YMELORD

YMELORD - A license place Jeff and I saw the other day and fell in love with. Perfect for our daughter. A truly good, smart, intelligent, caring person who is a magnet for bad luck. She's one of those people you just wish you had a Magic Wand to wave over her and make her life as good as she deserves. We got the estimate to fix the Montero... not good news. $3500 minimum. We just can't put that kind of money into a car that has an engine with questionable life left in it. So, we need to help Mary find new transportation. She currently has Jeff's car, but he really wants his car back (and I want to have MY car back since he takes my car to work every day and leaves me with no transportation). That's all well and good for a temporary solution, but we need to move on. Mary wants a good car. I know it. I can't blame her. However, her credit is awful from really bad choices a few years ago, and it's coming back to bite her in the butt now. (For all you parents out there who don't see your child suffering the consequences of their actions, just wait it out. Everything does come back to them sooner or later.) We don't see her financially able to make a big car payment, so Jeff's not willing to co-sign for a car loan for her... So what do we do? She has to have a car to get to work, and she has to have a car that runs well and is safe transportation and reasonably good on gas. We're her parents. I'm sure there are parents out there who say, "Deal with it yourself" but we aren't that kind of parent. Good? Bad? Who knows... but we are who we are. So it looks like we're going to buy Mary a used car. She will make car payments directly to us. It will not be anything fancy, and probably not even pretty! But it will be a car. It will be safe transportation to and from work. It will be as cheap as we can possibly get away with, which doesn't seem to be very cheap these days. I'm hoping we can do this for $3500 or less. Meanwhile, we're asking Mary to spend the next two to three years repairing her credit problems so that when this used car goes (and we know it will!), she will be able to get a car loan at a reasonable interest rate on her own. That seems a very fair thing to ask, to me. I'm not sure how Mary will feel about it (Hey! I hear you parents out there saying, "Oh well!"), but it is what it is. We'll help you this one last time, but you have to put yourself in a situation where you don't need help after this. Yeah, that's fair. As I re-read that, I know it's fair. We'll do our part to help, but YOU have to show us you are willing to help yourself from here on out. Lordy, who knew being parents of an adult child was going to be so tough??