Orlando, Fla. ? Veronica Frink is in mourning.

She is standing in line at Kmart’s layaway desk, pushing a shopping cart piled high with Christmas presents.

For someone who loves Christmas, this should be a happy time. But Frink, 37, isn’t very happy.

Wal-Mart, where she used to do most of her holiday shopping, is phasing out its layaway program and Frink, who uses layaway to buy presents without incurring credit-card debt, is discovering that the number of stores offering layaway is dwindling.

“This is killing me,” says Frink of Winter Park, Fla. “I’m a single parent of four kids. I use layaway all the time.”

The problem is, there aren’t many Americans like her anymore.

In an era of easy credit, the buy-now-and-pay-later philosophy has invaded the culture. Most department stores and national chains have eliminated layaway programs. But when Wal-Mart rang the death knell for its plan this fall – customers can put items on layaway until Nov. 19 but must pay them off by Dec. 8 – it might have signaled the end of an American tradition.

Once popular with high-school girls paying for prom dresses and adults buying appliances, layaway has become unfashionable.

“The idea of using layaway has decreased over time,” says Barton Weitz, executive director of the Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research at the University of Florida. “Credit is more available to a wider group of people than it has been before. And, also, I think people are less willing to wait to get what they want.”

Just as Americans don’t save money for a rainy day, neither do we believe in paying a little at a time and taking home that TV when it’s paid off. We want it now.

Last Christmas, when retail consultant Britt Beemer surveyed consumers, he discovered that only 5 percent used layaway. Five years earlier, 12 percent said they used layaway.