I absolutely love giving What I’m Doing Now updates on the blog. As I have mentioned before, it gives me the opportunity to share all the little details of life that don’t necessarily fit into one post.
In fact, since I have enjoyed the What I’m Doing Now posts so much, I started a weekly bump update giving you all a peek into what this final pregnancy is looking like. I’ve heard from a few people that they have enjoyed the recent weekly bump updates. That makes me smile. Thank you.
What I’m Doing Now
Well, enough about that. Let’s jump into what’s been going on. Aside from expecting our new addition, my oldest son is patiently waiting on his driver’s license and a car.
With this in mind, we have been having discussions about budgeting over the past few months in regards to getting a used car for him. We have discussed how much he has to work to maintain the car such as gas, oil changes, and possibly insurance, as well as talking about how many doors the car can have. Yes, this is a discussion.
Growing Up; My First Car
When we were growing up, my dad got us all cars; it’s four of us. But he would only get us two-door cars. His reason was that it made the statement that we were to only ride with one other person which was less distracting while driving. He explained that with four doors, you are more likely to invite more people causing more distraction. What an interesting perspective!
Being the oldest and only girl, I was the only one fortunate enough to get a brand new car – fresh off the lot. It was a 1998, black, two-door Chevy Cavelier. I was in love with that car!
At the time, my dad was in real estate and paid the monthly car note. My responsibility was to work enough to keep gas in my car, pay my monthly car insurance, and get an oil change once every three months. It was all very manageable.
While I am very blessed to have had that opportunity, I won’t be extending that to my children. Instead, they will get a used car. After having my own experiences and watching others, I don’t believe that a 16-year-old should have a brand new car.
What do you think?
New Drivers are Still Learning
Why? Because at 16-years-old you are still learning and making mistakes. Do you know how many times I hit something, dented something, and once even wrecked that car? Thankfully, I kept up on my insurance!
With all of this in mind, we are discussing the next steps for his future vehicle, a two-door of some sort.
The budget for this car is $5000. While the goal is to have the full amount saved and pay for the car in full, that may not be an option with the current state of the economy including the pandemic, supply chain shortages, rising gas prices, etc. Not to mention we have a new baby on the way. All of which is very exciting yet can be very costly.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Figuring Out Our Loan Options
Given all of these factors, we may finance a used car, and make small payments on it. Knowing that this may be an option, I’ve been researching several online car payment calculators that can help us with the process of estimating our payments.
For example, CarPaymentCalculator.net offers a variety of interactive calculators to help you determine what you can comfortably afford. I’ve specifically been playing with the numbers on the Bi-Weekly Car Loan Calculator.
The calculator shows how much your bi-weekly car payments will be and how much interest you will pay on your vehicle. Each year has 52 weeks or 26 biweekly periods in it, which makes shifting from monthly payments to biweekly payments create an effective 13th monthly payment to pay down the loan quicker which is important to us because we don’t want to be paying for more than a year if we have to go this route.
In addition to the calculator that I’m using most which uses instant appearing calculation results, it also has the ability to calculate a car price that fits your monthly payment or loan payment amounts, offers printable amortization schedules, etc.
These features are important to me, as it goes along with the My First Car Savings printable that I created for my son to help him be more accountable during this journey.
FREE DOWNLOAD – My FIRST CAR SAVINGS WORKSHEET PDF
Final Thoughts
Having these tools readily available is extremely helpful and appreciated regardless if your goal is to purchase a new or used car. I’m sure that those who are going through similar situations with new teenage drivers will find the calculators to be helpful, as well.
