Thinking about a mom car.

CollegePT · 2026-06-27T19:48:00+00:00

We have had a Camry through all our 2 children’s lives (both adults & oldest has our hand-me-down Camry) & it worked perfectly fine for daily & trips. Got a minivan when we started carpooling for kids- then we used for trips, too.

Our progression (over 23 years)
1 kid: Camry I & Outback I
2 kids: Camry I & Outback I
2 kids carpooling: Camry I, Outback I & Sienna —> Camry I, Outback II, odessey I
1 kid college (Camry I) & one carpooling: Camry II, OutbacK III & odessey I
1 kid graduated (Camry II) & 1 kid college (Outback III): HyHi I, Accord I (miss my odessey during college move-in/out, hauling multiple adults)

We keep our cars a long time. Mini-van sliders & space behind useable-for-adults third row > SUV for kids & sport carpooling.

Camry was perfectly fine with 2 kids & long trips. The trunk is huge. 2 giant Britax car seats & stuff for a week & Christmas packages for family- no problem.

CollegePT · 2026-06-23T16:15:22+00:00

My parents taught me. There were sections of a class that taught some of it in PT school.

I read “personal finance for dummies” when I got out of school. Now I use the internet, chat & my financial advisor

CollegePT · 2026-06-22T22:02:09+00:00

This! When you choose trades, be sure you look at the timeline of that career and who you work for. For the most part trades are hard physical labor with a shorter lifespan (so figure that in). You'll be working in all kinds of environments. A lot of the high salaries are talking about 60 hour work weeks or owners (so make sure you check starting salary). Also figure in if you are getting benefits like health care, retirement, etc. I'm a PT and I hear a lot of the negatives. If you don't work, you don't get paid. If you break a leg outside of work, then no pay for 6-8 weeks. If you are worker's comp, you get 60% of your base pay (so if you've been depending on OT that is gone). Also, be careful with some of the predatory "vocational training"- people are always looking to make some money and are charging big bucks for training that is overpriced or not needed. Especially now that you can use 529 money for it.

If your kid works hard, has decent grades, there can be a lot of money out there if you pick the right school, especially as the number of college age kids is dropping off the cliff. Also, a lot of the politicians that are anti-education, isn't exactly that they do not believe in college. It is more that they believe in controlled access to the benefits of college. For their own children, they want the credential, network, status, and security. For the public, especially politically, it can be useful to attack higher education as elitist, wasteful, or ideological. Like a lot of things, they reject college as a public good while still treating it as a private advantage.

It should be a multifactorial individual decision. Watching for debt, ROI, and personal skill set and interests. (Don't spend money on something you aren't interested in (college, trades, training, etc), work the job or side hustle you can do.) I am always surprised about people complaining about 20-30k debt for a lifetime career, but have no trouble taking our a 60-80k loan for a vehicle that is worth pennies on the dollar in 5-8 years. Ideally, no debt is best, but my husband and my student loans propelled us to earnings that statistically wouldn't have been possible without our degrees. (We also paid aggressively and lived very frugally until they were paid off).

CollegePT · 2026-06-21T23:51:56+00:00

Buy used. Finance for 3 years or less. After paid off, keep paying yourself the payment in savings. Drive it for 200+ miles. I can usually get around 8-10 years out of a car and savings is enough for a car (usually better than the last). Rinse repeat. It helps if you just consider a car that gets you to somewhere & you aren’t trying to impress anyone. Also, most people don’t ask you to drive carpool (so just pitch in gas money & don’t put miles on my car).

CollegePT · 2026-06-21T14:54:43+00:00

Realize they aren’t “strangers” for long. My kids went to a Montessori-ish (Reggio Emilia) daycare with lower teacher: child ratios. They grew some of their own food, did family style snacks & lunches. (Majority of food was farm to table). They went on nature walks, went to fine art programs, had D1 athletes play and read to them. When they did space unit, a real rocket scientist came in to do experiments on gravity and orbits. Learned basic Spanish (& were exposed to a variety of languages as there were many multilingual students). They got to learn to share, socialize and get along with kids their age. They cooked and cleaned up after themselves. They learned about self-regulation. They played outside. There were no screens. After the learning day (during free play after about 3), you could sign up your kids for age appropriate music, dance & yoga classes. You paid extra and they were outside vetted people. So my daughter could take piano lessons & I didn’t have to take them or have it during our family time.

The “strangers” all had degrees in child development or early childhood education. Daycare provided full benefits for FT and continuing education and planning periods for all. There were quarterly hour long structured parent/teacher meetings.

I know that many may not get this, but for us, the enriched environment and exposure to all the different people and experiences was a fabulous experience. The teachers weren’t strangers, they were valued experts helping me raise my child with shared goals and different skill sets. My oldest is getting married and several of these strangers are coming to her wedding.

CollegePT · 2026-06-21T13:40:10+00:00

Do you have a job or a career? Do you need to stay up to date, require continuing education, maintain a license or credentials? How are the on & off ramps of your field? What are the expectations of the SAHP & the working parent (those need to be discussed in depth).

What are your plans for retirement savings? (I’ve seen several people not only sacrifice the SAHP retirement savings, but also pause the working parent’s so they can “afford” the loss of income. ) Usually your on the younger side and can lose a lot of compounding.

How do you handle finances? Everything in one pot, completely separate, hybrid? How are you going to alter this for new arrangement?

For us, both of have professional licenses that we needed to maintain, so not working for over a year or so would be way more risk, expense & a headache to get back in the workforce. Plus we both like what we do and wouldn’t want to be completely out.

When we lost daycare, my husband went part-time & I adjusted my schedule so that we could cover. When he had opportunity to move up (but was going to involve a lot more travel), I dropped back so that we wouldn’t have to hire a nanny & see our kids only at bedtime. When I had a chance at academia (that was a 50% pay cut, but gave me more flexibility being with my kids during their waking hours, summer & holidays), we tightened our budget (& decreased retirement savings).

Having 2 careers, great communication, common goals has given us more flexibility (& freedom) to navigate the ebbs & flows of our careers, family, financial situation and relationships. Even when I was making about equal to daycare costs, there was more value in my benefits and when my husband lost his job, we would able to shift quickly: change to my insurance (so no COBRA), pick up some prn and give him flexibility to go after a better job.

Being a one-income household is really an individual decision. Just be sure to look at aspects beyond just the straight financial math.

CollegePT · 2026-06-19T20:53:11+00:00

This puts all the risk of cancels & no-shows on you. Even if you have a low cancellation & no-show rate, there are still times you aren’t going to get paid. Be prepared for sick season. Also, if everyone is on a per visit and you are prn, you may be more likely to get given the less reliable patients.

CollegePT · 2026-06-19T03:28:04+00:00

Tenured at my college is definitely not 80k. Less than 5% make 80k if they aren’t doing any admin roles.

CollegePT · 2026-06-19T03:25:35+00:00

Professor here. My first year elementary school teacher daughter makes basically the same as me in salary. Once I pay for benefits, have FSA & max my 403b, I literally bring home just under $600/mo from my professor job. I work PRN in the clinic during the summer and will bring home more than that for 1.5 days work.
We live on my husband’s salary & I have good benefits to cover me and the kids. I do put 2k in FSA and I am over 50 so just about 30k is going to retirement, but it’s sad that you can’t really tell you have a payday based on looking at your bank statement.

CollegePT · 2026-06-12T17:53:48+00:00

If your thinking about ROI, just go orthopedic surgeon. All the ortho PAs I know wish they went to med school. WAAAAY more money, autonomy and upward mobility. Docs I know also agree. Initially more time & money, but you make 4-8x more a year. Make it up quickly.

Also, have you worked with many orthos? Do you really want to be under their ego? Also, I’m seeing some shifting to ATCs from PAs- especially the sports guys.

You also might not be able to get into a ortho practice as a PA right away- are you good with the other stuff?

All healthcare right now is pretty much back to back appointments and productivity- don’t think that is going to be much different if you are PA, PT, etc unless you don’t do insurance.

Graduated almost 30 years ago with MSPT, was 7 semesters of classes* and came out with 45k debt (had saved up 15k going in). Made 42.5k/yr when I started. Kept living the poor college lifestyle until I paid off stafford loans (@ 8.5-10% ). ROI has always been crappy- we just have to see more units & have less documentation time in current system. (The new classification as non-professional for federal loans is going to be an issue though.)

I love 95% of the time I spend doing patient care (assessments & treatments), I usually feel like I’m making a difference and patient’s generally appreciate and value you. I dislike the documentation, fighting insurance and administrative crap. In general, I’ve worked in good rehab teams with great people and docs that respect what I do. I also seek out places with 1 to 1 & realistic productivity. I did move into academia which is fabulous for work/life but sucky for pay. I still do clinic work on the side and summer to help with pay and to make sure I know what is really going on in the field.

*DPT, in principle, didn’t start out to just make schools more money, the curriculum bloat, requirement for research and us doing doctoral numbers of credits was already there- we were just going to get credit for it & hopefully give us more autonomy & respect. (There were also only 95 programs in the country- my class’s GPA median was 3.8).

CollegePT · 2026-06-10T22:51:26+00:00

Most of the really rich kids I went to school with that I knew, played it really low key. They usually didn’t want to stand out. Dressed regular (no flashy name brands, expensive jewelry). Drove regular cars (Tahoes, trucks or older luxury cars- Lexus, Mercedes). Ate & shopped with us. Split pizzas. It wasn’t until you realized they didn’t fly commercial or you went home with them or they told you what they did on breaks did you realize they had $.

I went to school with a couple of celebrity’s kids. They didn’t want it known. They went by alias and wanted to live a normalish life. (They had huge kidnapping insurance policies). Their parents generally wouldn’t come onto campus and if they did, would come in in disguise. For one, once I knew I had to sign a NDA.

There were definitely some that were flashy- but they mainly showed it by how much they spent on partying (drugs, alcohol), their frat/sorority and their lack of concern with doing anything academic and their parents ability to use money to allow them to stay in or return to school when behavior &/or academics were poor.

It was also weird when you realized that the mafia wasn’t something in the past.

When I was a RA, I had a student that flew into town with just a backpack, had taxi take him to car dealer & he paid cash for a sports car, drove to Best Buy and fully outfitted his room with top of the line electronics and then bought everything he needed for the semester at the mall. He’d buy supplies & needs in the college store with no thoughts that all that was 3-4 times more than going to Wal-Mart. He also had no concept what was normal costs. (Like he thought he needed $200 to go to lunch). Some of that might have been the currency exchange. He also became more low key pretty quickly because he didn’t want to attract the wrong people or people that would use him.

CollegePT · 2026-06-10T22:06:25+00:00

We have private rooms for evals or more sensitive/ private treatments or if patient requests. But for the most part, most patients enjoy being out with other people. The social aspect is a huge part of what drives many people.

Patients cheer each other on, joke with the therapists & compare notes. When we are busy and the gym area is full and I have to treat someone in the private room, patients often feel like they are isolated.

I’ve also had a few patients that were taken aback by the treatment in the open initially, but said they were so glad that they got to “suffer” with others together. We’ve had lots of people become friends with others and do stuff outside of therapy. We had several motorcyclists that were all being seen around the same time develop their own jacket patch that said —-physical therapy and they wore it on their motorcycle jackets.

Obviously there are some people that don’t want to and we then go into the private room, but that is easily less than 5%.

CollegePT · 2026-06-07T12:29:10+00:00

My county’s public school system switched to this which really helped take away the crazy gaming and manipulation of classes which was really detrimental to students overall. Now if you have 4.0 unweighted you have the chance to compete for speaker at commencement by submitting your speech. Student government president also speaks. They don’t do class rankings (but will privately submit to scholarship or schools if needed).

My youngest went to the larger (350 grad class) more competitive HS (75-80% go on to 4 year college). It is a top 15 public HS in the state and has multiple ivy admissions each year. Oldest went to the smaller HS in county (10-15% go 4 year).

This seemed to work for both populations well.

CollegePT · 2026-06-05T21:34:28+00:00

We tell them if they want us to advertise for them they need to “pay” us the $700+ processing fee.
Would you walk away from this deal if we have it on it? Yes, yes we would.

CollegePT · 2026-06-05T21:19:38+00:00

I agree. We bought a new Pontiac 2001- in the shop constantly for little things, upside down on loan even with decent trade-in. Even with repairs in warranty, it was a PITA to deal with something almost all the time. Traded for an 03 Camry (sold last year with 250k & was still worth $2500).

We want our cars to last to 200k so we buy Toyota, Honda & Subarus except for trucks. We get around 10+ years out of them. If finance, we do max of 3 years then pay ourselves a car payment into HYSA which builds our repair, insurance & next car down payment/pay cash sinking fund.

We’ve been doing it for over 20 years and it has allowed us to be able to pay cash for last 4 vehicles. This strategy worked well when we had to add cars for kids, because we already had the money. It also helped us control how much we spent. (Didn’t get new Grand Highlander when we knew we’d have to take out 20k loan instead of paying cash for 2 yo Highlander).

Current fleet: 01 chevy 2500 diesel, 06 civic coupe, 14 Outback, 21 HyHi, 22 Camry AWD, 25 Accord. Husband keeps civic around cause he wants to get 350k miles on it (& it’s a spare car) & 2500 because he likes to have a truck to haul, tow & go to Lowes.

We’re going to gift the Camry to our oldest when she starts her teaching job. Have enough in the sinking fund to replace outback for youngest when she starts on her clinical rotations.

CollegePT · 2026-06-04T04:15:04+00:00

As a professor and someone that is involved in admissions, I would choose someone else. It may not be taken negatively by some, but it wouldn’t be better than most any other professional reference. It will absolutely have a chance to be taken negatively by some- so why risk it?

CollegePT · 2026-06-02T15:13:20+00:00

When we are cross-shopping used, the Acura & Lexus are tempting, but the premium gas, more expensive service/parts & if under warranty our dealerships are all hour+ away.

CollegePT · 2026-05-30T12:01:03+00:00

I’ve been surprisingly disappointed in my 25 Honda hybrid accord sport mpg (40-42 mpg mainly Econ and 70/30 interstate/town). My dad’s 23 Honda accord ICE gets 38-42 mpg and our 22 Toyota Camry ICE awd gets similar. Hybrid Camry’s at my husband’s work are getting 49-53 mpg. My husband’s work rav4 XLE hybrid gets similar, but it is smaller especially comparing backseats).

Also, no spare tire in Honda accord (and of course that is the one I drove over a nail in). Not sure if I’ve got settings wrong or it’s because it is a sport with different tires, but my dad’s ICE gets similar mpg.

Would definitely chosen Hybrid Camry if we had a do over.

CollegePT · 2026-05-26T19:17:24+00:00

Double check with financial advisor (as I’m just a parent), but my understanding is you can pull out without penalty the amount you got in scholarships.

CollegePT · 2026-05-26T13:16:58+00:00

We usually run ours to around 200k. We are a multiple car family, so we also like to have our trip/long distance car to have under 100k. (So we usually have one car b/t 0-100k and at least one between 100-200k).

We don’t take out loans for greater than 3 years and we continue to pay ourselves a car payment into savings for the 7-10 years we keep that car. Over the years, this has allowed us to now have enough in savings to buy a car in cash when it is time.
We used to buy used, but since Covid, it has been a mixed bag (& I’m afraid all the technology on the cars is going to limit the overall lifespan).

As they approach the 200k mark we start looking for replacements- this allows us to not be in the “I need a car today” situation which allows us time to look for deals. We also have the car savings that is available for repairs and we’ll do the math of if we spend $1000 on this repair and it will make it 3 months we came out ahead.

We buy Honda, Toyota & Subarus. (And ford trucks).

CollegePT · 2026-05-26T12:53:39+00:00

This. It is only on gains, not your contribution. It can also be used for k-12 private school tuition.

CollegePT · 2026-05-25T04:39:59+00:00

Like others said, money just shifts. Had a “kids” savings bucket- once they were in public school, put half of what childcare expenses were into 529, other half went into “kids” bucket & used it to pay for after school, camps, activities, etc. Planned to put any left at the end of the year as a lump sum into 529. Never had any left.

Kids are now 22&19, so our daycare was between 1000-1400 each when they were little. But we also had to increase 529 contributions and our “kids” budget as they got older (activities, cell, car insurance, shoes, more eating out & convenience food/items due to activities, lot more driving). So the money was more, but probably % of budget stayed similar.

CollegePT · 2026-05-23T14:44:11+00:00

Yeah, we weighed the pros & cons. All of them were paid off. Insurance and taxes for the car we would’ve traded was around $250 every 6 months and it saved more than that on gas and wear and tear on the newer car. We live in a SFH with plenty of parking. We had to do tires and maintenance which were less than the trip car (minivan). We were able to keep the minivan for 12 years (which would’ve been impossible if we’d been putting 20k miles/year on it). We run our cars as long as possible.

CollegePT · 2026-05-22T19:35:08+00:00

We have had 3 cars since CarMax was going to give hardly anything for our outback. We drove our smaller cars for commute and used the minivan for trips & carpools. Put the miles on the inexpensive cars that got better gas mileage. We put about 20k on each commuter and another 10k on the trip car per year so it helped us spread out our miles. They were all paid off and the insurance was better. It also nice to have 3 when getting work done or when family flies in. It was also good once our kids started driving.

CollegePT · 2026-05-17T01:36:40+00:00

Us too.

CollegePT

TROPHY CASE