Car Wars

When our daughter, Jessica, turned sixteen seven years ago, we were determined not to spoil her with her own car. After all, her father and I didn't get handed the keys to anything on our sixteenth birthdays. No sir, I had to get a part-time job and earn the money to buy my own car and my husband rode his bike or took public transportation. (They have it rough in Switzerland). We weren't completely heartless. We understood that times were different, that jobs didn't pay the percentage of a new car that they used to. So we decided to compromise. We would purchase a reasonably priced car that Jess (and later her brother, Josh) would contribute a set amount monthly towards the payment, insurance and gas. We were confident that this would work and that we weren't being too indulgent when we forked over the cash to help our young'uns have wheels. Parenting mistake #9,472.

So now here we are. They are twenty-one and twenty-three and neither one of them has managed to scrape enough money together to purchase their own vehicle. Why should they? They have a what was once-upon-a-time nice Honda Civic that they have run into the ground at their disposal without the pesky payments. Oh sure, they've managed to contribute here and there (when they have jobs) to oil changes, new brakes, etc. but the luxury of dealing with your parents concerning payments and bills bears no resemblance to dealing with banks and insurance companies. And they can't begin to build any pride of ownership (as evidenced by the condition of the car) when they haven't struggled to pay for it. Worse yet, they can't co-ordinate who has to use the car when and someone inevitably ends up asking me for the keys to my car. At this point, since we're not going to be able to use this wisdom on any additional offspring, there can be only one solution. It's time to sell the car, let them split the proceeds and put down payments on their own cars. There's just one problem. They would still have to park them on our driveway.