Thanks to Affirm for sponsoring this post! I was paid for my review, but it reflects my genuine opinion.

Affirm Review

Thinking of learning something new, like a musical instrument? For us, the cost of new musical instruments for hobby that may or may not stick with our kids was a bit of a deterrent. Until someone told us about Affirm! I am a frugal person by nature and necessity. Making a large investment all in one month goes against a lot of our set budget. We really felt like it was an investment that we were ready to commit to, but there wasn’t necessarily wiggle room in our budget to get started. Thankfully, Affirm is an accepted form of payment at stores online including Reverb where we eventually found our new instruments. It is also a transparent payment system so that you can see right off the bat exactly how much you will pay every month and with the interest rates are. It is laid out in clear terms that make using it simple, straightforward, easy to use, and easy to work into a budget. Using Affirm for online purchases makes using credit to buy a big ticket item not so scary because you know the terms upfront with no surprise fees or hidden costs.

Here is some history as to how I got to the idea of buying new instruments for our family. Spring break is now over, so that means one thing for moms: start searching for ways to survive summer. The preview of “what may be” that it is spring break is a great way to get yourself motivated to plan ahead and make summer more enjoyable and productive for everyone. Recently asked my friends on social media what could I do over the summer to keep my kids on the right path and not develop a “summer backslide”. My daughter is a high achieving student and specifically I was nervous what I could do to keep her brain engaged over the summer but offer for something that was fun as well. A friend offered me a solution in the form of a pop-culture reference. He said that he was not familiar with most of the long list of computer programs that other friends suggested, but that most of what he had learned about being a grown-up and a parent came from the TV show The Simpsons. The character Lisa on The Simpsons is also very smart and he suggested that music would be the way to go to keep her brain engaged while having fun, just like Lisa.

Getting three kids started on a musical path is not as easy as it seems. We had a lot of debate over instruments. I played the violin and my husband played trombone, but both were frowned upon as uncool. My five year old son wanted drums and was vetoed immediately. My daughter wanted piano, but not a keyboard and there is no way I was buying a piano on a whim. The baby just doesn’t care but will inevitably be grandfathered into the instruments, so he still needed to be considered. We settled on guitars. Thankfully we had a great selection of affordable options on the website Reverb. There was something for every level of musician and budget. We chose two 3/4 guitars and a full size for us to play with them. The plan is to get a DVD series and learn together.

The process of purchasing using Affirm could not be more simple. You can find a list of stores that accept Affirm as a payment on the Affirm website. Once you have chosen the store you want to shop from click the link to take you there. We chose to purchase our guitars from Reverb.com.

Once you found the items that you wish to purchase make sure to check that they accept Affirm as a form of payment. If they do (on Reverb some did not because they were personal sellers using the site as a third-party) then add to cart and move onto your next step.

In the image above I underlined where it said “as low as $14/a month” In the image above I underlined where it said “as low as $14/month”. Another great feature I wanted to mention is that you can choose the terms of your financing as far as the links of the loan. You can either choose a three-month, six-month, or 12 month payment term. Isn’t that amazing?

When you get to your cart, make sure you choose “Affirm” as your form of payment before you proceed to checkout.

I am sure there was another way to do check out that would’ve made it so that I didn’t have to purchase each item individually, but I did not do it that way. When I was checking out I had to check out with each item and process three separate Affirm loans. It was super easy, so it really didn’t make me feel a need to look for a better way to do (though I am sure there is!).

Affirm makes a (real-time) credit decision each loan and all three went through quickly.

After you’ve been approved you can either choose to enter your financial details for automatic deductions or you can choose to wait to set this up another time through your Affirm account. Review and agree to the terms and click to confirm the loan and you are all set!

Once my husband and I started looking into this genius summer idea, we quickly realized that the cost of this idea adds up fast. Also there was no guarantee that the kids would have more than a passing interest in this idea, so throwing our budget to the wind over it is daunting. I really dislike the idea of having extra guilt about using a credit card on an idea that may not prove fruitful. This way of paying for the instruments takes the guilt out of buying. Have any of you taken on a new hobby for your kids? How do you jump into the risk of spending a lot of start up money on something that you were not sure they will love?

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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Affirm, Inc. The opinions and text are all mine.