If you’re a large family like us, then chances are you work hard to balance the budget each month.
We’re very blessed by what the Lord gives us and want for nothing that we truly need. But now that the children are getting older (Read that: Now that they’re able to get their driver’s license), we’re faced with a new financial dilemma — the price of a young driver’s auto insurance.
And simply put, it’s virtually unaffordable.
Which has led us to praying through and weighing the benefits of allowing our children to get their license at 16 or waiting until perhaps 18 (or even older).
Already, we have one daughter who’s 18 and doesn’t drive. She manages without a car for the time being, although that likely will change soon. The demands of her current studies will require a more convenient mode of travel than Dad driving her everywhere but for the time being, the benefits of paying for her auto insurance or asking her to work to pay for it do not outweigh the costs.
And the son turning 16 in May is completing his driver’s education requirements now, albeit without any expectation that a driver’s license awaits him later that month. It’s more about convenience and cost-savings that he’s taking the course now.
He’d like to work this summer to earn money, but not necessarily so as to pay for auto insurance. With a grocery store within walking distance, we don’t need another driver to run up and get some milk or eggs, and there’s no other place he currently needs to drive.
So here we are. Two children living in the United States and of or near the age to legally drive, and we still haven’t done it.
Costs are the biggest hindrance, but our needs at the moment just don’t dictate it. We can wait, all of us, and our children haven’t been raised to expect it.
Each of you is different, and we’re sure you’ve found other solutions to your car and driving dilemmas. Share your thoughts below. We’d love to hear them and are sure other straddle parents would, too.
We have 14 children and I am big on teaching personal responsibility. We always thought our kids wouldn’t get a license until they could pay for their own insurance. Things didn’t turn out that way, however. We live in a rural area and our kids have started community college at age 16. The college is 20 miles away from us. There is no way I could drive them there and pick them up everyday and our rural area means no nearby bus stops. So, they get their license at 16 so they can drive themselves to school.
Our kids are ambitious, hard-working and completely un-entitled. They all find work and jobs whenever they can. For now, we pay for insurance because I need them to drive.
Ditto what Renee said only we are about 30 miles away from everything. One of mine decided to wait an extra year to take college classes so he is 17 and still only has a permit.