Down payment RBS Citizen Bank?

[adamvk]

I'm looking at buying a Retina Macbook Pro. I've been approved for $4000, but so far all I see is monthly payments. Is it possible to put half of it down and finance the rest? I have the money, I just want to build up some credit. If anyone knows, please let me know! Thanks.

To clarify, this is the RBS Citizen Plan directly through Apple via the education discount.

 

[r0k]

I'm looking at buying a Retina Macbook Pro. I've been approved for $4000, but so far all I see is monthly payments. Is it possible to put half of it down and finance the rest? I have the money, I just want to build up some credit. If anyone knows, please let me know! Thanks.

To clarify, this is the RBS Citizen Plan directly through Apple via the education discount.

You only finance what you need to finance. If you walk in with $3900, the balance ($100) gets financed. The word "down payment" makes it sound like you are giving the money to the bank who in turn gives it to Apple when in reality, down payment means you pay what you can and finance the rest. You are only charged interest on the amount you finance. Of course you should read ALL the documents from RBS carefully to make sure they aren't charging some outlandish interest rate (like 29%) and make sure there aren't any "traps" like penalties for paying early or outrageous fees or interest rate increases for paying late.

 

[adamvk]

You only finance what you need to finance. If you walk in with $3900, the balance ($100) gets financed. The word "down payment" makes it sound like you are giving the money to the bank who in turn gives it to Apple when in reality, down payment means you pay what you can and finance the rest. You are only charged interest on the amount you finance. Of course you should read ALL the documents from RBS carefully to make sure they aren't charging some outlandish interest rate (like 29%) and make sure there aren't any "traps" like penalties for paying early or outrageous fees or interest rate increases for paying late.

Well I'm aware that's how it normally works, but I don't see anywhere on the RBS site to put a downpayment...Hmm...

Yea, the interest rate is 11.99% over 48 months. Not terrible. I plan on paying it back in much less time than that, however.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Is there an early payback charge/fee? If that's not illegal now, it should be. I actually had a loan that charged an early payoff fee. WTF!

 

[r0k]

Well I'm aware that's how it normally works, but I don't see anywhere on the RBS site to put a downpayment...Hmm...

Yea, the interest rate is 11.99% over 48 months. Not terrible. I plan on paying it back in much less time than that, however.

They don't collect the downpayment so it doesn't appear on their web site. You are getting what is called an "unsecured" loan which means they aren't going to "repossess" your computer if you don't pay. Instead, they would send collection agencies after you and eventually sue you if you don't pay. You merely finance the portion you weren't able to come up with at the time of purchase.

The only time the bank wants to deal with down payment information is for things like cars and houses where you are bringing cash to the transaction so they know the item is worth more than what they are lending you so they can get enough out of it to recover their money if they ever repossess the item. Computers are not expensive enough for the banks to care about how much "equity" you have. At least not yet.

 

[adamvk]

Ok, well thanks for the help everyone!

I bought a base retina w/ 16GB of ram and the 2.6GHZ cpu, along with Applecare. ~$2600, ~$3300 after interest.

I'm ending up with $70 a month, which I don't consider bad. I should be able to get a grand or so from my current Mac, so that's 14 months right there.