As a youth, my "record haunt" was a store in a nearby (nearby the street where I lived) mall. The Wade Hampton Mall consisted of a large Winn-Dixie grocery store, a Walgreens Drugstore, and a variety of small shops on two levels. One of those shops was Carole's Records.
It was at Carole's that I found my first "store purchase at full price" LP...."To Kill A Mockingbird" for $3.79, plus tax...which, IIRC, made the purchase $3.91 (3 cents on each dollar...plus 2 cents on anything that was more than 3/4 of a dollar. Yes...the tax depended upon the percentage of a dollar you were paying.)
I paid for the LP on layaway. I did many transactions with Mr. Green of Carole's on layway in those early years. My weekly allowance did not cover the amount of an LP...and I needed money for movies, too. So, it was a dollar a week. Fortunately, must-have soundtrack LPs didn't proliferate. After TKAM, I got "The Robe" and "The Egyptian" on special order, followed by layaway payments.
Once I had a summer job, I could buy an LP outright. Mr. Green was always very, very good to me, and he would let me know when something new arrived that he only had a couple of copies of.