1. 1920’s Economic Boom New Appliances and New Debt
5.2.6 Recognize how Americans used credit/installment plans to purchase consumer goods in the 1920's
(i.e., vacuum cleaners, washing machines, radios, and other home appliances).

2. Laundry Laundry with tub and washboard Memory Narrative
To buy this new time saving machine, you needed cash up front, or credit.

3. Types of credit
Look at the picture of an advertisement that appeared in the 1920’s.
Do you think it is advertising a layaway plan or an installment plan?
What evidence do you see?
Installment plan
You buy the item and make monthly payments until paid off. There is usually a down payment required.
Layaway Plan
You pay monthly payments until paid off, then you take it home.

4. Income
The average American made $1,500 a year in 1920, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
$ conductor monthly pay
$32.90 a week for working at coal mining company

5. What to buy?
To make these decisions Americans had to analyze what they needed and what they wanted.
What do you need?
What do you want?
What happens if you spend too much?

6. Refrigerators From an icebox to a refrigerator.
Technology made life easier at home.
No more buying ice, refrigerators used electricity to keep food cold.
How do you think a family paid $395 for a new refrigerator?
Save up $395, or buy on credit

7. Automobile 1904 Cadillac 1922 Lincoln Town Car
Most Famous…. Ford’s Model T
These cars changed how things were produced in factories….. And changed the way American traveled.
Connected the country like never before.
But… who can afford them? How do they pay for them?

8. Installments
Buying a car, meant signing a contract promising to make payments until it was paid off.
This debt was not popular until the 1920’s. Car buying changed how Americans felt about owing other people money.

9. Types of Debt Layaway Installment Plan Running Tab Store Credit
In the 1920’s people had a booming economy. That lead many Americans to buy radios, vacuum cleaners and other appliances on credit.