hire purchase
Hire purchase lets you take an item home today and pay for it in instalments, and it becomes fully yours once the final payment lands.
In plain English
Hire purchase lives in the sweet spot between renting and buying. You get to use the item right away, a generator, a car, a fridge, a machine that helps you earn, and you pay it off in steady instalments over months or years.
The clue is in the name. Until that last payment clears, you are hiring, not yet owning, so the seller holds the title, and if payments stop they can take the item back.
When the final instalment lands, ownership passes to you, and it is fully, properly yours. This is a real friend when you need a tool to live or earn but do not have the whole price today.
A tailor can take a ₦300,000 machine on hire purchase and start sewing, and earning, from day one, letting the machine help pay for itself. Just go in with clear eyes on one thing.
Hire purchase almost always costs more than paying cash, because the extra spread across the instalments is the seller charge for waiting on you. So add up every instalment and set the total beside the cash price.
If the gap is small and the item earns for you, lovely. If the gap is wide, it may be sweeter to save for a few months first.
A ₦300,000 sewing machine on hire purchase might be ₦30,000 down plus ₦25,000 a month for a year, ₦330,000 in all. You earn with it from the first day, and it becomes fully yours after the last payment.
Questions people ask
When do I actually own it?
Only after the final instalment. Until then, the seller holds the title.
What if I stop paying?
The seller can take the item back, and you may not recover what you have already paid, so choose instalments you can carry easily.
Is it cheaper than cash?
No, the instalments add up to a bit more than the cash price. Compare the totals, and if the item earns for you, the extra can still be worth it.
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