How do you pay for large pieces of furniture?

[Mybobowler]

Incredibly boring topic, but just canvassing opinions.

Desperately need to buy a new sofa and armchair. We were given incredibly shabby old ones when we moved house 18 months ago, and I absolutely hate them. Also want to redecorate the living room, but don't see the point when the furniture is so manky. We have a small amount of savings (£1000ish), and almost no unsecured debt (£160 on a credit card). Should we use our savings, buy cheap but brand new on credit through the retailer (looking at IKEA), or buy decent quality, second hand on a credit card? However we do it, I don't want to spend more than £600-700

Buy second hand if you can’t afford to buy outright. We have a lovely big DFS corner sofa that was £250 from Facebook and barely used. We also have an arm chair that came as a pair with a footstool for £100 from Facebook again barely used because they came as part of a suite and the family didn’t have room for them. If you just don’t like your current sofas you have time to shop around. I would hope that I would never buy furniture on finance and I would always prefer second hand. If you only have £1000 in savings I wouldn’t spend it, that’s easily eaten up if your car breaks down etc.

Definitely agree with the previous post. Our sofa and armchair were £400 on gumtree and are an Italian designer brand we couldn't afford in a million years. Another option maybe is the really stretchy sofa covers you can get online as they are a great way to cover up something that just looks shabby but works fine?

We bought sofas from dfs and paid them off over 4 years. We didn't want to spend our savings and we could afford the monthly payments. Our savings have since come in handy for car repair and replacements.

I’ve had cheap and new before and the quality wasn’t great. My current suite was £125 off eBay, 6 months old and originally cost £4,000 from Frank Knighton! It was immaculate when I bought it and will last years (leather on an oak frame).

Great, thanks everyone! I tend to buy almost everything second hand, and I wasn't sure whether buying sofas was a thrifty step too far. I've just found a couple of promising local FB ads, so hopefully I can get rid of our horrible sofas soon (honestly, they're beyond redemption and not even particularly comfortable!)

Personally, I wouldn't buy secondhand furniture (not like upholstered stuff, fine if you are talking about a kitchen table). I would save up and get something you like that isn't worn and battered already. You could easily get that at IKEA. I'm not a massive IKEA fan, but it did us well when we needed to furnish a house and didn't have much to spend.

I would absolutely go for second-hand rather than get into debt. It may also be worth looking in charity shops which sell furniture - DS bought a stunning sofa and chairs from the British Heart Foundation.

We did the "spread over 3 years" thing. I'd rather pay £30pcm and hold onto my savings than fork out the whole lot in one go then have nothing for if an emergency arose. It's the same amount - no interest - so no incentive to pay in one go.

I recently got a Made.com sofa for £90 from eBay. It had been used in a spare room and is immaculate. I have small children (who have already damaged some of the fabric sigh) so didn't want to buy full price. Otherwise I just tend to shop in ikea or outlets.

In your shoes I would buy second hand.

Also for those considering buying on the finance that retailers offer please be aware that if you miss a single payment you will be liable for the whole amount PLUS interest. The 0% only applies if your payments remain perfect.

2nd hand. My sis got 2 Italian leather sofas for about £200

Either interest free credit from a furniture store, or a zero percent credit card that you pay of by direct debit and make sure irs paid off by the end of the interest free term.

You can sometimes find factory seconds or returns of popular designs e.g. habitat on eBay for a good price.

I once bought a gorgeous Chesterfield sofa on ebay. It would have cost a fortune brand new, but the person selling it hadn't quite measured the space properly and needed to sell quickly, so put a low buy it now price on it.

I kept it for about 5 years and kept good care of it. When I came to sell it several bidders got locked into a bidding war and I made quite a healthy profit on it.

Check out the British heart Foundation. There are some hideous sofas but occasionally you find an absolute gem for a bargain and they are all steam cleaned. I also got our most recent sofas new from SCS and got two sofas for 800 ish. Every sofa before that was second hand though.

I'd just get it on interstate free credit assuming you can manage the repayments.

I've never used finance for furniture, always waited and saved. My worry has always been not having the money 2yrs down the line for repayments.

DFS also have a clearance section on their website, [[https://m.dfs.co.uk/clearance/all-clearance here]]

We've usually paid ours off on credit.

Our current suite is 11 years old now and getting past it , but then it's had fairly heavy use, lots of toddlers jumping on it, people sleeping on it, been spilt on, sicked on, weed on, etc...

Save up for a while and buy it outright?

Second hand. I own very little new furniture but buy expensive pieces. People change their decor and furniture so often these days that there is always a bargain to be had.

I would buy on a 0% interest credit card or use the shop's own interest-free credit offers.

Unless you find exactly what you want on the second hand market, it's a false economy to spend your savings on something that wouldn't be your first choice, just because it's cheap.

You have a very modest amount of savings and I think it would make more financial sense to hang onto them.

Debt is not a terrible thing if it's 0% interest and you can afford the repayments.

We stopped buying new furniture a while ago, and we've just moved into a new house. We're buying everything needed either from gumtree or charity shops. We couldn't afford (or at least didn't want to spend our money on) good quality new furniture - when we bought new it was always IKEA or similar - and this way is so much better. Everything we buy now is solid wood rather than MDF, properly made rather than flatpack. We bought our sofas from a charity shop - they don't look like brand new but they're so much better quality than we'd have bought new that they're still much better, and they were steam cleaned and so spotless (which we found was the only downside to buying sofas off gumtree, that they don't tend to be clean, though obviously you can just steam clean them yourselves!). Charity shops won't work that well for you if you're into a very modern aesthetic - gumtree or similar might be a better bet - because they tend to be old people's stuff, but otherwise we've found them our best bet - you can browse before you buy and all our local ones deliver cheaply, which is also the problem with buying a sofa from gumtree, unless you have access to a van. Environmentally and in terms with what you get for your money I really think it's so much better to buy second hand than to buy cheap.

I wouldn't rule out interest free for sofas, normally I'm very debt adverse but we got two gorgeous sofas from dfs in the sale, interest free at £12 a month, we were confident that even with changes or problems that was still a low monthly amount to manage, they're fab and I paid for the insurance upfront so can get someone out if I stain them or anything

I'm often amazed at people in my local area selling a sofa after 6 months or less "because we changed decor" or "it didnt suit the room". Would definitely investigate second hand.