When I was 17, I backed into a co-workers car in the parking lot after work. She agreed to get an estimate and I would pay her for it. She got one, it was thankfully minor damage and I went to the bank and cashed in a CD to pay for it. My parents never even knew about it, but they would have made me do the same thing. There is no way they would have paid for it, even if I would have had to pay them back $10 a week for 2 and a half years.
How would it have been handled if she had knocked the mirror off of the plumber’s van instead of your car? Would you have paid for it or had her do it? Part of making mistakes is learning to take responsibility for your actions.
Well, yeah, it was kinda stupid, but if I were in her position, and I was in danger of being late for an appointment, rather than find the plumber and get him to crawl out from under the sink and move his van (which, why’d he have to park it in the middle of the driveway, blocking both cars?? well, maybe he thought there’d be enough room to get around him. hmmm…), I would at least have been tempted to try to squeeze past. And if I were a relatively new driver, driving a car I wasn’t familiar with, I too might have misjudged what I could get through.
I do still have a small dent in my car that I put there not too long after I bought it, when I tried to drive through a small space and got too close to a post.
Justice requires her to pay for it, and it sounds like she knows this. Good. Now it’s your prerogative, as her father, to temper justice with mercy if you so choose. Feel free to pay for the repair out of your own pocket if (a) you can afford it better than she can
and (b) you don’t think she needs to pay for it herself in order to “learn her lesson.”
Plenty of parents buy their kids whole cars. There’s nothing wrong with buying yours a mirror.
You have to ask yourself–what would you enjoy more? The $330 or bringing this up every few months for the next ten years?
If you go with bringing this up every few months, next time she’ll find a way to have it fixed without you even knowing it happened!
More seriously, if she’s half - way through school and on track to graduate in 4 years, I might pay for it and tell her to pay you back after she graduates and gets a real job. Right now, that $330 represents a lot more to her than it does to you.
I agree with Manda JO–in fact, I’m surprised she’s the first one who suggested asking her to pay it back in a few years. I think that’s quite fair.
Using your car for free is a privilege, not a right. Ideally, when we let someone borrow the car, that sort of thing gets discussed beforehand so there are no surprises on either end. If someone borrows my car, even a (far in the future) adult child, I’ll try to make sure that he/she knows that this means taking responsibility for any damage that is, unquestionably, his/her fault.
A friend of mine went down that road. The minor stuff got bigger until 3 nice cars were seriously damaged. The upside is that he loves spending time with his grand kid now that she lives with him.
The price of a new (non-folding) mirror is about $55. You should be able to buy a painted one from a junkyard.
I would expect a college student to possess the ability to learn how to replace a car mirror. A manual will run $25 if it can’t be found in a library. The satisfaction of saving $250+ would seem like a nice ribbon to put on this lesson.
As someone close in age (im 23), I would feel obligated to pay for it, and if I was unable to come up with the complete cost when the repairs were due, I would work out a payment plan with my parents.
Does insurance cover that repair? They paid when my father knocked off his mirror when backing out of the garage and slid on some ice.
Hopefully the deductible is at least $500 to save on the cost of the premium. Also, given the current financial climate it’s not advisable to make any small claims. By itself it’s not big deal but if something else crops up then you have a bunch of dings on your record. If an insurance company drops you it can be tough to get new insurance.
Thirding the junkyard suggestion. When I was 17 I knocked the mirror off my Chevy Corsica. I remember having a fun day with my dad visiting a few junkyards and then installing the mirror ourselves.
I think she should pay, but I think you should give her the option of replacing with used parts and her/ her friends providing the labor. If you choose to just go to the shop and get a new part, that’s more because of your comfortable grown-up lifestyle. Many people won’t be paying $330 for a new mirror on a 6 year old car. And why your wife was the one to call around and get prices, I’ll never understand. That can be done from anywhere and would have been educational for your daughter.
How this would’ve worked in the branch of my family where it could’ve happened is that the dad would’ve paid for the repair but the daughter would have had the responsibility to call around for estimates, choose a shop, schedule and keep the appointment. The cost to her would have been time and convenience rather than monetary.
At the risk of getting a rolleyes response, at 21 she is not a kid and should be responsible for her actions. Heck, even if she were a kid, she is responsible.
When my 18-year old son broke some furniture by hitting it with younger brother’s head, I made him pay for the replacement ($275). When my 16-year old son broke a $200 piece of sports equipment in a flash of anger, I made him pay for the replacement.
They need to learn lessons in life other than “mom/dad will bail me out”.
The younger brother’s head cost $275 to replace??
Seriously, though, this doesn’t sound like the same situation. The damage done here wasn’t a result of hostility, childish horseplay, or an inability to control one’s temper.
More importantly, this kid doesn’t need to be taught a lesson she doesn’t already know:
For some kids, knowing that “mom/dad will bail me out” if they ever get in trouble is an excuse for laziness and irresponsibility; for others, it’s not that at all, but it is a source of comfort and security.
True, but it was still 100% her fault, 0% her parents’ fault.
If paying for this becomes a contribruting factor in causing subsequent financial difficulties for her, and for some reason she is unable to earn money to fix the problem, then that is the time for parental support.
It looks like a perfectly fine replacement can be had for $60. If she’s in college, she’s probably smart enough to do the job herself with a few tools. Chalk it up to a silly mistake, let her borrow your tools, and have her replace the mirror herself. You can pay for it or not depending on how magnanimous you’re feeling.
This has nothing to do with punishment. She is of age to be legally and morally responsible for damaging someone else’s property. Punishment is something added above the cost of damage if it was done deliberately.
Thnaks for all the responses. Interesting to hear the wide range of approaches folks can have to an issue like this.
I guess my “kid” called my wife very apologetic, took full responsibility, and promised to pay for it and do whatever it took to get it repaired. I dunno why tradesmen seem to so frequently park right in the middle of the driveway, but they seem to. Heck, we even have a turn-around they could use - but it is the rare tradesman who does so. I dunno whether the kid was late for the appointment, but even if she were, IMO it is her fault for being late getting out of the house. The dentist is maybe 1.5 miles away and the weather was nice. Instead of driving she could have walked or (as she ended up doing) borrowed a bike. So IMO she chose to borrow the car, and then made a series of bad choices that resulted in damage. So she pays.
It is repaired, and cost the kid right around $300. We had a coupon for 15% off the cost of the part. I think it made a big impression on her. She HATES to spend money, and I think she learned how quickly a poor decision could cost a considerable amount. We give our kids a set amount towards school - they are responsible for coming up with everything else, in addition to saving for expenses they expect when they get out of school. The kid in question has around $8k saved. We owed her ~ $900 for this school year, so we cut her a check for $600.
Regarding those who advocate having the kid repair it herself, several reasons we didn’t go that route.
-The car in question is my wife’s daily driver, so she wanted it fixed quickly and well.
-Tho a few years old with its share of dings, it is in very good shape with @ 60k miles on it. Would like it to last at least a couple more years - possibly longer. Hell, maybe one of my kids will buy it off us at some point cheap.
-With the kid going back to school today and a reasonably ful schedule between then and now, I’m not sure how realistic it would have been to have her look around for a junkyard piece, pick it up, have it painted if necessary, and then have the kid work at repairing it. Getting it fixed as we did took 2 phone calls, and then driving it to the shop 5 minutes from home. To some extent, time and convenience is worth some $ to us.
-Also, no guarantee she would do as good of a job as the shop - and - as it is my wife’s daily driver, she wants the job done well.
-We felt it was dangerous to drive without the mirror (not to mention possibly illegal), so we didn’t want to wait until whenever the kid came home again.
-And $300 was not enough - for either her or us - to really stretch this out in order to save a few bucks. Fortunately she is in a position where she does have enough to pay for it, and we are certainly in a position where we place a pretty high price on our leisure time.
So that’s how we handled it. Seems to have worked well. Food for thought should you face a similar situation in the future.
