3 Tips For Taking Your Teen To Buy Their First Car
If you have a teen that’s about to start driving, both of you might be anxious for them to get behind the wheel in their own car. However, a bit more should go into this process than just buying a car for your teen and handing over the keys.
To help ensure that you’re teaching your teen during this process, here are three tips for taking your teen to buy their first car.
Make Sure They Understand All The Costs Beforehand
Before you allow your teen to get a car for themselves, you should first go over all of the financials together. It’s very likely that your teen doesn’t fully understand the financial commitment that they’ll be taking on by owning a car, or even just driving a car that you as their parent will own.
In addition to paying for the car, be it an out-right payment or monthly payments, your teen will also have to pay for things like car insurance, gas, and maintenance. And depending on where you live and where you teen is planning on taking their car, they might also have to pay for things like parking, toll roads, and more. So before you go through the process of helping your teen to get their first car, make sure you are both aware of what the costs will be and have a plan for covering these costs.
Get Something Used
While your teen might have some grand ideas about what they wanted their first car to be, what’s generally going to be best for any teen is to get a used car. Because teens are just learning how to drive and have a higher chance of getting into a car accident or causing other damage to a vehicle, driving a safe and quality used car should be your default choice.
Before you go out looking for a used car, speak with your teen about what they should be looking for. Talk about how many miles they should aim for, how to get the car inspected to make sure it will run well for them, and more.
Teach Them About Negotiating With Salespeople
Cars are one of the few areas where most people recognize that you can and should negotiate on price. However, most teens won’t have any kind of experience with this, unless you count negotiating with you on the time their curfew is set. But learning how to negotiate at this point in their life can be a great skill to develop. So prior to heading off to any kind of dealership or meeting with a seller, teach your teen some tips about negotiating, like knowing the worth of the car before they see it and being prepared to walk away from a bad deal.
If you’ll be helping your teen to buy their first car in the near future, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you both prepare for this experience.