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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- It's a payment plan that keeps you from seeing "post holiday debt," and with the down economy making shoppers think twice before picking up that must have toy, layaway is more popular than ever.

The layaway program at Kmart has been around for decades, and let's you put anything aside, except for food.

All it takes is 10 percent down and a payment every two weeks.

"I would say we had a 20 percent lift in layaway sales from 2010 over 2009," Chuck Winslow, Manager for the Kmart on Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs, said.

The management team at Kmart is expecting the same this year.

Layaway has really picked up in the past three to four years.

The old storage room that used hold all of Kmart's layaway products has now expanded into three stock rooms.

Linda Sewell of Colorado Springs has used layaway programs for more than 10 years and said, "If you don't get it now you won't get it because you always say I'll come back, but it's never here."

An average of 1,000 people walk through the Kmart on Nevada every day, but come Black Friday that number multiplies by seven, turning it into the busiest day of the year and turning a one-person line into a long nightmare.

So, the key to layaway is to buy sooner rather than later.

"Since I'm unemployed and collecting unemployment this is a way I can afford to get this," Lynnel Reeves, a Colorado Springs shopper, said.