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Yes! Here’s how and why we accept payment plans.
Looking for all the nitty-gritty details? Check out our earlier blog post about our Payment Plan Options.
Deb: Hope, we often get questions here at Timberdoodle about “How can I afford your curriculum?” “Do you offer payment plans? “Are there any other ways to cut costs?”
We’ve covered how to cut costs in a previous video, but why are people concerned about payment plans? What what is the driving issue here?
Hope: Well, if you think about it, families as a whole don’t have to afford their whole year’s worth of fuel from the get-go. We don’t have to afford all our taxes from the get-go. To have to afford your child’s whole year of school from the get-go is kind of staggering if you’ve not been planning for it since they were babies. If you’ve not been budgeting for it, and especially if you have multiple children, this can feel like a huge hit to your budget to all of a sudden have to afford the whole year’s worth of education for your children.
Deb: Exactly. Because you’ve been paying the taxes on the public school and now all of a sudden you’re going to have to cough up something to teach your own children. This hits particularly hard if you’ve made that transition to homeschooling from the public school fairly recently. So if you’ve been planning for years that this is what you’re going to do you may have socked away the money. But if you’ve suddenly made that decision, it’s going to hurt! So what are some of the options that we have for people?
Hope: Well, we have a couple options. We have a payment plan, basically a loan program, that we work through: Klarna. And we also have PayPal. Do you want to go into the different details?
Deb: Let’s back up a little bit. If you were to send your child to a private school locally, you would be out about $4,500 and that’s here in podunk Shelton. You know, there’s just not much here! You go a little bit further to Olympia and costs go up another $2,000. So obviously even if you choose a private school route it’s going to be expensive.
So now dial it back and look realistically. What are we looking at for a typical curriculum? I’m just air-picking a Kindergarten kit, and it’s about $800. So you have a couple of options. How are you going to afford $800? You’ve got PayPal. Now, these are for qualifying people…
Hope: We’re presuming you as a customer qualify.
Deb: Exactly. So PayPal has a six month, no interest loan. So if you take that curriculum, the $800 curriculum, and do it through PayPal you’ve got six months to pay. It would be about $135 a month, which is a lot more reasonable than the $800 all at once.
But let’s say that doesn’t appeal to you. There is another financing option through Timberdoodle. Now, we are not financing it. That’s not our skill level! We do curriculum. We don’t do financing, but we’ve partnered with a finance company, Klarna, who does do the financing. And they can finance it for whatever you decide. So you’re saying, “I would rather pay this off not in six months, but in a year…”
The problem with Klarna that you need to know and have a heads-up on, is you are going to pay interest on that versus PayPal with no interest. But with Klarna, you can set it up to pay in a year, or you could set it up to pay in eight months or whatever works for your family. So using the same figure, $800 for the kindergarten curriculum, and let’s say you set it up to pay in a year. I don’t know what their interest rate is. They’re going to make that decision based on your credit score, and obviously, I don’t know what that’s going to be. But if you have a great credit score, it could be as low as 5% in which case you’re paying $68 a month – much more doable. But if, say, you don’t have that great of a credit score then their interest rate could be as high as 19%. Which sounds staggering, but is going to be comparable to any credit card. And even at 19% you’re paying $74 a month. Not that big of a difference.
Klarna gives you the freedom to spread this out over a distance or add more curriculum. Obviously, it gets more expensive. But again, this is much more doable than coughing up $1,000 right from the get-go.
That covers what financing Timberdoodle has available. So Hope, are there any other questions?
Hope: I just wanted to let people know, if you’re trying to make the decision between PayPal and Klarna, you can go to our checkout system and select Another Option and try to go see Klarna’s rates. You can go apply and they will tell you, “We don’t have any options for you,” if you don’t qualify. Or if you do qualify, “Here’s what your rate will be.” At that point you can bail out and come back and say “No, I don’t want to do that. I’m going to do PayPal or I want to find some other way to finance this…”
Deb: A garage sale!
Hope: Exactly. Or if you want to go through with it then you just continue on.
Deb: That’s a really good point because you don’t want to get sucked into something where you’re saying, “I can’t afford this or I don’t want that commitment.”
I think that covers what Timberdoodle does. Again, we aren’t financing it. We are going to a professional who finances it and we do what we do best.
