http://tags.library.upenn.edu/tag/finance+nytimes PennTags Feed http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/24139 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/24139 <div class="timestamp">February 2, 2008</div> <div class="kicker">About New York</div> <h1> For Just a Few Dollars, a Big TV and Years of Debt </h1> <div class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/jim_dwyer/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Jim Dwyer">JIM DWYER</a></div> <p>First thing Friday morning, before anyone showed up to rent a television for the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/super_bowl/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the Super Bowl.">Super Bowl</a>, Deborah Williams walked in the door of the Rent-A-Center store under the Broadway el in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She was delivering $109 in cash, her February payment for a 27-inch television that she is buying over time. </p> <p>If she does not miss any payments, she will own the television by the summer, for a total of about $900. Such televisions can be bought retail for well under $400, but that would require more money than Deborah Williams can put her hands on at one time. </p> <p>This is a big week in the television rental business. Fliers were slipped under the doors at the Astoria Houses in Queens that urged people to hurry to the Rent-A-Center on Steinway Street so they could have a big new TV for the football game. Among the offers was a 40-inch Bravia, with payments of $47.51 a week. In 117 weeks, the customer would own the set outright, for $5,558. </p>