My oldest daughter will be 16 in 90 days.  She’s a good driver and I’m excited for her to get her license and help out with the taxiing. I’m also excited for her to save up and buy her own car.

It’s something we’ve talked a lot about lately.  She’s concerned that it will take forever to save that much money.  I reminded her that I’ve been driving a car worth $500 for a couple of years.  If she could scrape $3,000 together, it would be the nicest car at our house :).   Dave Ramsey has a matching fund for his kids.  If they save so much towards a car, he’ll put that much more with it.  We thought by now we’d be in the position to do that for our kids, but we’re not.  They are going to be fine anyway.

Then there’s the insurance.  When I was a teenager, my parents paid my insurance as long as I was driving their car and made A’s or B’s in school.  Darren and I looked into it for Heidi and it’s pretty cheap to add a driver to an existing car since they aren’t the primary driver.  As soon as you add another vehicle to the mix, they become the primary driver and the insurance is quite a bit more expensive.

When we’re shopping for cars we call our insurance agent first and find out what it would cost to insure the vehicle we’re interested in.  It’s good to know all the numbers you’ll be faced with before you buy.  We also think about the sales tax, licensing and annual property tax.

We like to buy our cars used from a 3rd party (instead of a dealer), then run the car by our mechanic for a look over.  We aren’t car people, so it’s good to get someone who knows what they’re looking at to find any glaring problems.  We also look up the private sale car value at KBB.com. If you compare that number to the dealer price, you’ll see why we prefer to buy from an individual. It surprises us how many vehicles listed on Craigslist are priced incorrectly.   With the KBB number you’ll have what you need to know to make a reasonable offer.

We’re getting ready to buy a couple of cars for the family and are involving Heidi in the process, so she’ll be more prepared when it’s her turn.  At first Heidi thought she wanted a truck, but now she’s thinking something smaller and more fuel efficient.  As long as she’s paying cash, we’ll let her make that decision.  I’m excited to see what she chooses.  Until then, every time she gets called for a job that car is going to be in the back of her mind.

This is day 16 in our series 31 Days of Kids and Money