Picture it and take a journey with me. The year is 1997. I am one week away from college and handed my first set of car keys. My car keys. To my car! What was the car, you ask? Well dear reader; the answer is a 1912 Nissan Sentra. Well, maybe not exactly 1912, but close. Old. Really, really old. No air conditioning, no power anything, heck there wasn’t even heat. But it was mine. It was a brown metal box on four wheels that got me from point A to point B, and I was over the moon! It set me back a cool $500, but with it, I had transportation for the 2-hour journey from KC to Manhattan for school. You couldn’t tell me “nuthin,” as they say. Side note, I later found out my (now) husband (and I quote) “felt sorry for me because of the kind of car I drove, was it even safe?” Whatever, it was character building… thank you!
Fast forward a few years, I drive that car into a little dealership and am basically told that in fact, no it isn’t safe to drive. Being a broke college student, I tell the car dealer that I want the cheapest thing on the lot. What kind of car this time, you ask? A manual, 1997 Geo Metro. Did I know how to drive a stick? Oh of course not, don’t ask me silly questions. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was $120 a month. I learned how to drive it as I drove it off the lot. It also had no power anything, no air conditioning. But it did have heat, so there’s the upgrade folks! Plus it was new, to me. I again, was thrilled. Sure, I most likely could have gotten out of the car and walked up a hill faster than I could drive it. But that didn’t bother me, I was just happy to have a new car.
I kept that car for several years. It made a short-lived move with me to Florida, jam packed with my junk. Have you seen a Geo Metro? It is equivalent to today’s smart car. TINY. I struggled with no AC in the summer and driving it to work in full on dress clothes. But I still loved it none the less. That all changed when I became pregnant. I stand a whooping 5 foot tall. (I know, first you were jealous of my cars, now you are jealous if my incredible height.) My belly scraped the wheel and knew it was time to upgrade.
We moved on to our first family, nice car. Man were my husband and I in love with it. It was a 2005 Dodge Durango and we treated it like it was a Porsche. I kid you not when I tell you, we would wake up in the middle of the night and look outside to make sure that no one had stolen it. As if people were dying to take my Durango!
My husband and I have changed cars multiple times since then. Each time loving it more and more. Each time upgrading and feeling the excitement that comes with your latest and greatest. Now we are at a new phase of life, our children driving. We have a 14-year-old that is knocking on the door of freedom and independence. The door of car ownership.
Our conversations have moved away from “reasons why you don’t eat glue” to first car options. The decisions on what to look for, what boundaries to set, how much we should agree to spend, all of it has left us with our minds swirling. While I don’t want her in a death trap on wheels. There is a lot of amazing experiences that can come from a car that isn’t quite up to snuff. Who am I to take away the honor of telling her future children about the times she had to stop on I-70 between Topeka and Manhattan in a snow storm to scrape her windshield with a tape cassette holder because she didn’t have defrost….or an ice scraper. True story, that happens. Or so I’ve been told.
We want the best for our kids. I think we would all agree that we would give them the world if we could. But at what cost? What is the sweet spot of comfortable but not too comfortable? We want to teach our kids the value of a dollar. There are no handouts, you work for what you have. We don’t want to jade their view on the world and what is readily available. We want them to be happy, while giving them the room to be happy with things you get to earn later in life…. on your own dollar.
Do you appreciate things more if you had little to begin with? Do you appreciate them more if you had to earn them? I think so. But do you need something reliable to get you around because mama is tired of being a taxi? YES.
I hope no matter what we end up picking, our kids will know and value what they have. I know I sure did, best $500 I could have spent when I was 17! If not even for the transportation and freedom, for the stories my husband and I get to share while my kids eyes glaze over with pure boredom.
What was your first car or great story? Do you have any tips for the first car purchase for your kids?
