<p>We were talking about this on the class of 2015 thread, and I wondered what you parents thought about parents buying their kid (meaning teenager who recently got their license, not like college grad) a car. A lot of my friends and I are 16/turning 16 soon, which means driving independently, and I know a few parents that bought their kids a car, some are making their kids pay for one if they want it, and others are making their kids pay for part of it. Mine say that if I want one, I’ll have to pay for it, gas, parking spot if I want to drive to school, everything.</p>
<p>What did you all do for your kid(s)/what will you do when the time comes? I understand my parents position on this, but it’s just frustrating that some kids get a free car of their own. I get that in the long run it’ll make me appreciate it more though, so I’m not complaining (too much ;)).</p>
<p>We didn’t help our older buy a car (one that was 15 years old) until her third year of graduate school. We helped the younger one at 16 (also 15 years old) because there was no way she could accomplish her schedule without one. </p>
<p>It’s certainly not a “right”, if that’s what you mean.</p>
<p>Some people have more material goods and wealth than other people do and some feel differently about what they want to provide for their kids at various times. Parents may feel that one of their children have the maturity to handle a car at 16 while another child might not have that maturity.</p>
<p>In general, it’s easier to be happy if you are content with what you have instead of wanting what others have.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong; I completely respect my parents on this and understand that they want me to work hard to earn it, not just get it from them, I was just wondering what your opinions were, if people should buy their kids a car, or if kids should work for them.</p>
<p>We have the means to buy our children cars and chose not to. A car, like a license, is a privilege, not a something they’re due. We feel if we give them everything as teens, they won’t learn to work for things. Our almost 20 year old and almost 18 year old are not thrilled with this but too bad. If they don’t like it, they can get a job and buy their own. They’re getting a free college education so it’s not like we’re being too hard on them.</p>
<p>Pretty much the same happened here - allowing D to drive my Corolla freed up our schedule so much I could not figure out what to do with all this spare time! Kidding, of course.</p>
<p>Every time I try to count other people’s money, I end up unhappier for the effort.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure this applies to cars, too.</p>
<p>But, for what it’s worth, my wife and I have two teen drivers, and we are just now expanding the family fleet from two to three cars–mostly because we want a car, and with this many drivers, the older car is worth more to us as a third family vehicle than it would be in trade.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood buying a new car for a new driver. New drivers drive cars into stuff. Obviously, experienced drivers do, too, but new drivers do it more frequently.</p>
<p>We made the deal with our daughter (and now with our son) that if they got a full ride to college, we would buy them a car as a high school graduation present. Darn! Wouldn’t you know, our daughter achieved this! It was certainly cheaper than college tuition! Our son is not in quite the same academic shape and may get full TUITION to the school of his choice, but not a full RIDE, and he has pretty much resigned himself to no “free” car. Both kids were in different high schools, but MOST peers had their own cars as soon as they turned 16, so they were already “deprived” in their eyes!</p>
<p>We live in a place where there is no public transportation. Having our kids drive was a real time saver for us…and them. When DS got his license, we bought him an OLD (12 years old) Volvo that hat lots of miles on it. It was not all that expensive. He drove it for over two years and we then donated it to charity, when DD got her license, we were ready to purchase a new car for one of the parents…and did. She drove our old van until she went to college. </p>
<p>Our kids were responsible for putting gas in the car. Since they would have been on our insurance anyway, we paid for that. </p>
<p>I will say…if we lived someplace where public transportation was available, I don’t think we would have purchased that third car.</p>
<p>ETA…our daughter got a fabulous scholarship to her second choice college. We told her we would buy her a brand new car…and buy a condo in the college town if she chose that school. She declined the offer and went to her first choice college. The car and condo would have cost us significantly less money!</p>
<p>They had an old family car to drive to/from school and activities because it made my life easier. When the oldest left for college, the car got passed down. “Help” with a car once one was needed for clinicals had everything to do with choosing an affordable college.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to do much of anything where I live without a car. Zero public transportation and I live on one edge of my very large school district while most of my friends live on the other side. I split the cost of my first car with my parents and grandparents but I’ve worked for a long time. I got it when I was 16-ish but didn’t get my license until 17. My friends without jobs generally didn’t get cars until later.</p>
<p>I only hit something once. I slid off the freeway in a freak ice storm. I was only going like 15 so I was fine but car was totaled. I bought my car completely on my own after that (at 20) and will be making my last payment in about a month! I’ll be FREE!</p>
<p>I bought my own car at 16 from savings of years of working (really). It would have never entered my mind that my parents would buy me a car (and they wouldn’t have and they didn’t).</p>
<p>I didn’t buy my kids cars when they turned 16 either even though I have the means to do so.
They didn’t need a full time car. Very few HS kids do actually ‘need’ one full time.
Buying a 16 y/o a ‘new’ car is generally a very poor investment. The car depreciates too rapidly and given that the likelihood of them getting in some kind of fender bender or hitting a parking post or something is high due to inexperience, it’d be even more costly.
There’s a very good chance that within a year or two they’ll head off to college somewhere and not bring the car with them which means it sits in the way in the garage or driveway or exposed on the street, all the while depreciating and being subjected to the elements and potential vandalism, theft, etc.
It’s a good lesson for the person to realize that just because some other kid they know is handed one, it’s not a reason one s/b handed to the them. There’ll always be other people handed things and it’s best to learn to not be envious of such situations but rather, take pride in what you yourself earn through your own work.
This is a good time for most parents to save every penny they can since they’ll likely have an outlay coming up quickly in college costs if they decide to fund college for their kid.</p>
<p>Most people who have never owned a car don’t know just how expensive they are with the purchase price and subsequent depreciation (most 16 y/o don’t even think about depreciation), maintenance, gas, insurance, accident repairs (deductible), etc.</p>
<p>I think you’re better off getting your license and then, if possible, borrowing a car from your parents when you need it to gain experience driving and doing so on a car that’s not brand new so people don’t get too worked up the first time you put a dent or scratch in it. Then you can go off to college in a year or two and then when the time’s right, consider buying yourself a car.</p>
<p>We have 3 cars, one of which we don’t use a whole lot because my dad insists he’s going to sell it, but I’ve been trying to get them to let me just have it…they’re fine with letting me use it to drive around to wherever since they have one car for each of them to use, so it’s not any sort of burden, but they insist that I can’t actually have it to call my own, because I need to work to buy one to make me appreciate it all. Since it’s not technically mine, but I can pretty much use it whenever, I don’t think I’m going to buy a car until after college, if I need one though.</p>
<p>Good advice, GladGradDad, that’s pretty much my parent’s views on it all.</p>
<p>D1 had no car whatsoever (did not even bother to reserve a parking space at school). She didn’t get her license until after junior year, but I bet she only drove to school 2-3 times her senior year when I wasn’t going to work for some reason. We had ONE car, and I used it to go to work.</p>
<p>When that car got up to about 140,000 miles, I bought a replacement (used with about 20,000 miles on it), and the old car became a car D1 could drive when home from college. D2 did not get her license til this past fall (senior year). She does drive the old car (now with about 165,000 miles on it) to school this year. I think it is good for her, as she is not a particularly independent kid, and I think this fosters more independence on her part.</p>
<p>I pay for insurance & repairs, so far no one has had an accident. I also pay for gas for driving to school or jobs, but if they burn gas going to friend’s houses that are far away or someplace else, I expect them to chip in some gas.</p>
<p>Plenty of their friends got licenses at 16 and their own cars, some of them new. My kids knew that with college expenses on the horizon that wasn’t going to happen. They would not trade having a car for having me pay most of their college expenses, that is for sure. I don’t think they would have dreamed of even posting this question.</p>
<p>FYI, D1 is now out of college and lives in a city with good public transportation. She still doesn’t own a car, says it is too expensive and unnecessary where she lives. Guess my kids don’t see a car of any kind as a birthright…</p>
It sounds like you have a good situation - you have a car you can use when you need it but you don’t have to actually pay for it. This means that you can save up any money you earn from working and potentially use that money in different ways - for entertainment costs at college (restaurants, etc.), helping to pay for a study abroad, maybe helping to pay for additional internship costs if applicable, or ultimately, when the timing is right, buying a car.</p>
<p>Some of the kids with cars who actually take them to college then have to pay high parking fees and have them exposed to vandalism/theft even though the car is likely to spend most of its time sitting in the lot because cars really aren’t needed on most campuses unless the student commutes (which changes the whole picture of having a car).</p>
<p>Each family needs to do what is best for them as a family. My kids’ high school is 6 miles from our house and the majority of their friends live on the other side of the school district (about 8 miles from our house). The roads are rural with no sidewalks and very high speed limits so riding a bike is not an option. There is no mass transportation available to them. There are exactly two places that hire 16 year olds within walking distance from both my house and their dad’s house. With 50-50 custody, they go back and forth between our houses every week. Before my daughter drove, I frequently put 20+ miles a day on my car just taking her to the school and picking her up for her activities. It’s 12 miles round trip and I’d drop her off, then go back home, then go get her again so it was two round trips for me to take her. </p>
<p>The kids’ car is not fancy and it is a 2004. It doesn’t have power locks or windows or a fancy stereo system. Sometimes the air conditioning works, sometimes it doesn’t. It was my car in 2008 when I had to replace the engine. I was ready for a new car so I bought myself a new vehicle and saved that one for two years until my D got her license. </p>
<p>The kids driving saved ME so much time, hassle, and gas. Having them be able to run errands for me is heaven. Not having to stop what I’m doing every other hour to drop them off or pick them up is heaven. My deal was that I provide the car and insurance. I also provide one tank of gas because that is enough to get to school and back. Everything over that is on them. The car did enable my daughter to get babysitting jobs. My son is extremely frugal so he doesn’t really need a job at this point, other than mowing his grandpa’s lawn. </p>
<p>When it comes down to it, I got them a car for ME, not for them! It was great to not sit in a parking lot waiting for the marching band buses to return from a competition anymore. It was great to not have a kid sit at the school for 2 hours after their EC ended because they had no way to get home. It was great to call them and ask them to stop at the grocery store for bread or milk or whatever odd ingredient I might realize I didn’t have. I also get more sleep because I don’t have to be ready for work in time to drive anyone to school in the mornings. It’s a win-win.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s really a call only a family can make for itself. Even the family next door may have different needs, so what “everyone else” is doing or not makes no sense to sway the opinion of any other family, or even different kids in the SAME family.</p>
<p>Three of the 5 kids in my family worked for dad making drugstore deliveries, so we got our license right at 16 and went to work for him. We never had our own cars, but had pretty liberal use of the two family cars. With 5 kids, my parents were thrilled not to have to drive as much. My other two siblings had different after-school jobs that didn’t include driving so they took longer to drive, and my brother bought his own junker car with the money he made. He paid all his own expenses. But this was in a small city with no public transportation and a “car culture”. None of us took cars to college.</p>
<p>I live in a city with amazing public transportation options-bus, train, light rail, trolly, ferries, even a monorail. My family spent several years car-free. My two older kids didn’t even drive until they were over 18. But it worked because they went to schools easily accessible by bus, and had jobs they could get to the same way. On rare occasions I would drive them if something came up.</p>
<p>But my youngest goes to a school out of town, and already is involved in so many ECs it’s just not sensible to do it all by bus. We spend a lot of time driving her around. And once she can drive, we’ll probably get her an old but reliable car to free us up at least a little. My son and our nephew are both experts in car repair so we’ll have them take a good look at whatever we get her. To be honest, I’m not thrilled with the idea of her driving on the freeway, which she would need to do. </p>
<p>But really, having a car is not a right, a given, or anything else. It’s a perk. Not long ago I discovered the “life in my old hometown” Facebook page and reading a certain thread I learned that many of my peers’ parents had a single car that the family shared, the kids walked everywhere. My siblings and I were actually outliers in that we all drove and our family had two cars plus the store car.</p>
<p>We bought a 1997 Mazda 626 in 2008 for our daughter to drive 35 miles to her school. She still has it. We paid for the car, expenses, and insurance. Our son got our 1999 Volvo when my husband needed a new car. </p>
<p>We never really wanted to make the kids have jobs to pay for insurance and gas because we wanted them to mostly spend extra time on school. It has seemed to work pretty well.people do lots of different arrangements around here.</p>
<p>Both my kids were given cars they had no interest in driving. My daughter got her grandmother’s 1993 Subaru when Grandma decided to stop driving. Daughter declined to drive it until she was about 19 but has been driving and maintaining it ever since. After I drove the Subaru one winter I decided to buy a used Outback so we gave my 2000 Toyota to my son who similarly had no interest in driving until the spring of his senior year. I think it’s funny that some kids really want to drive but have no car and some kids are handed cars but have zero interest in driving.</p>
<p>We just bought a new-to-us car, freeing up the 2001 with 202,000 miles for D1 to use. </p>
<p>The primary reason for buying another car was that I figure it’s best to hunt for a used car on our schedule instead of in a hurry when a car dies - been there, done that. H and I put 30,000+ miles a year on one car, 20,000+ on the other. The car that’s now used by D is reliable and safe, but it goes through a lot of oil. It will last longer with the fewer miles that D drives.</p>
<p>Others have mentioned the side effect of buying another car: I get more control of my time. I was tired of having to be home 4 afternoons a week for D to get to lessons, rehearsals, groups, etc. Yes, it’s been wonderful since she began driving herself, but I still had to arrange my day to be home to hand over the car. School is only a block away. </p>
<p>We pay for insurance, gas and oil, lots of oil. All of her long trips are music and other EC related. If she were driving much for pleasure, she’d have to buy the gas. I’d still buy the oil. </p>
<p>D knows she is lucky to have access to a car. All of our cars are old and not worth much with no collision coverage. If she crashes, she’ll be without a car again. When D2 gets her license later this year, they’ll have to share. </p>
<p>So, did I buy my kid a car? Sort of. I bought H a car, and bought myself quite a bit of time. Would she buy herself a car with her savings? No, she thinks that would be a waste of money since she will be going to college in a little over a year.</p>
Kidding, of course.</p>