<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">There are really two ways to look at this - either as a discount for paying in advance, or a fee for spreading out your payments. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">(One note - the info you have shared isn't enough to calculate an APR. A rate depends on time, so to figure this as a rate, we would have to know the frequency of the payments - are they monthly? quarterly? some other interval?)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">In his answer, as he mentioned, Robert calculated the difference between the two prices
as a 37% discount for paying in advance. From that viewpoint, we look at it as a percentage of the higher price. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">If we want to think about it as an extra cost for the convenience of spreading out our payments, we would want to calculate it as a percent of the lower figure - $591 / $997 = 59%. So, it's 59% extra if you want to make payments, which is definitely a pretty steep "convenience fee". </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">(Side note, getting back to APR - if, for example, these are monthly payments, and we do want to think of it as an interest rate, it comes out to 177% - 59% * 4 /12)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif">Finally, I'd offer the thought that whether this is a rip-off or not really depends on the value of what they're selling. Is it something worth $1500 and you're getting a big discount for paying up front? Or is it worth $1000 and you're paying a big fee for the convenience of spreading out the cost? For some people, even that big fee might be worth it, if they just had no way to come up with all the money at once.<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default">Finally, my apologies if this is too "lessonish" - I've taught math on and off for years and do have a tendency to be a bit long-winded with my explanations.</div><div class="gmail_default"></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 6:30 PM Robert Heller via Hidden-discuss <<a href="mailto:hidden-discuss@lists.hidden-tech.net">hidden-discuss@lists.hidden-tech.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">At Sat, 22 Aug 2020 19:40:21 +0000 (UTC) Marcia Yudkin <<a href="mailto:yudkinyudkin@yahoo.com" target="_blank">yudkinyudkin@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> <br>
> I saw a course costing $997 if you paid all at once also having a payment<br>
> plan of 4 payments of $397 each. <br>
> <br>
> Can someone help me translate those numbers into a monthly interest rate,<br>
> like an APR?<br>
<br>
It would not normally be stated as a monthly interest rate, but rather as a<br>
pre-paid ("cash") discount. In this case, about %37 off if paid in full up<br>
front.<br>
<br>
397*4 = 1588<br>
1588-997 = 591<br>
591/1588 = .37216 == 37%<br>
<br>
> <br>
> Thanks so much! This seems pretty outrageous, and I'd like to be able to<br>
> quantify just how outrageous.<br>
> <br>
> Marcia Yudkin<br>
> Goshen<br>
> <a href="http://www.yudkin.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.yudkin.com</a> <br>
> <br>
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