How much did it cost you to get your 17 year old on the road, and how did you afford it?

[Howsaboutthat]

My eldest turns 17 this year, and is very keen to get out on the road. I've told her she'd better start saving now as I don't have the £4,000 required to get her on the road.

Breakdown of costs:
£2,000 Insurance for Vauxhall corsa, Nissan Micra type car (who insures their 17 year old nowadays?!)
£400 Driving lessons (20 x £20 1 hour lessons)
£100 for driving test and theory test
£250 Road Tax (dependent on car)
£50 MOT
£400 Provision for tyres/work if cheap car
£800 for an old banger (that I'm not too happy about my child being in but costs must)

AIBU to wonder how people do this? Should I have been saving for this day since she was born?

My parents paid for lessons up till my first test, which I failed. This was for my 17th birthday. Then I was on my own. I didn't start lessons again or buy a car until I'd left university and had a ft job, just couldn't afford it.

DH was working FT anyway aged 17 (back in 1876 or thereabouts ) so paid for it all himself.

My sister is just learning now aged 21, paying for it herself,

My brother is 35 and passed his test and bought a car last week, he couldn't afford to do it until then. The car is a bit of an old banger but is in good nick, he's going to get something bigger/better when he's been driving around for a while and his insurance drops, then pass the car on to my sister. Hoping it will stay on the road for long enough to pass on to dd1 in a few years once she's old enough to drive. I will expect my dd's to contribute to their driving when the time comes, even if we could afford to pay for it all ourselves (which I doubt) because I am mean and tight with cash I think that as adults they should pay their way a bit even if they're still at home.

Oh, and my friend's dd bought a car aged 17, she kept the insurance down by having a box thingy fitted to it so she can't drive it between 11pm and 6am. IIRC it still cost £1400 pa but a lot less than it could have been otherwise. She's a full time student with a part time job, she pays to run the car herself.

Insuring your sons car in your name is called fronting and is insurance fraud marriedinwhite. if the insurance company find out they can cancel your policy and recover the cost of the claim from you, and you would essentially be uninsured, so could also be in trouble with the police for being uninsured. you would also have to declare the fact you had had insurance cancelled if you took out any other motor policies.

definately not recommended!

You do need to buy them a car if your is anything bigger than a corsa or something.

DS bought his own Corsa for £2k by selling his drumkit and a few other bits. I pd his insurance £1,5k for first year, going down next month to £1k, I pay for petrol, maintenance, MOT and tax.

So for the first year it's cost me about £2,200 inc (£100 cash to a lady whose fence he skidded onto in the ice).

My take on it is that dh and I chose to live in the middle of nowhere with no public transport. After years of paying for taxis to take him to rowing etc (I wasn't going to get up at 7am on a Sat), I don't feel much worse off than before.

Gave him £500 for doing well in his GCSEs and that's how he funded the lessons (and, thank God, passed first time!).

Had we lived in a city or big town with public transport I wouldn't have been so accomodating.

Bugger,I thought it cost a lot over here

My Dd1 is actually at drivers ed class as we speak. It cost $900 that includes 30 hours of classroom stuff,12hours of driving lessons and 6 hours of driving observation.I then have to do an additional 40 hours of driving with her ( please help me,shes clueless ).

If you are under 18 you have to do drivers ed or you wont get insurance,if your over 18 you dont have to do it but it will chop a huge chunk off your insurance cost ( they say about $1000 ) a year.

My oldest son who is 20 bought my old car. It is old and there is no outstanding loan on it so he has basic insurance,costs $80 a month but when he started it was $120.

My middle son ,19, also bought his own first car,same deal with the insurance.He killed it within a year.Talked me into financing him a good car,promised to make payments etc. He crashed it 5 weeks after I bought it,caused $2700 worth of damage to it.A week after he got it back he rear ended at BMW. His insurance is now $360 a month. He is away at college and due to his class schedule cannot work enough to make the payments or pay the insurance,so muggins here is doing it

Dd1 has saved for a year and has almost $4000 saved up to get a car when she passes her test.

I paid for all the drivers ed and I pay all the insurance, both my sons are at college and need the cars to get there but cant afford to pay for them if you know what I mean. My Dd is still in high school. I have also been known to put gas in the cars if they are totally skint.

I cant wait till they get proper jobs and leave home :o

son saved since he was almost 16, we said we would match what he saved, he got a £1k corsa, passed after 23 lessons, £2700 first year insurance, which went down to £998 this his 2nd year, so all in it cost about £5k to get him on the road, its odd watching your "child" drive himself to school in his uniform!
now he is at uni he travels all over as he is a competitive archer, so its been invaluable to him, i think its a skill everyone should learn asap, but its very costly

Ignoring the rights or wrongs of buying a DC a car at 17, we have just started to research the cost of insurance on a newish car for DD when she turns 17. After an hour with a local broker we know that engine size is a key factor so a 1.4 Polo would be £4 to £4.5k first year, a Toyota Aygo/Peugeot/Citroen C1 (all really the same car and DH thinks lack impact protection) comes down to £3 to £3.5k. Most shocking - basic Mini One £7,500! Mini is due to cost of having to pay BMW rates for repairs. Insurance seems to drop by about £500 in the following year. Buying a cheaper car may bring the cost down a bit but the insurance will still be out of all proportion to car value.

Good luck with the budget OP.

At what age does insurance become more realistic?

I passed my test at 22 and my first year insurance was 750 for a new 1.3cc car. Put a high excess on the car and put yourself on the insurance as a named driver if you have a good driving record (as i said before insuring it for your dc is fraud), go for fully comp as its pretty much the same cost as tpft. Park it in a garage overnight if you can as that will reduce premiums. dont modify the car. 10 month accelerator policy and pass plus should help too

saintmerryweather we checked out the insurance situation with our broker. The car was purchased from my bank account, is registered in my name and is legally my car. The insurance on it is in my name and my son is a named driver. Is that still fronting? If so, I need to discuss further with the broker.

Marriedinwhite - if you did it with the intention of your DS being the main driver and he is the main driver, afaik yes it is still fronting. Is that the case with you?

What tidydancer said

married It is 'fronting' if your son drives the car more than you do!
If you use the car to go to work or to go out in the day whilst he is at work/school/college and he only uses it occasionally in the evenings,weekends or holidays, then that is not fronting. It is all about who is the main user of the vehicle - not who paid for it or whose name it is registered in.

There are three 17 year olds close to my house. They were all bought new cars upon passing test!!

One got a cute fiat 500 two years ago. I was a bit :-0

Then they all went to fee paying schools too.

Think my children may be dissapointed when i make them pay for their own cars! Like i did.

Well I think I use it more than he does rather than use my huge beast. I use it for work, and work across three sites and for many local journeys where I know I have to park in tiny London spaces. I reckon I clock up about 100 miles to less than 50 pw for him. So I think we are right. We are effectively now a three car family. DH and I can drive any car but DS can drive only the Ka but he isn't on the other insurances - not sure what the situation is with the GWiz but DS wouldn't be seen dead in it anyway. Therefore the insurance advice was correct then.

Sounds alright then! just your first post made it seems a bit like you were insuring his car and you were only using it a bit.

the main driver must be insured as the main driver, otherwise it is fronting, which is insurance fraud and you all I hope know the consequences of that. What is ok, and sometimes helps, is to put parents on the child's insurance as named drivers - i.e. the other way round.

this and the fact that 1 in 4 boys chuck their Corsas into the scenery each year that they drive, means that their insurance is very high. The EU gender equality ruling means it is now as bad for the girls. And because the Corsas/Micras are the weapon of choice for the youngsters, they are now an expensive car to insure.

it's not the £800 car (which will be perfectly ok if you choose correctly and maintain it), it's the nut on the wheel.

let her fund it all herself. If she waits until 25 she will still be perfectly able to learn to drive, and her premiums will be lower.

You forgot £50 for the provisional license and then £50 to change it to full after she passes!

Im not planning on paying for my DC's cars.
Sure, I would buy a block of lessons for birthday but I think by the age of 18, as an adult, a car is a luxury, not a necessity....so if they want to drive while a uni, they need to fund the car or wait until in employment to fund it.

Apparently, I'm sharing my car with DD. Oh really? I don't think so!

DD had a 2 hour lesson on her 17th birthday and I paid for that, plus the license. That was her birthday present. She's not had any since, because she is saving her own money, to buy a block of lessons.

marriedinwhite I'm going to copy your promise of no motorbike = driving lessons (not sure I can run to a car too).

I've saved all the dc's birthday and xmas money over the years with vague plans to use it for driving lessons once they hit 17/18. It's a life skill so I hope I can support them to achieve it.

DS began driving lessons when he turned 17. I was on benefits then, and I paid for his first 2 lessons for his birthday.
From then on, he paid for all of his own driving lessons, paid for his own theory test and driving test.

After he passed his test, he borrowed £400 from his GM to buy a 2nd hand car, and paid his insurance on a monthly direct debit.

His insurance was £3K for the first year!!

There is no way I could have afforded to pay on his behalf!! Tbh, I don't think it would have helped him either. DS is the type who looks after anything he has bought, but if it is given to him, it kind of loses its value in his eyes IYSWIM.

married
What you initially described does sound like fronting, but with your further explanation you are probably OK.
However if your son does have an accident you can expect your insurance company to ask some hard questions because they are very much on the lookout for this sort of thing.
Also of course as he is not the main driver he will not be building up any NCD for when he does get his own policy.