Shopping

When she can no longer hold in her hankering for the newest and the cutest, Lilly Sessums succumbs, and puts the purchase on layaway.

Lately, she plopped down a payment on a $20 pair of pajamas. She’ll retrieve them in a few weeks, when she has another $15.

Lilly Sessums lives in a strictly cash economy – so let the markets melt.

Let others buy, on credit, a few minutes at a parking meter, a few ounces of coffee and a few more copies of a $4.50 magazine that tells us to keep it Real Simple. Lilly will continue to sock away 25 percent of her money at the NW Preferred Federal Credit Union in Stayton, Ore., her hometown. When she spends, she’ll still do it at Jensen-Kreitzer Family Clothing, a family-owned Stayton fixture.

If Lilly sees something she can’t afford, she heads to the Covered Bridge Cafe and negotiates with the owner, Cari Sessums.

“I ask her for $5. She says, ‘No.’ I ask her for $4. She says, ‘No.’ I ask her for $3. She says, ‘No.’ I ask her for $2. She says, ‘Yes.’ I tell her, ‘I can’t buy anything for $2!’ ” Lilly says.

“She says, ‘Work, then.’ ”

So Lilly will bus and set a few tables and return to Jensen-Kreitzer with a layaway down payment.

Here’s the thing: Lilly is 8, and Cari Sessums is her mother. By word and example, Sessums teaches her daughter to delay gratification and live within her means.“I imagine most younger shoppers these days don’t even know what layaway is,” says Todd Jensen, who owns Jensen-Kreitzer Family Clothing with his wife, Karlene. “They whip out their debit card or credit card and buy it.”

Jensen’s father-in-law bought the store in 1960. Jensen and his wife took over in 1981. They sell home decor, heavy-duty work clothes, nice ladies apparel, greeting cards with tea cups drawn on the front and tea bags tucked inside. “We’re not a store that carries 12 of one thing,” Karlene Jensen says, “so we say, ‘Put it on layaway,’ because it won’t be here when you come back.”

Their terms are generous – put 20 percent down (less if they know you), pay it off in 60 days (longer if they know you).

One of their best layaway customers, the Jensens agree, is a little girl: Lilly.

Oregonian