Other Charges

2018 Cost Savings Initiatives. During the first quarter of 2018, we began execution of multiple cost savings initiatives, including reductions in overhead and supply chain, resulting in pre-tax charges of $7.1 million in severance and other payroll-related costs, $1.9 million in legal and advisory fees, and $1.3 million in lease obligation costs.

Store Consolidation Plan. During the first quarter of 2018, we closed 61 Core U.S. stores and 8 locations in Mexico, resulting in pre-tax charges of $4.6 million, consisting of $3.6 million in lease obligation costs, $0.8 million in disposal of fixed assets, and $0.2 million in other miscellaneous shutdown costs.

Write-down of Capitalized Software. During the first quarter of 2018 we discontinued certain IT software projects and as a result incurred pre-tax charges of $1.9 million, related to the write-down of capitalized assets.

Acceptance Now Store Closures. During the first quarter of 2017, we closed 76 Acceptance Now manned locations and 9 Acceptance Now direct locations, and initiated a plan to close an additional 115 Acceptance Now locations, resulting in pre-tax charges of $5.7 million consisting primarily of rental merchandise losses, disposal of fixed assets, and other miscellaneous labor and shutdown costs. In addition, as a result of the plan to close certain Acceptance Now locations, we recorded a pre-tax impairment charge of $3.9 million to our intangible assets, related to a vendor relationship.

Corporate Cost Rationalization. During the first quarter of 2017, we executed a head count reduction that impacted approximately 6% of our field support center workforce. This resulted in pre-tax charges for severance and other payroll-related costs of approximately $2.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

Activity with respect to other charges for the three months ended March 31, 2018 is summarized in the below table:



(in thousands)	Accrued Charges at December 31, 2017		Charges & Adjustments			Payments			Accrued Charges at March 31, 2018
Cash charges:
Labor reduction costs	$	1,674	$	7,196		$	(1,096	)	$	7,774
Lease obligation costs	2,105		5,029			(1,176		)	5,958
Other miscellaneous	—		137			(137		)	—
Total cash charges	$	3,779	12,362			$	(2,409	)	$	13,732
Non-cash charges:
Rental merchandise gains			(359		)
Asset impairments			2,632
Other⁽¹⁾			2,820
Total other charges			$	17,455

⁽¹⁾ Other primarily includes incremental legal and advisory fees related to our strategic review.