Is layaway making a comeback—or has it simply been rebranded as “buy now, pay later”? In this episode of Is This Really a Thing?, Dean Paul Jarley sits down with Jim Adamczyk, Chief Strategy Officer at FAIRWINDS, to unpack the surprising history (and psychology) of delayed payments. From Christmas shopping in the 1970s to today’s Klarna and Affirm apps, they explore why consumers keep returning to installment plans, what it means for financial health, and whether AI could reshape how we manage spending and debt.
Featured Guests
Jim Adamczyk - Chief Strategy Officer, FAIRWINDS
Episode Transcription
Paul Jarley: If you're as old as I am, you know, things come back around. Today, we're going to talk about an old classic: layaway. Is it back? Is it hiding under a different name? Should you really put your lunch on layaway? Or buy now, pay later. To help me figure this out, I'm joined in this episode by Jim Adamczyk. Jim is a UCF alum, a member of our College of Business Hall of Fame and is the current Chief Strategy Officer at FAIRWINDS. We recorded this podcast live in front of 100-plus students in The EXCHANGE, and we're bringing it to you now. Listen in.
This show is all about separating hype from fundamental change. I'm Paul Jarley, Dean of the College of Business here at UCF. I've got lots of questions. To get answers, I'm talking to people with interesting insights into the future of business. Have you ever wondered, Is This Really a Thing? Onto our show.
So when I was a kid, my mother spent half of her annual income on Christmas. I'm not kidding. We grew up with relatively modest means, and so she would start shopping in June for Christmas. And the family didn't have a huge amount of money, so she would buy things on what was called layaway. Basically, you went in and you picked out your item and you gave it to the store and you promised to pay for it before you would pick it up and you had to agree to a schedule. And I was driving somewhere a couple of weeks ago and I was listening to the radio and I think it was Burlington Coat Factory was talking about their layaway program. Literally, I hadn't heard about layaway in probably 40 years. And so today Jim and I are going to talk about layaway, what it was, how it differs from Buy Now Pay Later, or rent to own things that many of you might see, why it's on the comeback and what might replace it after that. So thanks for joining us today, Jim.
Jim Adamczyk: Always happy to be here.
Paul Jarley: What is layaway? Had you ever experienced layaway?
Jim Adamczyk: When I was in high school, I was dating somebody and I remember there was a Montgomery Ward in Altamonte Springs and I put a present on layaway. And by the time I got the layaway, I was no longer with the person anymore, so my first experience was: layaway is not great.
Paul Jarley: Just so you understand kind of the world we're living in at that time, people didn't have credit cards, people didn't have debit cards.
Jim Adamczyk: The main way to pay for it was cash. You took cash out and you went to the store and buy it, but if you didn't have the cash, your primary means of credit was layaway. And it's not really credit in the sense that you don't have the item, so you're kind of saving each month. It's like a savings plan to end up eventually buying something. It's almost like delayed gratification in a world of instant gratification today.
Paul Jarley: Right? And if you missed a payment, the retailer put the product back on the shelf.
Jim Adamczyk: And so the retailers had to have an entire inventory management system to keep track of all the different items that were on layaway, the customers that had them on layaway and then the payment plans that were in place to pay for those items as well.
Paul Jarley: And there would be late penalties, right? I think if you -
Jim Adamczyk: Usually you had to put a percent of the item down upfront, 10, 20%, and then if you were late,
