Last week, we were talking with our twin daughters, who are turning 17 this month, about life. They brought up how many of their friends at school are surprised when they find out that our girls don’t have their own car(s). Our kids are pretty grounded and we have talked to them a lot about the realities of finances and our philosophies about what is and isn’t important. So it was a good conversation.
While were in the midst of it, Yulia brought up a document that I had written about four years ago when one of our older daughters had decided her life was terrible because she didn’t have her own car. I put together a somewhat satirical - maybe a bit too sarcastic - conversation and sent it to her.
She stopped talking about getting her own car, so I had assumed she had read the document. We found out last year that she never did! Yulia had me read it to the twins and they got a kick out of it. She then suggested that I use it for this week’s newsletter. So, without any more introduction, here is the “So you want to buy your own car?” conversation.
So you want to buy your own car?
Insurance for your own car will not be subsidized by us. Cost for insurance for a teenage girl in Texas is around $5000 (https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/car-insurance-17-year-old.aspx) but since you are buying an old car, let’s say you can get your own insurance for 3000 a year.1
That’s roughly $500 dollars a month for the privilege of having a car sitting around.
Gas. You still are not buying gas regularly. Let’s say you buy a car that gets good gas mileage (around 25 miles per gallon around town). On weeks you have seminary and school - because those are places you have to go, you’ll use an average of 4 gallons just getting to those places. Now let’s go to and from work 5 days a week since you’ll be working to pay for the car (add another 4 gallons). Now let’s do some fun things twice a week (not more since you’ll be working during all the times it is fun to go places). As a conservative estimate let’s say 10 gallons a week. Fuel is relatively cheap right now at Walmart. 10 gallons a week is 18 dollars. Gas goes up and down, so let’s say 20 dollars a week right now.
So far to get your car where it needs to go you are paying $580 dollars a month. Let’s talk about maintenance.
You bought a used car. It needs new tires. You buy cheap ones at Walmart - that costs you $350 dollars up front. Not bad. You’ll need new brakes in 6 months. $250 for that. You also need to change the oil every three months (50 dollars every 3 months) and have some money for the little repairs that are always coming up - remember what you say about my truck being SOOOOO expensive? Your car is 10 years older than mine since it’s what you can afford. We’ll be very generous and say you only need to budget for $1200 a year for maintenance.
So right now your car is costing you about $680 dollars a month. What else is it costing you? Time!
Let’s say you get a job for $11.00 an hour working at a fast food place or grocery store. After taxes and tithing it means you need to work approximately 80 hours per month (20 hours per week) to pay for your car. You probably want to do fun things with people since you’re working so hard. So let’s say you work 25 hours a week so you can have a bit of fun money.
So you are working from 6:00-11 M-F right? Well, what about days you have track meets? Swim meets? When are you going to do homework? Sleep? Which part of your life are you going to give up?
You can work weekends. Let’s work on Saturday for 8 hours. Cool. Only 17 more hours during the week to worry about. Sundays? Well, sure, you can make that choice. Now you don’t have any days of rest.
Now ask yourself a few questions.
If you are working 25 hours a week for a car and a “little fun” how much are you saving for your future?
If you are working 25 hours a week, will you be able to continue with swim and track? What about grades in classes? What is the most likely outcome of working so much? If you aren’t saving for college/future and your grades are slipping and your extra curricular activities are gone, what does that do to your odds of going to the university for cheap/free?
Now consider the other aspect of time. You want to have your own car so you can go places and be with friends “more” than what you can do now. Does that happen if you now have the responsibility for all of the things that car ownership requires?
One of the things that this imagined conversation hits on that I think about a lot are the trade-offs that we need to make. Every decision has a consequence, good or bad. Even good decisions can make life harder. Getting married and having a family, for example, requires a lot of work and effort. Knowing why we do the things we do, helps us to measure the costs and benefits with more clarity.
In my teenage years, I had a car that I got to drive pretty freely. It was the family truck. I was responsible for paying for gas and maintenance. I was thrown off with needed repairs to the clutch and carburetor when my whole paycheck went to repair shops and parts stores. I was responsible for paying the difference in insurance costs that my driving added to the insurance budget. All of that is much more expensive today than it was for me in terms of cost and time to work. Inflation in car costs makes the calculations very different for my kids than it was for me.
Our economic circumstances in my family were also different. Our parents asked us to be responsible for ourselves financially when we moved to Payson when I was 12 years old. School fees for activities, clothes, and any spending money were my responsibility since then. I had to work. That work was good training for life, but it also changed my decision-making. I did fewer extra-curricular activities and missed things because I was working 25-30 hours a week during school from the time I was a sophomore in High School.
So our kids have a bit different set of circumstances. We try to teach them principles that will help them to make good decisions and to accept responsibility for the decisions they make.
I didn’t add this in the document, but of course, this depends on the type of insurance she’ll buy, but I went with the options on the website I found.
THOSE were the "GOOD OLD DAYS!" Now the cost of used cars, gas, insurance and maintenance have sky rocketed. Is is to force people to move to areas with public transit? I see our UTA buses drive around empty MOST of the time. Public transit by colleges is getting better so that might give the youth hope. Until then, appreciation for use of the family car should increase!