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I'm having a hard time imagining what world you live in where teenagers have ~$3000 + gas money in disposable income from their $7.25/hour jobs and no pressure

I'm having a hard time imagining what world you live in where teenagers have ~$3000 + gas money in disposable income from their $7.25/hour jobs and no pressure to save it for college. My suburb was probably in the top 1% of property values in the state and only a few (~10 out of 250) kids "owned" cars, which their finance-industry parents bought them. Most garages were 2-car, and you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow. I was actually offered my grandmother's car for free when she died, but my parents refused it because they didn't want to deal with 3 cars in a 2-car driveway and garage. No one else had any say in what car they would drive; 99% of the time it was Mom's minivan or Prius, with constant tension over when the keys would be brought back home. 95% of my graduating class went to college, and all but a few of them lived in dorms (at least for the first year) where car ownership was neither necessary nor permitted. None of us will be thinking about buying cars until we graduate. And even then, those who will have money to buy cars they want, instead of the cheapest thing that starts, will be the San Francisco software engineers and the Manhattan investment bankers, i.e. the people who don't need them. I know a few people who got cars out of necessity for internships in remote places, and on all accounts it was a ~10-year-old, boring, practical castoff of a middle-aged relative who wanted an upgrade, to be sold when no longer necessary. Personally, I'd love a Jetta but I can't imagine what I'd use it for, and for the same amount of money I can get a fully-loaded rMBP, an iPhone, and less student debt.

ocb 11y ago
I agree with you... However, where do you (or your parents, I guess) live where you have a 2-car garage but not enough space to park a car on the street in front of your house? (snow isn't a real excuse, plenty of people in snowy places don't park their cars in garages)
- superuser2 11y ago
  Municipal ordinance - parking between midnight and 5am by permit only, only n nights per year per resident. Not sure how common this is for suburbia, but I gather it's not hugely unusual.
  - ocb 11y ago
    Wow, that's a hassle. Okay, I guess snow is a valid excuse then, haha.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Where is that? I've lived a lot of different places in the US and I've never seen anything like that outside the downtown areas of really big cities.
benaiah 11y ago
> you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow Why not? It works fine, and there are few places in the US cold enough to even require a block heater, let alone actually endangering the engine. Just have to brush it off sometimes, but it's hardly a dealbreaker. I lived almost 20 years in Alaska and never had a garage that we used for cars.
bennyg 11y ago
I live in Huntsville, AL. Where I grew up in Madison, AL, basically everybody in my graduating class had a car. Some were junkers and some were stupid expensive. I didn't have one until I bought one from my parents after my freshman year of college.
eitally 11y ago
But you need to understand that this perspective doesn't exist for the middle 90% of the country and really only applies to the large metros where things are either dense enough for cars not to be generally necessary, or public transit is acceptably good. Everywhere else, most teens need a [cheap] car just to get to & from their part time & summer jobs, or to shuttle around their younger siblings.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Public transit is worthless where I grew up. Your choices are to share your parents' cars, get driven everywhere by your parents (most common), work at one of the 3 walking-distance employers, or simply not leave the house very much.

ocb 11y ago

I agree with you... However, where do you (or your parents, I guess) live where you have a 2-car garage but not enough space to park a car on the street in front of your house? (snow isn't a real excuse, plenty of people in snowy places don't park their cars in garages)

superuser2 11y ago
Municipal ordinance - parking between midnight and 5am by permit only, only n nights per year per resident. Not sure how common this is for suburbia, but I gather it's not hugely unusual.
- ocb 11y ago
  Wow, that's a hassle. Okay, I guess snow is a valid excuse then, haha.
- Frondo 11y ago
  Where is that? I've lived a lot of different places in the US and I've never seen anything like that outside the downtown areas of really big cities.

benaiah 11y ago

> you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow Why not? It works fine, and there are few places in the US cold enough to even require a block heater, let alone actually endangering the engine. Just have to brush it off sometimes, but it's hardly a dealbreaker. I lived almost 20 years in Alaska and never had a garage that we used for cars.

bennyg 11y ago

I live in Huntsville, AL. Where I grew up in Madison, AL, basically everybody in my graduating class had a car. Some were junkers and some were stupid expensive. I didn't have one until I bought one from my parents after my freshman year of college.

eitally 11y ago

But you need to understand that this perspective doesn't exist for the middle 90% of the country and really only applies to the large metros where things are either dense enough for cars not to be generally necessary, or public transit is acceptably good. Everywhere else, most teens need a [cheap] car just to get to & from their part time & summer jobs, or to shuttle around their younger siblings.

superuser2 11y ago
Public transit is worthless where I grew up. Your choices are to share your parents' cars, get driven everywhere by your parents (most common), work at one of the 3 walking-distance employers, or simply not leave the house very much.