<p>All our kids got cars early. My son received our Volvo and then bought a new car, an Explorer, at 17. Our oldest daughter got a new car for college…don’t ask…it was a REALLY nice one. Youngest got a REALLY nice car for college. (My first car was a Dodge Dart…used…broke down every week. I didn’t want that to happen to our kids.)</p>
<p>We live in an area ruled by cars. The high school parking lot was ridiculous. But our kids have taken care of their cars and this is our neighborhood where these cars aren’t out of place. When oldest daughter was asked if she wanted to buy a new car or buy out her lease she chose to purchase her car.</p>
<p>We lived in a state where kids could get permits at 14 and both of mine did. S is almost 21, will be a college senior, and though he has a license, he has no car (college is in a rural area, but he is content to stay on campus most of the time). Jobs he had in high school and summers were very close, so I drove him there instead of paying for boys insurance. He has driven very little. D started driving alone as soon as she turned 16. She was only permitted to drive to sports, work, and school. I wanted her to drive since I still had young kids and it was a hassle to be driving her back and forth, wasting gas, and dragging little ones along. She doesn’t own the car and needs permission to use it. We pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance. Now she is leaving for college 8hours away and wants to have the car (9yo Hyundai) so she can drive to sports. I’m inclined to let her take it, but I worry about safety. We have another 9yo Hyundai with very high mileage that I would be willing to give S when he graduates from college next year–if he’d even want it. Kid #3 will be 16 in the fall and has no interest in driving. He walks to school. No sports/job to drive to. I do want him to get a license while he is in high school, but no rush. I would never buy any of my kids a car, but I would let them use ours. Or give them a beater if we were ready for a new car. H and I didn’t own a car until we were married (26&24yo). Cars are moneysuckers and IMO, the longer you put off owning one, the better.</p>
<p>We’ve told our kids since they were in diapers that we would never buy them a car. (Actually–as they aged toward middle school/hs we said we would get them one if they got a full scholarship to college.) (Not much danger there.) None of the kids in my family were ever bought cars, although my dad did pay the first year of a four-year car loan while I was in my last year of undergraduate school. I could see a deal like that coming up some day.</p>
<p>That said, we keep as many cars in the family as we have drivers. I don’t really remember how we did all the driving/carpooling before any of them started to drive, but I absolutely cannot imagine having to shuttle them around now. In fact, my youngest can get his learners permit in a few weeks and I am literally counting the months (~10!) until he can finally drive himself. I am way tired of being a chauffeur.</p>
<p>P.S. I know a lot of this is situational. I grew up in the suburbs of a large city. We got in the car to go everywhere. Now I live in what could be considered a semi-rural area. No public transportation, no sidewalks, really nothing within walking/biking distance anyway.</p>
<p>I bought both of my kids a car when they got their DLs. Both were older model used cars in good condition (I have a friend who owns an auto body shop and he helped us get both). Car was necessary for D who worked at a theme park 25 miles from home for three summers. I drove her the first summer and believe me, that got old fast. S could have survived without a car because his HS is easy walking distance from our house. But with band and other ECs, transportation became a lot easier when he started driving himself.</p>
<p>I also told both kids, the first car is on me, but all subsequent cars are on you, so take good car of your cars.</p>
<p>D has always paid gas, insurance, we helped with repairs. S pays for gas and will start paying insurance this year when he starts getting paid ICW full scholarship.</p>
<p>D’s first year in college, she survived carless but hated it. She will be living off-campus next year and is happily taking her car.</p>
<p>S can’t have a car first year at college, not sure whether he is going to take it after that or not, since his college has a good public transportation system.</p>
<p>Looking back, I’m glad I did it this way. They both got more extensive driving experience with their own cars and learned responsibility and managing money through having their own cars to be responsible for.</p>
<p>I’m currently a high school senior, soon to be a college freshman, and I sort of have a car.
I share my mom’s car, but I have to drive her to the bus stop in the morning so that she can get to work if I want the car for the day. I don’t have to pick her up, though. It becomes sort of a nuisance when I don’t have school, but I am willing to do so because I get to have the car for the rest of the day.</p>
<p>I was not allowed to get my permit until I got a job though, so that I would have enough money to pay for insurance. I pay for my own insurance, gas and half of any repairs or whatnot.</p>
<p>Although next year it would be nice to have a car at school, I do not want to have to buy myself a car, and pay for half of my college tuition and fees.</p>
<p>When I am home, I will have access to the car, but I just won’t be able to have access to “my” car at school.</p>
<p>My mother would NEVER buy me a car, it has always been, “If you don’t need it and you just really want it, buy it yourself.”</p>
<p>MichaelNKat–No, I have not heard any negative comments from other parents. We really enjoy our kids and do alot with them, like take them on scuba diving vacations. It helps that our kids do not give us any problems–seriously, when my oldest was a freshman in hs, she thought about becoming a Nun. So, the “worst” I’ve ever heard is something like, “will you adopt me.”</p>
<p>I’m a little embarassed to admit this, but my child drove 3 blocks to his high school every day. Everyone does this here, even though no student lives over a mile from the school, as we’re a very small suburb. Driving is a status symbol, even if it’s in your dad’s old '98 Camry. Now that he’s in college, he admits that having a car in an urban area that got 11 feet of snow last winter, wouldn’t be practical.</p>
<p>My X bought my D a two year old BMW with about 12K miles on it. Having a car in HS is helpful as we dont have buses. I think he has told her she can have it at college. She doesnt really need it there but it does make it easier for her to come at breaks. I am hoping to convince her to leave it home during the winter.</p>
<p>Our kids have the older cars. We live in an area without public transportation and kids usually take the yellow school bus to school freshman and sophomore years and then drive junior and senior years. My daughter will be moving to NYC in August so her car will be passed down to our 16 year old, who is going to have to learn to drive a stick. I don’t see the point in giving the kids the good cars. I started off with a '62 bug and learned how to change tires, oil and how to use duct tape. Our oldest son has a 6+ hour drive to his college and his having his own car there is really helpful.</p>
<p>I got the family mini-van when I turned 16, my brother also got the used family car when he turned 16 5 years later. After about 15 months, I got my dad’s (then) 3 year old Chevy Cavalier convertible. My brother got a new car (it was used model) after crashing his car. In December of 2008, after driving my little red convertible for almost 9 years, and adding close to 120,000 miles, I suffered a minor crash in it, and the insurance company totaled it. As an early medical school graduation gift, my parents bought me a used 2008 Pontiac Grand Prix. </p>
<p>So, that’s a total of 5 cars that my parents have given me and my brother. But in large part, the cost of the car was a steal compared to the cost of convenience for my parents by us being able to drive ourselves to our own activities (or when I was in HS driving my brother to his events). It made life a lot easier.</p>
<p>They’ve always paid for our auto insurance (though for me that’s ending this year when the current coverage ends…now that I’m a doctor and all). Gas has largely been paid for on my own, but when I happen to be back in my hometown, occasionally I’ll get slipped a $20, or will be asked to gas up my parents vehicles with the payoff I get to gas up my own with their credit card. That was certainly a frequent arrangement when I was in HS. (And $20 doesn’t go near as far as it used to! The summer after I turned 16, I remember gas getting down to $0.87 a gallon…that was amazing!)</p>
<p>Again, in the end, it’s been all about convenience for my parents. My brother and I went to the same college a 3 hour drive from home, so having our own vehicles then made it more likely we would come home for a weekend on occasion. Being in medical school, I don’t think I could have made it without a car, and I think that would be the case for medical students most everywhere except perhaps NYC - the variety of clinical locations and odd hours at which students/residents have to report really limits the use of public transport (I was looking at doing residency in Salt Lake City and even though the University Hospitals are right off the TRAX station, the schedules of the service wouldn’t have been good enough to get me to work on time consistently - same thing in Dallas with UT-Southwestern).</p>
<p>We have a third car that 18-year-old HS senior uses. We pay everything. She did drive it back and forth to school (35 miles from home), which saved me many miles on the road. </p>
<p>It is a 1997 Mazda 626 with fewer miles than either of our other cars and we paid $3000 for it. She will not take it to college. Insurance is cheap because it’s old and we only carry liability.</p>
<p>Oh, and she won a nice merit scholarship, so I consider that she is paying her tuition, but we will pay most everything else. Her work earned her the scholarship, which she accepted rather than being full pay at the University of Chicago–her true first choice.</p>
<p>My D is 17 and still has her permit, with no definite plans to get her license, but I did sign her up for the state mandated 5 hour course in July. She has 2 PT jobs and many school and outside commitments but she just doesn’t like to drive! She will be attending college in Cleveland and I seem to be the only one who actually listened when the administration made “firm suggestions” that students not bring cars to school with them. There is 1 small parking lot for the kids, but it fills up quickly and if you don’t get there in time, it’s the street, and ticketing is a full time activity! Despite all of this, she has found other new students in the Facebook group who are insisting that “they couldn’t be trapped without their car”!!. I can’t imagine what insurance must cost for a student’s car, parked outside, on the streets, in a city!! Add that to the tickets and that could really ad up quickly. I’ll be driving her to and from work this summer and will be the one making the 4.5 hour trek to college and back (I really,really, dread the wintertime, driving on open highways along 2 of the Great Lakes!).</p>
<p>I guess I am going to have to say that we spoiled our one and only. He received a new car (Honda Civic) at the end of junior year in high school. We paid for half and his grandmother paid for half. We did not set out to buy a new car, but I wanted one that had every airbag invented, and the used cars that had all 3 sets of airbags actually cost more money than the new Honda. We pay for upkeep and insurance and our son pays for the gas. It was a reward for a job well done all throughout his years in school. We had never given him anything as a reward for the good report cards, so this was a big surprise to him. His efforts in school earned him a full tuition scholarship, which saved us over $80,000. We do pay for his room and board in college. He has had a job at college almost as soon as he started and he pays for anything he wants, plus an increasing amount of what he needs.</p>
<p>He does need the car to travel to his summer internships (last summer and this summer). Although he has the car at school, he usually does not need it there, but there have been a few times when he did.</p>
<p>If our son ever acted spoiled or entitled, we would not have bought the car. He is respectful, kind, hardworking and an overall joy to parent. </p>
<p>Some background history ~ my husband bought his own first car while in college with money saved from jobs. My parents bought me a new car my junior year in college since I needed it for my education classes which required me to travel to area schools. Both of us had our educations paid for in full by our parents, which was a tremendous gift as we started our married lives at the tender ages of 21 and 22.</p>
<p>kate43,
If you need a car, buy one. What others have or not will not help you. Everybody in a different situation. We bought our D a car and paying all expences. However, we both employed, we have one dependant (D), we do not pay tuition (Merit $$), we paid only small portion of R&B because of D’s Merit $$ this year, we did not even pay full tuition at her private HS because of Merit Scholarship at HS. In addition, whenever we ask her to contribute to some expenses, she always does because she works and has some $$. </p>
<p>All of the above is different from family to family, I do not see any reason for advice / comparison in regard to financial situation, which car is part of.</p>
<p>DS didn’t get a license until he was 20. Never needed a car at college (suburban) and while he interned sophomore year. Never needed a car for a commute from home to job 25 miles away during junior summer (commuter bus). Really doesn’t need a car for his job, which is less than a mile from his apartment, and stores are only 7 blocks or less, and roommates have cars. Just to get a license in another state and registering a car have cost him close to $400 plus insurance. Not a expense he really wants to pay but this time necessary.</p>
<p>We were full pay, DS is an engineer and assumed responsibility of the loans we took for his education.</p>
<p>soph son has a car but we don’t allow him to take it to school. In high school he had my old mini-van and later that was replaced by a used car that was split between his grandparents and the sale of the mini-van. The car is in our name and we pay the car insurance. When he is home he is required to have a job and pay for his own gas. He is also asked to drive his sibling when needed. A car at college would be nice but he admits he doesn’t need it and is actually happy to not have the respondsibility. Many of his friends have cars this year.
In our town it is common for a high schooler to have some sort of a car to drive. For some it is a new luxury car or Mom’s 2 yr old BMW for others it is Mom’s old beat up mini-van. I had to go out to the high school this week and I could not find a single empty parking space.
Oldest D has had a car on and off since age 16. She has not taken the traditional path through 4 yrs of college. Our arrangement is that if she is in school we will pay for car expenses. If not it is on her. Her present car was jointly purchased with money she made supplemented by us so she could get something reliable and safe. Since she is now back in school we pay insurance and a small weekly gas allowance.
We don’t know yet what we will do with child 3. She is going to go to a high school that is a 20 minute drive each way. I might be ready for her to have her own transportation by the time she is 16.</p>
<p>My 17 year old DD shares a car with me. My office is less than 3 miles from our home so my DH drops me off on his way to work and either he or my DD pick me up in the afternoon. Sometimes I bring my tennis shoes and walk home and get my exercise for the day!</p>
<p>DD has to take her younger sister to school and also drives the carpool for younger DD and friend one day a week to the barn where they ride their horses. In the evenings DD uses my car for all of her rehearsals, lessons or performances as we have DH’s car at night if needed. It has worked well for us doing it this way.</p>
<p>This may be a late reply, but I think the area of the country you live in dictates whether the bulk of HS or college kids have their own cars. As a Southern California parent, my three kids did get cars right around their 16th birthdays. Nothing too extravagant, but new so they would be reliable. There is no public transit where we live and we are 12 miles from their public high school. Not driving carpool makes my work life much simpler. As to college, the 2 older ones(at two different UCs) had no car most of their freshman year. I relented and let them take the cars toward the end - provided they had good grades and a safe/legal place to park it. A car is almost a necessity after freshman year since their UCs don’t have on campus housing after the first year - making accessing the campus pretty tough.</p>
<p>2 kids, both got cars (used) when they got their licenses (suburban NYC).
I told them both they would get one car and one computer from us,then they are on their own. Paid for their insurance until rates go down (D now 25,S now 20) D pays all expenses for the car herself now, S does not. D still driving the original car we bought her 7 yrs ago,and it was used then…Hyundai Elantra…no major problems!
D went to school 2,000 miles from home didnt take car until junior year…we paid a boyfriends airfare one way to come and drive with her back to college, that car hasnt been back to NY since! She drives everywhere across the U.S.
S took car down south to college soph year. We drove one way with him for move in and then flew home. He’s since driven back and forth…its about 900 miles.Both have gotten lots of driving experiences. S’s insurance rates dropped somewhat this year and hopefully will continue to.We’ll cover him until they do. His car also hasnt needed much repair work (was a used Jeep bought from his aunt).
Both kids got merit scholarships for undergrad…S’s is large enough all expenses are paid plus $$ in the bank.It made buying the cars more palatable.
S’s scholarships even included a computer so we never had to buy that original one but we recently gave him the $$ to upgrade to a Mac…
Kids attended a suburban public HS with such ritzy kids that they got new Mustangs,Hummers,BMW’s etc .The student parking lot was amazing compared to the teachers lot.</p>