[...] to look for deals on designer clothing, if that is something you’re after. Think of it as shopping for a used car – someone else paid for most of the [...]

[...] Used Car Buying Guide for Teenagers at Frugal Dad [...]

First, there’s the insane notion that bigger & faster is better. For more than 50 years, American car buyers have been suckered & steered into a fascination with useless & inapplicable performance – most often, horsepower – and it’s time for the deception to end. A car’s “0 to 60″ time is not only meaningless, but can encourage reckelessness.

Then there’s the silly perception that a smaller car can’t be roomy enough. That’s simply not true. Small cars can be – and often are – deceptively spacious & comfortable even for larger-sized folks.

And too, many people still buy into the elitist notion that a small car is a cheap car for people who can’t afford something big & luxurious. Let’s see if you can still muster a disparaging glance at me when you’re spending $75-90 to fill up the gas tank on your luxury SUV.

Finally, there’s a nasty misperception that bigger vehicles (like SUVs) offer increased safety, but that’s also just not true. In fact, the engineering that goes into keeping a small car safe is far more impressive than the sloppy “we’ve got plenty of sheet metal to protect us” design that pervades most SUVs & trucks.

Even if they were anywhere near as safe as people seem to think (bigger = safer, right?) the “I can plow over anything in this tank” attitudes & driving habits of SUV-owners even further dimish their overall roadway safety.

[...] Used Car Buying Guide for Teenagers – $ Frugal Dad [...]

[...] Dad” has some great advice for buying your teen’s first vehicle, and it starts with this: Don’t buy your kid a new [...]

[...] to getting a car as a teenager, few things are as liberating to young adults as moving out and finding a place of their own. [...]

[...] Dad gives a nice Used Car Buying Guide for Teenagers for parents, but it has some useful tips for us grown-ups [...]

I want to emphasize to parents that their kids get a USED car, as you said, not new, or anything near new.For years i read in the police blotter of my weekly hometown newspaper of all the accidents and fender benders, a disproportionate number of which involved drivers under the age of 21.

I did investigate insurance costs, and since our premiums will go up by 50 a month, I said that’s what you’ll be paying. What? I’m paying that?
Um, was I supposed to work more to pay it for you?

Well that really didn’t seem fair to him either. He did comment about how this growing up thing was getting kind of expensive. So now he does have to get out and get a job–which I don’t think he’d do if it weren’t for that insurance bill. And now he’ll need to budget that money, and realizing that life as he knows it is soon over. All part of the plan to get him out of the house in two years–and not falling on his face six months after.

We do have a car for him, only because my husband has always operated on a policy of one extra vehicle in the driveway. He works a lot of hours and the cars are at least 12 years old; if one breaks down he wants the freedom to repair it himself at his leisure. I don’t know if this is cost effective or not, and for our marriage it’s better not to know. It does mean we have a car available to lend to people in need, and we will have three cars with three drivers soon. And when oldest moves out, he’ll need to leave with his own vehicle, not one of ours. (We’ll have another kid driving by then.)

I do think providing too much too early is more detrimental to any kid’s character than providing too little. Love and affirmation is free flowing around here; money is not. He’ll have to work twice the hours I would to pay his expenses, but this is parenting, teaching life as it is, not as we wish it were.