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<p>Well, you’re right, that is a different story.</p>
<p>To me the most valuable of the the three has been the “crappy job.” You know, the one they despise, which gives you the opportunity to say “that’s why getting a good education and doing well is so important, so you won’t have to do a job you hate- because you’ll have options.”</p>
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<p>I have known or known of some people who were unmotivated in high school, but got a lot more motivated after one or several gap years working in an entry level high school graduate job or enlisted military service. The usual path for them involved starting at a community college, doing well there, and then transferring to a four year university, although one of the enlisted military servicemembers eventually entered that branch’s academy to become an officer. However, not all people need a “crappy job” to become motivated.</p>
<p>@PG, re #373: It’s not that. I know a friend who lives in a neighborhood where most of their neighbors would ‘outsourc’ their lawn care to local businesses (people in many other neighborhoods cut their lawn themselves). My friend did his own lawn for a couple of years when they first moved in the neighborhood but eventually they gave up. Why? Their lawn always looked sluggish, a visible deviation lying side by side with neighbors’ lawns. This is not a super affluent neighborhood and they can afford it as their neighbors can but eventually felt it’s “inappropriate” to not go with the flow. </p>
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Yup, my parents were millionaires. My brother and I shared a station wagon with 200,000 miles on it. The only reason we had a car at all was that we needed it to get to our prep school. My first apartment was a 3rd floor walkup studio with slanted floors and no shower. I have fond memories of both the car and the apartment.</p>
<p>Crappy doesn’t have to mean unsafe. A one bedroom with a Goodwill couch in a reasonably safe neighborhood or a used Subaru with 100,000 miles qualifies. We always had both insurance and AAA. </p>
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<p>Hmmm, the neighborhoods around here where uniformity in front lawns is “enforced” are the ones with homeowner associations that contract with lawn care companies to take care of all of the front lawns (of course, that is where some of the homeowner association fees go).</p>
<p>No, I’m not going to “let” my kid live in a dangerous area with an unsafe car. I never did either. </p>
<p>my kids both chose to live in “gentrifying” areas and some mildly sketchy areas. I didn’t get a vote.</p>
<p>Lol, when I was young I couldn’t even afford the crappy car. I had to buy my own clothes in high school, so my part time money mostly went to that and college savings. I couldn’t afford a car in college because I had to work to go to school. I bought my first car after I graduated and got my first job. I bought a very simple but NEW car, and I cherished that car. It had a stick shift and was fun to drive.</p>
<p>S2 has never had his own car. (S1 still doesn’t drive.) He borrows ours as needed. S2 knows that after he graduates, he’ll be buying a used one or taking the Metro because he’s not going to have $$ for a new vehicle. </p>
<p>S1 and DIL are living in college student type housing these days because Silicon Valley rents are insane and they are trying to save $$ for a house (though they do not expect to buy in CA). No granite countertops, A/C, washer/dryer.</p>
<p>My first car was a 1969 Impala, which my folks bought from a neighbor for $50. Dad got recapped tires, tuned it up, and that was that. We called it “The Tank” because it was Army green, had a 350 engine and was impervious to mailboxes and other hazards (as my brother learned). I was not allowed to take it to college. Got my next car (used 1977 Chevette) in 1984, after I was married. DH’s first car was a new Mazda GLC, which he bought after graduation. I loaned him the $500 downpayment til he had gotten a couple of paychecks under his belt.</p>
<p>One of the messages we communicated repeatedly to our kids growing up was that we chose to live frugally so they would have options for college and we could be mostly debt-free. That applied to the house we live in, the cars we drive, the tech toys we didn’t have, and the expectation that they would help pay for their college with Staffords, etc. We have done better financially than our parents and sibs, and my kids have taken note of how that happened. DH and I were both zero EFC kids who broke the cycle.</p>
<p>My husbands commuter truck is 50 years old.
It won’t die. He has had it for about 25 years.</p>
<p>My family never voiced an opinion re: where I lived (or DH and I, before marriage) since college or during two college summers. Not even the teeny place in the beaten down building with DH (okay, it was a block off the beach and probably the only safe enough part of that city. Shower, no tub. Bugs. But near the beach.) First car was 2 year old Pinto, I commuted 30 miles, no cell phones, and a stretch of hwy you wouldn’t want to be stuck on. When the car broke down, it was near home. And I worked with some car savvy engineers who’d set up my maintenance with their buddies. Today, I wish I knew a youngish guy (or gal) with that sort of advice to give.</p>
<p>D1 is home now. Do I worry about where she will live and what she’ll drive? Sure. I’m trying to get her to take over our 12 year old car- but she works locally, could take a bus, and I could back her up. She can do a rental or zipcar if she needs to. She said she wants the lifestyle she grew up with, which was/is a mix of treats and compromises. You don’t always “need” to be seated in Row 12 Center in the orchestra section. We prefer to rent an apt or house on some vacations. To some extent, your perceptions of your lifestyle are a state of mind. </p>
<p>I think I grew up middle class moving toward upper middle over time. I was given a 14 or 15 year old car when I went to college. My parents paid fully for college – education was and is the strongest value in my family. I had summer jobs in HS writing software and immediately got a job doing so at college. </p>
<p>We have done pretty well in life. I save more every year than I thought I would earn. We were frugal early on relative to our peer group (probably still are, but the peer group has gotten pretty well-to-do). But, we chose to live in a middle to upper-middle income neighborhood in a fairly affluent town, so the kids didn’t think that going to the Caymans for spring break was a birthright. They learned and believe that the travel and comfort we have had in life is a blessing and not a birthright. Both have turned out very well – directed and ambitious in their own ways. ShawD who is moving into a profession with good but not amazing pay is very careful about what she spends. She always has a job during the school even when we have suggested she could take the pressure off. She’s a careful shopper, although she currently doesn’t have time to shop (one of her favorite activities). ShawSon is less concerned about money – he doesn’t want stuff – but is probably a little less sensitive to spending money but largely doesn’t do it. He was given an 13 or 14 yo Subaru Impreza when his grandmother bought a new one. He drove it until it was no longer driver-worthy. He then took over my 13 yo Acura but we decided to sell it when he went off to grad school in California for grad school. He’s getting two degrees that likely in combination make him employable at relatively high income levels. He wants a car – we’ll probably get one – but is happy to take any kind of hand-me-down for stuff as long as he doesn’t have to think about it. He just focuses on being successful in life. He explicitly asked me what kind of income he’d need to make to be able to replicated our lifestyle – as he said, "We have a nice house, but not the fanciest in town, we always had money to pay for schools (college, private school when desired) and travel (we’ve taken an interesting trip every year, though not always expensive trips). " He is clear that income is a constraint and not something to maximize but wants to make sure he aims at twice the level I told him. That way if he slows down, he will still be doing well enough.</p>
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<p>This 1000%. It is not spoiling your kid to make sure that they can afford safety. My kids got new Volvos with every safety option (and none of the entertainment or appearance options) when they began driving. The pedestrians and cyclists in our town would appreciate it if they knew, because it is almost impossible to hit a pedestrian or cyclist with the safety features. I don’t know if they needed all the safety features, but I refuse to consider getting any fewer, since we can afford it. I dress less well than some people without two nickels to rub together, but I know that I have done everything I can to keep my kids safe. </p>
<p>Btw, in addition to the cars, I inconvenienced myself to make sure that the kids got (and the young one is still getting) every opportunity for driving under Dad’s watchful eye. My son thanks me for this, because his cohort who got into accidents were the kids whose parents decided that it was inconvenient to switch drivers on pickup and dropoff and who saved a few minutes by driving when their kid could have driven, and thus the kids had far fewer hours behind the wheel before they got their licenses. And, the driving instruction should begin well before learner’s permits; I consciously would verbalize my thoughts as I drove: “see him, he looks lost and might turn in any direction without blinkers; see that guy, he seems to be impaired; look at all those people driving in the dusk/rain without headlights, the idiots think that because they can see us, we can see them.” </p>
<p>Well, both my husband and I did live in unsafe areas and drive unsafe cars. But we’ll be darned if we want our kids to do that. We’re not trying to raise entitled kids - as soon as our kids started driving, we made sure they knew how to change a tire and change the oil. Our teenage son has even replaced the brake pads and taken the rotors for sharpening. These are things we used to do ourselves back when we didn’t have any money and we owned cars so rusted you could actually see through them… </p>
<p>We’ve been paying people to do simple and routine maintenance on our cars for years, but it would be embarrassing to us if we raised young adults who NEEDED to pay somebody to do these things for them.</p>
<p>There are still some things you can fix on a car yourself, but they are fewer and fewer. </p>
<p>In the days of landline phones, most of us could make simple repairs on a phone; try to repair an iPhone 
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<p>I did the same, and it will be interesting to see what my kids choose. I don’t understand how parents can “let” or “not let” their adult children make adult choices. What if they want to do Teach for America and get assigned to a school in an unsafe neighborhood? What if they want to study or work in a dangerous part of the world? We can’t protect them from everything. Plenty of bad things can happen closer to home, too–domestic violence, accidents, random crime. We just have to hope for the best.</p>
<p>As the kids have grown older, we’ve adjusted our plans slightly in terms of providing a car. First, we are into bicycling. I don’t commute by bike only because I’ve generally been the parent that deals with mid-day kid crises. It’ll be a few more years before the kids are out of high school and I’ll be back to commuting.</p>
<p>Anyway, dh and I always assumed we’d get a 3rd car so the kids could drive when they reached that age. Now that we have one kid licensed and one kid permitted, we’ve changed our minds. Lots of folks in our neighborhood (median income $200k) provide nicer cars than the one I drive to their kids upon turning 16. (And I drive a nice car!) </p>
<p>But we also realized that felt like we’d be entitling them a bit too much. The school is maybe a 15-20 minute walk from home. They each have bikes. And that’s what they use. It doesn’t seem strange to their peer group because everyone knows that is what we do (biking family). Oldest child can take our (usually) parked car to school as needed but he only does that on days when he has to haul something.</p>
<p>The bonus is that they are free to explore our big city by bike - it’s only a half an hour away by bike, and they head into various sections of downtown frequently on the weekends. I will be less worried about them when they go off to college because they’ve explored both the good and the bad parts of town. Things are more up close and personal when you are on a bike versus driving a car.</p>
<p>Lots of folks on CC conflate “unsafe neighborhood” with one that is more diverse than where they currently live. I see this in the posts on Yale or Columbia- I realize that if home is a gated community on an acre, seeing so many people who don’t look like you will take some getting used to. But that doesn’t mean that these neighborhoods aren’t “safe” by any practical measure. And often a gritty urban neighborhood will have a far more obvious police presence than a suburb (where bad things happen).</p>
<p>I have a kid who is 30. Mommy doesn’t get to choose his apartments anymore. I’m not sure you guys realize that once your kids have graduated from college, you aren’t the ones picking the neighborhood and deciding “do I live in a luxury doorman building or do I share a loft with my friends in a less established place”.</p>
<p>I didn’t say I would decide. And I have a kid looking at TFA and fully aware that could mean living in an unsafe neighborhood. </p>
<p>But I wouldn’t be averse to temporarily kicking in a little to help a kid in a “regular” job situation live in a safe place if all he could afford was unsafe. </p>
<p>I’m more than aware of city neighborhoods so it’s not like I think anything outside a gated community is “unsafe.” </p>
<p>Gentrifying and mildly sketchy aren’t the same thing as unsafe. </p>