We have two weeks until my daughter's graduation. Prom is tonight with some of DD's friends sleeping here afterwards.
She will be commuting to a local State University in the fall so we are getting a car for graduation. Yes...I know...it sounds insane!. I always thought it was crazy for parents to give their kid a car for high school graduation.
She has been driving a 2001 Ford Escape that has been great. Recently, however, we have had to put about $1000 of repairs into it. In addition, my son just got his license and since our high school is 25 minutes away and he does year round sports, he needs a car. Sooo....we decided to let him use the Escape and we will get her a newer car that will hopefully see her through many years. We also want her to have something reliable to commute in as well as for getting back and forth to work.
We went back and forth on whether we should surprise her or not. We have decided, however, that it might be more fun for her to pick it out on her own. We also don't plan on getting a brand new car, but maybe a 2012 or 2013.
When we realized her tutition will only be about $7000 a year, buying a car actually seems really cheap. She was accepted to five schools...all with scholarships, but the others would have been $24,000 to $40,000. Buying her a car is still much cheaper than one year for her to live on campus.
I think she will be totally surprised because DH is due to get a car from work in July and we told her we would just let her use his old car. But it is a standard that both kids hate driving and also has almost 150,000 miles on it. In addition, the Escape will not last forever.
Can't believe how fast the years went!