The moment your teens are able to drive is a moment every parent looks upon with equal amounts of excitement and dread. You’re excited because it means your child can finally learn to drive, meaning they won’t pester you for lifts every single day. It’s also just a proud moment to see your little one all grown up and driving a car!
You’re filled with dread, however, because of all the worries and concerns that come along with a teen driver. Before they start driving, you have concerns. When they get their license, you have concerns. It’s a concerning time, but the key is learning how to manage your concerns and make the best out of this situation.
In today’s post, you’ll find some of the biggest things to worry about during this period, as well as a few tips to help you manage them!
Teaching your teen to drive
Of course, your leading concern will be teaching your child to drive. They need to learn somehow, and part of the responsibility lies on your shoulders. Yes, they should get proper driving lessons, but all driving instructors suggest that new learners spend some time out in their parent’s cars away from lessons as well.
So, the onus is on you to prepare your teen for driving a car. The good news is, there’s already a blog post that explains all of this for you. If you want advice on preparing your teen for driving, check it out!
The cost of learning to drive
How much is it going to cost to teach your teen to drive? This is a big worry for a lot of parents, particularly if you have multiple children. You know that you’ll need to pay multiple times to help them access lessons – not to mention the cost of them actually driving a car.
This is where the first point becomes even more important. If you prepare your child as well as possible, they won’t need many lessons with a proper instructor. In fact, if you’re really good at preparing them, they might be able to do their test without having a formal lesson at all. This is very rare, but the point is that you can reduce the costs by providing free lessons on your own. When it comes to finding them a car to drive, well, we’ll discuss that in more detail in the next point.
Finding a car for them
Once your child has learned to drive, you have the biggest worry of all; how will they drive? More specifically, what car are they going to be driving when they have their license? You have two options here, the first is to let them drive your car.
Now, this comes with a whole host of pros and cons. The advantages of letting them drive your car are:
- Save money by not needing to buy a new car
- Feel confident that they’re safe as they learned to drive in the car
- Have more control over when they drive
On the other hand, the disadvantages are as follows:
- Your car gets driven far more often, meaning it deteriorates quicker and will need filling up with fuel more frequently
- You run the risk of your car being damaged and needing repairs due to your teen driver, meaning you don’t have a family car
- Your teen could take the car when you need it without asking
It really is a difficult situation as there are some pretty big arguments for and against it. Generally, if you want to save as much money as possible, sharing cars with your teen is the best idea.
However, if you need your car all the time, then it’s a better idea to buy a second one. You could buy a new car for yourself and give them your old one, or you could just buy them a car. Or, you might consider selling your current car and using the funds to buy two cheaper cars. If you click here, you can see details of how to sell cars at car dealerships. If you have other kids approaching the legal driving age, having a separate car is a better option as they can share it between them, rather than everyone sharing the family car.
Helping your teen get car insurance
Your approach to the previous conundrum will impact how your teen gets car insurance. Another advantage of them sharing your car is that you add them to your policy, usually meaning the cost of insurance is a lot lower than if you insure them on their own separate car.
Nevertheless, there are still ways in which you can reduce the cost of insurance for your teen. To begin, make sure you purchase a suitable car – ones that are small with small engines are always cheaper to insure than the larger ones. Secondly, you could do something that we haven’t discussed but is worth considering; you could also drive their car. Insuring yourself on both cars – and your teen on both cars – can be a smart idea as it means you will be able to drive either car legally.
You just need to weigh up the costs of being insured on both, but it can surprisingly be cheaper to add two people to both insurance packages than have one for a new driver alone. The more experienced your child gets, the cheaper their insurance will be. Oh, and don’t forget to compare insurance quotes from everyone on the market. You need to see who gives you the best deal, saving the most money.
Overall, you can break everything down into two major concerns: teaching your child to drive, and the costs of them driving. The second major concern will include everything we spoke about above; finding them a car, insuring it, and so on. Please be aware there are no right and wrong answers to all of these concerns. Some families find sharing a car much easier than others. What you need to do is look at all the different options, manage the concerns, and find the solutions that work best for you and your teen. Then, when your next child learns to drive, you can be ready to repeat it all again!
