Hi all. My rising senior now has a nice little car to get to school and work. The schools she’s looking at appear to fall into three categories:
(1) keep a car there, in fact you’d better have one if you want to get out of the small town and do something
(2) freshmen are asked not to bring cars to campus due to capacity constraints
(3) having a car would be wasteful even if there was room for it, due to abundant public transportation and very difficult driving/parking in a large city
What have families done with a student’s car in situations 2 (for 1 year) and 3 (for 4+ years)? We just bought the car last month, she loves it, it’s not new but still has factory engine/powertrain warranty for the next year or so, and she could get 6-8 years out of it if she wanted to, maybe more - it’s one of the classic import subcompacts that people can put 150-200K miles on or even more.
Sell it? Store it, and if so where? Insurance considerations? Any thoughts appreciated.
None of my kids took their cars to school freshman year. We left them in the driveway and kept the insurance on them and made sure that we drove the car every couple of weeks. Your child will want to use the car when they are home on school breaks. I don’t recommend that students have a car freshman year. I think it can create extra unnecessary stress.
If your kid is farther than a certain distance (depends on insurance company) you can get a decent discount for “student away at school”. That’s what we did. Kid used it a bit during summers/breaks, younger kid used it (a bit) when he finally got his license. Now that older kid is graduated and living in a city, and younger kid is away at school, we will probably donate it to charity. Unlike yours it is a basket case
@Pizzagirl (love the handle!) Our driveway is a little tight for 3 cars. Currently she parks it on the street, although I wouldn’t want to do that day in and day out if she’s not here. Maybe we park one of the adult cars on the street, like my 80K mile beast with all the parking lot dings, and store hers in the garage. Just thought of that.
We had an extra car here while our kids were in college. We just took turns driving it. It was OUR car anyway…purchased by us and registered and insured by US. It was not a big deal. @ohiovalley16 what do you do when it snows? Here, we can’t leave cars on our street in the winter for most months.
You can also turn in the plates for the period of time it isn’t being used if that isn’t inconvenient and it makes financial sense. We use our daughters vehicle as a third vehicle. If one of ours is being serviced or repaired we are not without a vehicle.
Very timely as I was just having this conversation with both my mechanic and other parents. My daughter is at school in a city and our “extra” car has been mostly sitting in the driveway for 3 years (I do drive it occasionally but it was snowed in the last two winters). My mechanic tells me that a car sitting unused is not good for the car - that it is best maintained by being driven. You hate to get rid of the extra car and then at college graduation find out that your kid could use it - so it is a dilemma. (Our extra car is very old - so we will probably be getting rid of it within the year).
Haha. I guess we are not the only parents whose kid drives a better car than us.
DS did not have a car in college. It seems most kids at his college do not bring the car to campus. He finally had a car last year, several years after college.
Not where I live! All cars parked on the street MUST be licensed. And in my town, all cars parked on your property must be licensed. We have a blight ordinance…no unlicensed cars permitted outdoors.
I can’t imagine this would be a cost effective way to deal with this. If the kid comes home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break and summer…are you going to remove and then replace the plates each time? That’s not free.
Call your insurance company. Some have a way of handling students who are really away at college…usually if it’s over a certain distance from home.
It sounds like your kid has the nice new car. I would be driving that myself!
Although my daughter’s car was placed in the garage, I still drove it about twice a week. It is not good to leave a car sitting for a long periods of time.
Year 1 & 2: The insurance was very reasonable because she was not driving the car while at school.
Year 3: She had the car at school and the insurance increased a little. (about $225 for the year).
Many times my DD caught the shuttles her school provided to wherever she needed to go. After a few incidents where the shuttle did not return to pick her up at the scheduled time, two of them in the winter with lots of snow on the ground, she decided to take her car.
Year 4 (upcoming): She has not yet decided whether she should take her car to school. She mentioned that she might just try the shuttles again.
Both my daughters were car-less their freshman year in college. One attended a school 2000 miles away, the other was at a school 250 miles away. Both had cars the remainder of their time in college. Both cars are 1992, same make and model. Both cars still work, although whether to try to get the one on the coast through one more cross-country trip is being debated right now. My older daughter is sad to think of giving it up when she moves (to a city where she’ll rely on public transportation); I think we got it when she was a junior in high school. My younger daughter just moved to the “big city” and did not take her car; my spouse is planning to use it.
We were in situation #2 with our older son, and we did exactly what Donna indicated in post #3. We reported it to our insurance company, and there was a substantial insurance break while our son was away at school. When he returned, we re-upped the insurance, and then he took it to school with him sophomore year.
My husband did take it out for a spin now and again.
However, I can see the difficulty if you don’t have adequate parking at your house. Is there anyone in your area who might be interested in leasing a spot in their driveway or a garage spot? It might be easier than juggling the street parking situation. I can see how that would get old fast if you have a lot of regulations about which side of the street you park on or how long you may be parked there. We did need to lease a garage space for another situation, and I looked on Craigslist (and placed an ad there of my own) and came up with several possibilities in the area we were looking for.
We will be facing this again when my younger son goes to college.
We kept the 16 year old Toyota Camry, used by all 3 kids in high school, on the street but asked the neighbors if anyone minded.
We got the insurance breaks. The kids also used the camry on their breaks.
Bought the eldest child a reliable car (Yaris) for upstate NY, for her internships in jr and sr year, and put it in covered storage over the summer there with mechanic checks. (We kept the Camry for the younger sibs to use for high school and job).
After graduation, DD and I drove the Yaris back from NY where the next child was waiting for car in upstate CA.
Didn’t happen as the eldest needed the car to job hunt and finally drive it to work and back. Eldest then bought a new car with her job proceeds and passed the Yaris on to the junior in northern CA.
Son continued to drive the old Camry to Jobs and on breaks. He did not use the car on campus, this past freshman year. He’s awaiting the Yaris after sister graduates this year. Not happening as sister will be on the job hunt and grad school year apps.
My kids still dont have their own cars, although they are 25 & 33, and I am looking for a car for the 25yr old, as I live in an area with more for sale.
They do have a car in the family.
We are picking up a car for my son today - he is 22 and is starting his new job in a city where he cannot rely on public transportation. This is the first car for either of my kids. They haven’t had any car of their own to date. They didn’t in high school (just borrowed our car if needed) and they didn’t in college and somehow they managed through!
S is starting school across the country in the fall. I just literally called the insurance company yesterday to find out options. They have an “away at school” option where the kid isn’t driving regularly and the car is a minimum distance away (didn’t get the min number, but 2,500 miles qualified…). He’s still covered to drive other kids’ cars occasionally at school, rent zip cars and use his car on school breaks back at home, and it saved me $1,000/yr. I was fairly ecstatic about this. I plan on driving his car occasionally to keep it moving, and to help save miles on my lease.
We kept the car our daughter typically drove at home when she went to college half a continent away. It made it easy for her (and us) when she came home on breaks and for summers. We could remove her from our insurance while she was away at school and just add her when she came home. When she went back to school, we took her off again. Not too hard and a bit of savings.
She took it to school for the summer between junior and senior year and kept it for senior year. Post-graduation, she moved to NYC, so we were going to bring it home again and figure out what to do with it. As it turned out, my sister’s ancient mini-van died and she bought the car our daughter had been using. Problem solved.
