My wife and I live in an area of Connecticut where the coast is dotted with lovely old victorian manor’s, waterfront estates and a fair smattering of McMansions…Needless to say there are quite a few affluent people in our area…This weekend we were walking along a favorite boardwalk, and we noticed a young man pull up to a parking spot in a brand new Audi A4. It was such a lovely car I commented to him: “Nice ride!” He looked at me a little funny and sort of snorted a brief, "thanks…" and walked off with his girlfriend. On closer inspection written in soap across the back of the black A4 was written: Happy Birthday Tye!!
Having worked in a college, with freshmen, I have a decent idea what young adults look like, and this guy could not have been more than 17.
What do you folks here with kids feel about buying your kid a first car?
How about anyone, what do you think?
I worked all summer mowing lawns for my first car…a beat-up 1980 Saab 900…I think this is probably how I will treat my kids when I have them… they can earn their car, I certainly won’t be buying them a 32k car for their B-DAY…
My fifteen year old stepdaughter recently received a car from her mother which is far nicer than the one I own. It’s very hard for me to be okay with this, because I know I can’t afford to give my daughter a car, let alone a nice one. Am I bitter? It may be wrong, but hell yeah.
I acknowledge that there’s a difference between the UK and the US on this subject, but when I was 17/18 I begged and begged for a car. My parents were having none of it. They could have afforded it, but they refused.
I was covetous and desperate for wheels, so I went out and got a part-time job and saved my ass off, and finally bought a piece-of-shit beater for myself.
Looking back, I learned so much by that decision of theirs - but my poor old parents had to put up with an amazing amount of adolescent whining.
We bought cars for our kids when they were in high school. The first was a 20 year old volvo so sinkid the older could take classes at the U in the afternoons while attending HS in the morning. The volvo was not very reliable so we bought a new car when sinkid the younger started driving. They then shared that car and were responsible for working out the schedule themselves.
We did not allow them to work during the school year but both were employed full time every summer upon turning 15. While school was in session we emphasized that school was their “job” and that it should be treated appropriately. The money they earned in the summer had to last them thruout the year. This seemed to work well for our little family.
Although there were several minor squabbles about the sharing of the car over the years, it actually drew them together in the long run with both working for the same organizations for convenience.
We bought the cars and paid for the insurance after seeing too many high school kids put all their effort into working to pay for their rides while neglecting school work and dropping out of sports and school activities. YMMV.
I bet we will find the same thing when my wife and I go through it with our children. It doesn’t really matter if we can afford to give them a car or not, it has more to do with learning the value in a Buck.
I lived in suburbia as a teenager, and there was no way for me to have a job unless I had a car to get me there. My parents, who were originally hardline not-gonna-buy-it-for-you, eventually absorbed this reality and bought a junker that I was allowed to drive. I paid for gas and maintenance. When I went to college, they sold it.
I think you have to weigh the family’s financial position and the geographical realities of where they live. What my parents did was perfectly reasonable and not particularly indulgent–they knew that I’d be happier staying at home reading after school, but they wanted me to get out and work, so when they bought the car they told me I must get a job. If there’s no public transportation available and the parents can afford it then heck yes, I think they should buy a usable car for the kid. For my parents it was also a matter of convenience, because they bitterly resented chauffering me.
When I got my driver’s license (late 80s) it was fairly common for middle class suburban kids to inherit a parent’s 5-6 year old car while the parent got themselves a new car. This system worked pretty good.
A high-schooler who’s only been working a few years probably doens’t have enough saved for a car but they do need to be able to get to their job, school, college.
Kid’s who were given brand new cars were considered spoiled rich brats.
One, the fact that it said “happy birthday” doesn’t mean it was a birthday gift: kids write “happy birthday” on each other’s cars all the time these days.
I really think this is something that varies so much it’s hard to say. If you have a kid who is shouldering six AP classes, plays some sort of sport all year long, works on student council, and is active in their religious community, it’s not really accurate to say they need to get a McJob to teach them how to work. And they certainly don’t have time to earn enough to by even a beater. And in a case like that, the car may be as much for the parents as for the kid–having someone else in the family who can chauffer is a huge convience, especially if there are younger siblings.
In many places, working may not be an option if you don’t have a car. There are many places that don’t have public transportation and parent work schedules often don’t jive closely enough to carpool.
It really just comes down to the parents and the kid. For some kids, a car is the wrong choice–it reinforces an attitude of entitlement. For some kids, a particular car is the wrong choice–I’ve seen parents give sports cards to teens so hedonistic and reckless that I’ve actually wondered if it wasn’t a ploy to collect on a life-insurance policy. But some kids are already hard working and a car is just a tool that lets them be hard-working more efficiently.
I agree, though many people learn how to juggle full course load and a full time job, High School may not be the best time to teach them that particular lesson. That lesson may be best saved for when they get to college.
I would say, conservatively, that many of my students average 60 hours a week of committed activities without having a paying job, and more than a few probably work 80: 35 hours a week in class + 10 hours/week sports practice + 20 hours/week homework (and with 4+ AP classes, that’s standard, and the kids that don’t need to do that much work for 4 AP classes are usually in six AP classes) + some sort of all day thing most Saturdays–that’s a busy kid but not extreme. And it’s worse around college application time, musical, homecoming, graduation, AP exams. So it isn’t a matter of not being able to handle a full course load and a full time job–it’s that they already are.
I also don’t see a new car as inherently “worse” than a beater. At my school, at least, the new cars are low end Fords and Hondas, not luxury cars, and are often bought with the idea that this is the last car the kid gets and it needs to last through college OR with the idea that it will be passed down to siblings. Either way, that’s a lot of mileage to put on a car and a real POS that’s going to be in the shop three days a month really isn’t a bargain. And if money really isn’t an issue, I don’t see how a new Focus or Civic is so much more damaging to the pschye than a hand-me-down mid-range car.
My family was definitely of the “buy your own beater” frame of mind. In some ways I agree with that. However, I was really touched by the effort my college best friend’s family went to get her a car with airbags when they first came out. It was like “they’ve made this major advance in car safety and that’s definitely something we want our kid to have.” Because the truth is the kind of beaters we drove were pretty much guaranteed to leave you stranded somewhere, sometime. I think inheriting the parents’ older car or the parents making a down payment on something prudent (slightly used Honda, Toyota, Volvo) and the kid making the monthly payments worked out OK in a lot of cases. If the family can afford to do more, I think expecting your kids to drive something old and unsafe is sometimes going overboard to make a point at the expense of safety. Unless you’re really living the lifestyles of the rich & famous, having the kid come home to a brand new car sends the wrong message, though.
Just went through this with my 16 year old daughter. I told her that I would match her dollar for dollar when she bought a car. I figured she would save up a few hundred and I would match that. Turns out she had been squirreling away money for the past year or so and had two thousand saved. Her new car is pretty damned nice!
I have to agree that it depends. Growing up in The Middle of Nowhere, there was pretty much no way I could have independantly gotten to and from a job without my own car (not that I had a job, but that’s beside the point). Thus, buying my own, had I wanted to, would have been difficult. If you’re in the middle of the city though, and a vehicle is more of a convenience/status symbol, I see nothing wrong with making a kid buy their own.
(I still don’t have my own car, although one summer my parents bought a new one partially to give me access to a working vehicle while they were at work.)
Yep, that’s how I got my first car. I’m thirty-one and still driving it. I’d probably do the same for my kid if I ever have kids, and can afford it. (I’m not convinced that it is desirable for a full-time student to have a job at the same time, even in college – summers, of course, are another matter.)
I had the same experience as Hampshire and Fretful Porpentine - my brother and I inherited our parents’ old cars and they got new ones. We always had jobs and paid for insurance, gas and maintenance.
When I went away to college, my dad paid for my dorm. At the end of the first semester, I came home to find a new car in the drive, just for me. Dad had decided it was cheaper to buy me a little Escort (he works at Ford, got the A-Plan) than to pay for 4 more years of dorm life. He also did not want me commuting 45 minutes a day in a piece of shit car. So it made sense.
Once I was out of school, though, I bought my own car, mainly because the Escort turned out to be just as much of a POS as the other old cars I had been driving.
My niece will be able to get her license in about 4 months. She’s been saving her babysitting money for about 3 years and has $4-5000 saved for her eventual car. She said years ago to her mom that she knew her mother wasn’t going to buy her a car - she’d better start saving. She’s a suburban kid who maintains a straight-A scholastic record. her parents could afford to give her a brand new car, but she’s right - they probably wouldn’t. Knowing my niece, she’ll research thoroughly and find the safest, most economical car for the money.
My dad bought me my car when I was 16. This was '96, and he bought me an '83 Buick Skylark from a gas station. It was $400. He gave me the keys and said “Go get a job. Keep a job until you graduate high school or I’m taking this away.”
I got a job at a movie theater, and stayed there until I got a job at Kinko’s a year or so later. I think that was a good way to do it, and I’ll probably do something similar with my children, if I ever get them.
My first car was inherited from my parents. It had 100,000 miles on it, was 8 years old, but was drivable and efficient. It was worth maybe $1000 as a running vehicle. Maintenance, tags, gas, etc. were all my responsibility.
Note, this was after 5 years of college where I either borrowed the family car (when I was living at home near my “starter” campus) or I used my 10-speed (when I was living away at the campus 200 miles from my parents’ house). I didn’t have a car of my own in college.
It got me through my first year of work when I replaced it with one I bought myself. When I sold their old car, I offered them the money from it ($800).
Certainly I don’t agree with buying a brand-new car for a new teenage driver. Buying a beater or helping them out a bit is, I guess, much more acceptable if the parents are able. Making the child buy their own would result in the best lesson for the kid, though, IMO.
My first car was given to me in 1994. It was an '87 Dodge Shadow that hadn’t been maintained properly since 1988. It was by far a shorter list to name the things on the car that did work vs those that didn’t.
I worked and bought parts to fix it and my dad, the auto tech, helped me do the work or did the work himself on more involved repairs. We made that car last for almost 7 years before it finally died, but it taught me a lot.
That said, if I should ever have kids, they will probably get a hand-me-down from my wife. I drive a WRX now and there’s no way I’d give one of those to a 16 year old.
