Better believe it.
Though I might hafta look towards the old 427ci corvettes from the old days. The only problem with that is, the fact that even a 427 clone is about as much, if not more, than a brand new one. numbers matching 427s are going for more than a new Z06. Same problem with a Shelby gt-500. 67s are going for $100k or more for originals, clones(the Elanor vehicle does NOT exist) are goin for $50k up.
Of course, I could just go totally off kilter and buy a Hummer H1, or maybe H2. 
jmfay:
Regardless of what he could have done it is none of your business. I think it is wonderful that his daughter has a full scholarship to a prestigious school like MIT. My daughter is 17 and a senior in high school. She has always been a straight A student. I will be buying her the car of her choice (under $20,000) for a graduation gift.
Working is a great way but not the only way to learn the value of a dollar. My wife and I are both college educated and we both had to work while attending school. I do not want my children to have to divide there time between work and school. I instilled the value of money when they were young by example. That is why I can buy her the car and pay CASH for it.
~Michael
Its great that you can afford to give your daughter a $20,000 and also Craig58 with his $10,000 car. Not everyone can afford to do that. This country has a great gap between the haves and the have nots which has grown larger with Bush and his policies.
Working and volunteering are the few ways that kids or people can appreciate what they have or what others dont. Its not going to kill any kid to have to work during summers or long breaks. There are plenty of jobs out there for people looking and we dont see how this is going to take attention from anyone’s studies if they are on break from university.
We also have a program at our local high school which forces students who want a specific achievement on their diploma to do so many hours of volunteer work. It seems to be a great idea for kids to give back to their communities and these kids still maintain good grades as well.
jmfay:
My daughter volunteers 20 hours a week in the local schools tutoring young people to read. She is a member of the local 4H club, and still is able to maintain her grades.
She has learned to take nothing for granted. She is a very hard working girl who does not need the added stress of a job.
~Michael
Its great that you can afford to give your daughter a $20,000 and also Craig58 with his $10,000 car. Not everyone can afford to do that. This country has a great gap between the haves and the have nots which has grown larger with Bush and his policies.
I don’t think it’s so much politicians as much as it is the parents. We live in a time of living both beyond our means simply because we can get credit or loans to pay for things. How many people do you know that will buy a new $3000 TV and everything for it for the living room, put it on their credit card, but only make minimum payments on their card.
Friend of mine at work loves his card because he only has to pay $50/month for his $1700 tv. He told me that some finance person told him it was better for your credit score to keep that balance on there and make just over minimum each month. I think I’ll take the hit on my score paying off everything at the end of the month. I only charge what I can afford for the month, and the very rare occasions I’ve had to split it up over 2 months. I haven’t checked recently, nor do I really care what my credit score is, but a couple years ago I was told by a mortgage broker that it was like 796 or something like that.
Another friend of mine is a typical “debter”, living month to month by what he can afford on the monthly payments. He bought things on the “6~12 month same as cash” deals and made only minimum payments, thus compounding interest on them and he’s still paying for them 2 years later. He also has an '03 Taurus which he wanted to get rid of because “it was a piece of junk”. He owes something to the tune of 10 grand on it. I told him that even if he cleaned out his bank account, he’d still be upside down on the car. He bought a fleet car which depreciates very rapidly, you might get that car paid off, but you’re gonna be paying for the the new car AND the Taurus.
I was paying on 2 car loans(yes I took one out for the chevelle to get it fixed up), when 1 was paid for(about a year early I might add) I took that and put it towards my other loan, which I paid off a couple months ago(about 2 years early). So, if there is a person out there with near/at perfect credit score, I’m probably it. Do I care, no, I’m not gonna rush into a new car loan just yet. Provided I can invest my money right(CDs most likely), I’ll either use it to pay cash, or a really good chunk of the cost. I’m lucky to have had a good example of living within your means, and plan to stick with it. Could I afford to go out and just do a $1000 down for a brand new corvette convertible and make monthly payments on it? Yes. Do I want to? No.
If mom can afford it and is willing to buy a muscle car for her son I don’t have a problem with it.
The only thing would be that her son is level-headed, trustworthy, a good student, and mom knows for a fact that if the kid says he ain’t hammering the car he ain’t lying.
This topic reminds me of a kid (17 years old, graduated HS now) here whose parents bought him a stunning, bright red/white panels '71 Chevelle SS with a 454.
The parents THEN sent it down and paid to have a dual stage nitrous system added.
This kid beat this car into the pavement and was going through 2-3 bottles of NOS a week! Even with nobody to street race, he would just purge the NOS at the light and smoke the tires for the heck of it. The parents were also putting new tires on the rear of this car on a monthly basis.
After finally wiping the engine out of it he decided to go the tuner route and someone who really loves and respects the Chevelle got it.
Its great that you can afford to give your daughter a $20,000 and also Craig58 with his $10,000 car. Not everyone can afford to do that. This country has a great gap between the haves and the have nots which has grown larger with Bush and his policies.
Please don’t lump me into this political argument. Anything I have is a result of working for it, I am not going to apologize for being able to support my family. I am currently in a hotel room 1000 miles from home, I just spent the last 12 hours working. As some one said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” I’ve been working since I was 14, that’s how you go from being a “have not” to a “have.”
I have no problem with kids working while they are not in school, it’s good experience. I also think volunteering is very good experience, my daughter’s high school also requires the students to complete a certain amount of volunteer work before they graduate. However, I will not allow my kids to work while they are in school, I simply do not think it is the best use of their time.
bscar:
Just to set the record straight I only make payments on my house. Everything else I own free and clear. When I buy my daughter a car I will pay cash. I have worked very hard in my life and invested well.
~Michael
I’d rather have a C6 than an old Vette. So would Colin Powell. (He definitely does not want a Z06, however.)
I can’t wait for the days of Mad Max when fuel will be a scarce item…its gonna be fun!!!
Even in that movie with fuel a scarce item…they had big blown V8’s…gotta love it!
I want my kids paying attention to school, not spending their time working for $10/hour to pay for some POS beater.
Can’t agree more…With my daughters workload at MIT she doesn’t have time for a job…AND maintain her 3.8 average. If I can help her NOT worry about expenses…but just worry about finishing college and getting a good job afterwords then I’m doing my job as a parent.
I’m not saying you were, just making a broad generalization.
Why do you think there are so many foreclosures and repos? Because people have a few pesos in their pockets, they need to spend it.
Cousin of mine was renting out a house to a (young)couple, the 0% finance gimmick had just come out, so the couple went and bought TWO brand new vehicles at the 0% finance charge. The couple had to move out because they couldn’t afford the rent AND car payments.
Credit is ridiculously easy to get, so many people take advantage of it and get so far in debt they’ll never hope to recover, even if they live to be 200 years old. And they pass this way of life to their children, because it’s the only way the kids know how to live.
The T’bird was safe. We spent about $300 making sure it was, before we gave him the keys. New brakes, new tires, new exhaust…
It was huge, too! Other than it’s little (oil) drinking problem, it was a nice car.
Not a babe magnet, but good solid transportation.
It did the job, got him to/from school for 2 years.
So she goes to MIT year round? She cant work in the summers or during long breaks?
Yea she goes to school year round. Usually only taking 1-2 classes during the summer. And she does work during the summer…But the money she makes BARELY covers any expenses she has. A full scholorship doesn’t cover all the stuff for like notebooks and everything you need for labs. I suspect we put out another $2k just for everything her scholorship DOESN’T cover.
What bothered me was mommy not having the back bone to tell the son: “this is the car you are going to get”, period the end. If you don’t like it, you can walk.
Amen! Amen! The thought that occurred to me after I heard the caller was “whatever happened to parents putting their foot down and saying, ‘No!’”? Why do parents think they have to be best buddies with their kids? They’re supposed to give them direction and guidance to do the right thing, not indulge in idle self-satisfaction. Oh wait a minute, that’s how all the Boomer parents are these days?
If the teen wants a muscle car to show off his oversupply of testosterone or whatever, sure he can have one – if he pays for the car, repairs to bring it up to decent shape, maintenance, insurance, gas, and of course, traffic tickets. If he can afford all that, he can have the car.
I had to beg for the keys to the family car all the way through high school (and was rarely given them). I bummed rides to and from college for my first three years. Finally my senior year I was lent the family’s VW Beetle only because I had an “away” co-op job and needed to commute.
It never ceases to amaze and disgust me at how kids today regard it as a God-given right to drive a “nice” car (e.g., not embarrassing) to school, to the mall, to here, to there, all on Daddy’s dime. Never mind the school bus or public transport or a bicycle or, God forbid, their feet – that’s all so uncool. This country is lost, I’m afraid. If we are to learn anything from whatever the upcoming Catastrophe turns out to be, it will have to be something as bad as the Great Depression + WW II to reset our society’s attitudes. Maybe we need no cheap oil + economic collapse + WW III (fought over oil supplies)? The U.S. certainly deserves whatever happens to it!
The oil numbers are all wrong. Work the math – if the U.S. had a reserves-to-annual production ration of 10.4, we certainly didn’t produce 353.5 billion barrels, especially on reserves of 29.7 billion! Even if production and reserve headings were simply reversed, it shows we’d be out of domestic oil in a decade. I seem to recall that Saudi Arabia has the largest reserves at something over 100 billion barrels, so I have no idea where these numbers came from.
Come back with corrected figures and make whatever point it was you were trying to make.
No, rbombard deserves a Medal of Honor for not being a stupid gun-toting republican automaton, obediently parroting the White House’s criminal line.
By the way, the current war will (or should) go down in history as “Bush’s Vendetta”. Remember why we invaded? The constant drumbeat of “9/11”, “WMD”, “9/11”, “WMD”,…? Bush had a grudge against Saddam Hussein for trying to bump off his old man and was looking for a plausible excuse to go in since the late 90s. He (and Dickless Cheney) lied to everyone, and most Americans were stupid enough to believe the story (for the record, I wasn’t). I’m not going to try to defend S.H. – he was an evil man (and the less said about his beastly sons, the better). Maybe someday Iraq will be a better place without him, but 1) he did keep the lid on sectarian violence 2) the U.N. did keep him in a box, WMD-wise, and 3) he hated the mohammaden terrorists and vice-versa. History will show that Bush (and his puppet master, Cheney) were equally as evil as S.H. or O.b.L.
to the contrary, there is a STRONG argument we DID GO into iraq FOR the oil.
look at the size of the reserves there! (also note, the reserves in Iran. and all the drum beating for another EXCUSE to go to war there.)
current production, or even that in 2000, is secondary. we (or more accurately, the Big Oilys) are there for the long term. they seek to control those reserves.
yes, i agree. for all the flak others are giving him, rbombard makes a valid point.
there is more of a CONNECTION between oil and war than most understand. japan would NEVER have attacked us at pearl harbor in 1941, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Roosevelt made a decision to DENY THEM OIL. true fact. (the excuse then, was their actions in china. but that had been fully tolerated from 1937 thru june 1941.)
now, the Big Oilys want to ensure that the u.s. MAINTAINS CONTROL over as much of the planet’s oil reserves as we can. while our own domestic reserves continue to dwindle. (and yet again, the administration had LIED to the american people to justify a war, with a CREATED “enemy.”)
(this post was in response to skypilot.)