a really dumb decision, but if your fridge goes out and needs replaced it can be an easier option then buying one downright. Just wanted to get anyone's input on this.

Regards,

[mclawdawg]

I know we're not supposed to finance anything unless approved by the trustee, but a lot of these places use your income rather than your credit. Bad idea stay away or a good work around if I can maintain my plan?

[flashoflight]

IMHO absolutely terrible idea.

First, you're probably not allowed to incur debt for anything without trustee approval. Second, adding a payment seriously jeopardizes your ability to complete the plan especially in districts where the trustee is hungry and always attempts to grab every wage increase.

My suggestion is to look for a brand new "landlord" refrigerator paid with cash no credit. No French door or other fancy refrigerators. Landlord means the absolute cheapest new one. If you can't do that, then get a dorm refrigerator to get by and save up cash for the landlord special. All the big box hardware stores and Best Buy have refrigerators including the landlord preferred ones. Do not buy used refrigerators from any source or ANY alleged new refrigerators advertised on Facebook Marketplace. They are scams selling broken refrigerators someone else dumped. Nobody legitimate dealer who has operational refrigerators needs to use Facebook to move inventory especially with the supply chain problems.

[Zombie13]

One place to look for free refrigerators (rare? Probably) is, nextdoor . com. You can join for free, and search for items within your neighborhood and area. As a note: we have two refrigerators we are going to give away on nextdoor when we move, or just leave them here. We have given away a few large furniture items quickly; they have moved fast on nextdoor. (On a side note - the moving tape I use over the last several weeks has stripped away the oils/hydration in my fingertips so, they have split/cracked and are absolutely killin' me as I type! Need bandaids ; lost grip and dexterity as well but I digress).

Oh - also, and this may help you mclawdawg - our compressor fan failed on the fridge; it was replaced, now works fine. Screwdriver, and a replacement fan, is what we needed. You can find a replacement fan online for your make and model. We had an 'error code' on our fridge; I had no clue what it meant, until a tech came to resolve. Yeah I know... 'Google is your friend' or, LMGTFY (Let Me Google That For You) LOL. So, we could have saved about $200 'Googling' the error code, ordering a replacement compressor fan, etc. The fan has a plug similar to a regular 4-conductor computer power cable and plug, if that helps at all. Just plug it in, wait a few hours for the fridge/freezer to return to normal temp, and done.

Hope that helps.