Do UMC parents buy their adult kid a car after college?

[Anonymous]

Paid half for a new car for DS when he graduated college. He took out a loan for the other half.

A year later, when I realized the car had not been repossessed, we paid off the other half.

Similar to buying a car, but now he has somewhat of a credit history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

It is very much a middle class thing to buy your kid a used car or their old car.

No, it’s not. Real middle class people don’t even own their own cars. They certainly don’t have enough extra cash to drop 20k plus insurance, taxes, and registration to subsidize their college student having a car.

Rich people buy or lease cars for their college age kids, but not middle class people. That’s been true for a long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, have you ever contemplated that people don’t move as a monolith, no matter how much money they have?

Truth.

Yup.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

How long ago was that? You can’t find cheap used cars anymore. And the insurance for teens (and adults) is sky high now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

It is very much a middle class thing to buy your kid a used car or their old car.

No, it’s not. Real middle class people don’t even own their own cars. They certainly don’t have enough extra cash to drop 20k plus insurance, taxes, and registration to subsidize their college student having a car.

Rich people buy or lease cars for their college age kids, but not middle class people. That’s been true for a long time.

How would you even consider thinking you know that . Of course middle class people own cars. Everything has gone up in price but people are not giving up cars or giving up buying cars for their kids. Some parents split the costs of a used car with their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

It is very much a middle class thing to buy your kid a used car or their old car.

No, it’s not. Real middle class people don’t even own their own cars. They certainly don’t have enough extra cash to drop 20k plus insurance, taxes, and registration to subsidize their college student having a car.

Rich people buy or lease cars for their college age kids, but not middle class people. That’s been true for a long time.

How would you even consider thinking you know that . Of course middle class people own cars. Everything has gone up in price but people are not giving up cars or giving up buying cars for their kids. Some parents split the costs of a used car with their kid.

I think what PP was saying is that MC people owe the bank a lot on any car they have or the car is leased. So they have no car to give. Likely they cannot lease another or get a loan for another. Even if they could the insurance payments are very high for teen drivers. I agree that MC parents may help out a teen in getting a car but they do not have enough to buy one. UMC may hand down a car or lease another. Rich buy new cars like almost every kid at our private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

It is very much a middle class thing to buy your kid a used car or their old car.

No, it’s not. Real middle class people don’t even own their own cars. They certainly don’t have enough extra cash to drop 20k plus insurance, taxes, and registration to subsidize their college student having a car.

Rich people buy or lease cars for their college age kids, but not middle class people. That’s been true for a long time.

How would you even consider thinking you know that . Of course middle class people own cars. Everything has gone up in price but people are not giving up cars or giving up buying cars for their kids. Some parents split the costs of a used car with their kid.

I know lots of middle class people and every single one I know either has tens of thousands of dollars of car debt or leases their vehicles (the URM ones).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never wanted a car in my 20s. I preferred to live close in and walk or take public transit everywhere

If you're UMC and could afford to send your kid to college, subsidize their rent, pay their cell phone bill, and medical insurance, why would you want your 23 year old daughter to rely on sketchy public transportation in a dangerous city full of homeless, mentally ill, ex cons, kids fighting, people blasting music and video games on speak phones?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No because most of these kids want to move to cities where they won't need one and it would just be a pain.

+100 Mine is heading to NYC. No car is needed. We will furnish the apartment instead.

All those posh apartment buildings in Brooklyn have garages.

Yeah…so do Manhattan buildings but few people without kids are paying $1000+ per month to garage a car that gets used almost never. Also, most of those garages are for people parking overnight that don’t even live in the building.

+1000

Who would want a car in NYC? You cannot use it. if you take it out, you have to pay to park wherever you are going, so you sit in traffic for 30 mins and pay $40-50 to park it. It's easier and cheaper to uber both ways.

And after the $500+/month to pay to park, you also can add $500/month for insurance. Much easier to just rent a vehicle when you want to drive somewhere outside the city for a vacation or such

Not to mention the tolls are like $20 just to cross the bridge.

+1

The typical Manhattanite or even Brooklyn typically do not have cars. It's simply not worth the $$$, stress and hassle.

Last time I was in NYC, took Uber from LGA to Times Square area. Once we entered NYC at midtown tunnel, it was over an hour to go 1.8 miles to the hotel. It could be walked in 35 mins easily. Had we not had tons of luggage (moving kid out from college, so several large suitcases) I would have defiantly ended the trip and walked (or taken the subway). Why would anyone drive there own vehicle in that mess??!!? (hint, they dont')

The super rich have cars for when they leave the city. They also have private garages under their townhouses or even car elevators. Also some parts of Queens and Brooklyn are more suburban and cars are more common. But Manhattan for the most part is carless.

My daughter doesn’t even have a driver’s license. She knows the subways by heart and takes Ubers. She did recently get her permit. I drove with her in Astoria and I hope she never needs to drive. It was bad.

Most of our son's classmates at GULC had cars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People buy their kids cars. It’s not an UMC thing. It’s a parent thing.

MC parents don’t have the money to send their kids to college and afford to buy their kids cars. These days, that’s getting harder for even UMC families.

Not true. I took loans for college, my parents never made above $60k combined and they still bought me a used Corolla. This was pretty common in our very middle class area. Kids needed (cheap) cars to be able to work. There were no busses or metro trains.

It is very much a middle class thing to buy your kid a used car or their old car.

No, it’s not. Real middle class people don’t even own their own cars. They certainly don’t have enough extra cash to drop 20k plus insurance, taxes, and registration to subsidize their college student having a car.

Rich people buy or lease cars for their college age kids, but not middle class people. That’s been true for a long time.

How would you even consider thinking you know that . Of course middle class people own cars. Everything has gone up in price but people are not giving up cars or giving up buying cars for their kids. Some parents split the costs of a used car with their kid.

I think what PP was saying is that MC people owe the bank a lot on any car they have or the car is leased. So they have no car to give. Likely they cannot lease another or get a loan for another. Even if they could the insurance payments are very high for teen drivers. I agree that MC parents may help out a teen in getting a car but they do not have enough to buy one. UMC may hand down a car or lease another. Rich buy new cars like almost every kid at our private.

You have a biased view of middle class Americans. The ones I know pass their paid-off used cars that are still in good working order to their kids and buy something new(er) for themselves. I know some families with four cars because they buy new and keep the cars in the family until it doesn’t make sense to repair them.