Focusing on the advantages first, multi-payment purchases makes it easier to buy costly products like cars, PCs and phones when you're on a tight budget. Plus, many electronics shops in Japan offer a zero-interest split payment option for marketing purposes. From a financial perspective, delaying payments allows you to have extra(more) cash in your wallet. Moving on to the disadvantages, apart from the interest expense, purchases by instalments might give a false sense of security. The relatively small amount of monthly payment tempts you to buy more things (...to buy more than you can afford), running up huge debts. Personally, I much prefer paying the full amount at the time of purchase because granma often told me not to borrow or lend money. Some of the changes are to make it more natural, not so much that you are wrong. Ex : "great debt" to "huge debt."