Lessons Driving an $800 Car Can Teach Your Kid

August 15, 2020

Editor: Teaching a teenager to drive with an $800 dollar can create some real life lessons.  In addition to just learning to drive, you can learn how to fix a car, and carE for something that may not have a lot of life left in it. It can definitely teach you to appreciate what you have! White Coat Investor shares all about his teenager’s experience in today’s Saturday Selection, originally published on The White Coat Investor.

[Update August 2020: Originally published in November 2019, Whitney and I teamed up for this post about this new (to us) car. It is now August 2020, and it is still running great and just passed emissions again and continues to teach Whitney important lessons.

Most recently she learned that a car will not run forever on empty and that if you do not turn the lights off when you get out, it will not start when you come back to it. She also got to learn how to jumpstart a car! This Spring she rattle-canned it and now looks like an Easter Egg. She is currently regretting that decision so it may be a new color soon.]

We decided to do this post interview style. Enjoy!

Q. I understand you were recently involved in the purchase of a “new” car for you to learn to drive and then drive to high school. What were the criteria your dad gave you for the car?

Whitney:   Yes, recently (as in 4 months ago) we purchased a “new to me” car that I’ve been learning to drive. However, my dad imagined a set of nearly impossible criteria. It had to run well, (which isn’t easy to find for that cheap of a price), it wouldn’t need any immediate repairs (which was REALLY difficult to find), and it had to be a manual transmission or “stick-shift” which really helped the ever-narrowing options. But the real kicker: the car had to be under $1,000.

I began searching around the beginning of May and found some interesting listings on a local Craigslist-like website (KSL.com). One (my personal favorite) read, “Bought this car for my son to learn to drive stick, he crashed it into the mailbox, I gave up, so good luck!” Unfortunately, we didn’t get that one or that would’ve been a great story, but not to say my car doesn’t look like it’s been crashed into a mailbox.

Jim:   As regular readers are well aware, we could easily have gone out and bought Whitney a brand-new Tesla to drive to high school. But what kind of message would buying a new car have sent to her? Imagine how hard your life would be if you started out flying first class and then found yourself riding in coach later? So we decided not even to put Whitney in coach. She’s basically riding on the wing, the cargo hold, or the lavatory. We hope she’ll appreciate being able to ride in coach later. The reasoning behind the criteria was:

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://thephysicianphilosopher.com/lessons-driving-an-800-car-can-teach-your-kid/