M7 first car was a 1984 Chevy Cavalier hand-me-down from my grandparents. They gave it to me for free, complete with a slightly rusting exterior, an air conditioning system that was beginning to fail, and a push-button radio that most certainly did not come with a subwoofer or a five-CD changer. I was more than grateful, and even though the engine made an embarrassingly loud chonking noise on occasion and sometimes the windshield wipers began randomly swiping when I flicked on my blinker, that car allowed me to drive to school as a high school senior, to take my concert buddies and me to punk shows downtown, and to have my own sense of freedom.

Sure, I wasn’t sporting my dream car—that, for reasons that are unclear to me today, would have been a Pontiac Fiero—but it was awesome.

The Cavalier taught me that you could drive a car into the ground to save money to buy a nicer vehicle and then sell it to somebody else anyway (the car was handed down to my younger brother, and eventually, my dad sold it for a few hundred bucks to another kid in the neighborhood).

On WCI podcast #419 in May 2025, Dr. Jim Dahle talked about his own first car, a Chevette.

“Getting this thing to 65 mph was no small feat,” he said. “My dad was driving this car once, and it had just snowed. There was a little six-inch berm of snow between the lanes, and my dad changed lanes and we got a lap full of snow. The floor had completely rusted out in this car. There was a hole in the floor under the driver’s seat. Did we get a new car? No. Did we take it to a mechanic? No. He put a board down and we had a plywood floor in that car, and that became the car I drove when I turned 16. It was literally a Flintstone car. That was my upbringing. That gives you a sense of what money was like in my home.”

At WCICON26 (which you can watch in our Continuing Financial Education 2026 course), I talked to a number of attendees and speakers about their first car and what it taught them about money and finances. I’ve kept them anonymous so they could be as honest as possible.

Here’s what they said.

What Was Your First Car, and What Did It Teach You About Money?

  • I drove my dad’s 1983 Toyota Celica. I thought it was so cool. He didn’t let me drive it anymore after I got a ticket. I learned that I had to pay when I had the ticket. My dad didn’t bail me out.
  • It was a gold 1989 Honda Civic with a stick shift. As a girl, the lesson was that you’ll never be in a situation where you can’t get yourself home because you know how to drive a stick shift. I still can drive a stick shift today.
  • I had a 1987 Volkswagen Jetta that my mom had bought new. They let my grandma drive it for a while, and then it sat for a while. They pulled it out for me to drive in high school and college. It didn’t have airbags. It had the rod where, if you got into a car accident, your shins would shatter but you’d maybe survive. It had the shoulder strap that went, ‘Errr,’ and was automatic. But beggars can’t be choosers. I think I got picked on a little bit in high school for that car. But it taught me how to handle that. I went to a private school, and a lot of kids had their parents buy them brand new sports cars. It taught me that when other kids are making fun of it, I learned how to turn it and be like, “Yeah, this is my sick ride.” At the time, everybody liked Camaros. I called it my Camaro.
  • It was a 1997 Honda Accord from my grandparents. I learned that it was good to invest in a good, reliable car because it will last a very long time. It lasted all through my siblings.
  • The first car I drove was a Ford Contour that I got from my mom. I can’t tell you what specific lessons it taught me then, other than it was nice having a free car. The life lesson I take from it now is the value of me making sure I have things that I can pass on to my next generation, to give them slight edges in starting off their life.
  • It was a 1990 Honda Accord. I got it in about 1998. My grandparents gave it to me for free. But the car I didn’t get was what taught me the most. I’ve worked since I was 12. I never went out in high school. I worked and worked and worked. I worked all the time. I worked as a babysitter. I worked as a florist. If I wasn’t in school, I was working. I was in a private school, and I was surrounded by all these girls who got a new car when they turned 16. I thought I’d be given a car, so I spent all my money. When I turned 16, guess who didn’t get a car? And who had no money? That’s the bigger lesson.
  • My parents’ 1986 Toyota Camry station wagon. I got really good at driving stick shift. My kids think it’s cool I can drive stick. And I’m confident that I can drive any car in the world because I can drive stick.
  • My first car was a 2001 Nissan Altima. It was a fine car. But I learned that once I started making money, I just wanted to have something a little nicer.
  • A white 1979 Datsun A10. I started driving it in 1983. The first day I drove it was my 16th birthday. I was driving home from ballet, and I got a ticket for not stopping fully at a stop sign. Then, I got into an accident. I was freaked out that my parents would be really upset about the accident. Turns out they were really upset about the ticket. It had a dent in the back, and I drove it that way for two years until I went to college. What it taught me was that I could drive a car that’s not perfect.
  • It was a 1995 Plymouth Acclaim. I don’t know if it taught me much about money, but the end of its life was a collision with a semi on the highway. So, that taught me some things about life, I’ll say, about living life. My fiancé, now my wife, and a good friend were driving home from school over Thanksgiving break. It was snowing a lot. I was driving slow, maybe 20mph, and it started spinning and slowly, gradually sliding into the next lane as a semi was coming past. Everyone was totally unharmed. You wouldn’t look at the car and think we could be unharmed. We were going slow, but the semi wasn’t.
  • A 1992 Pontiac Grand Am. I got that in 2008, and I paid $3,000 for it. It taught me that you don’t need as much space as you think and that you can drive it until it rusts. It rusted two years later.
  • A 2005 Mercury Mariner. My parents made me a deal. I could either have a quinceañera or I could have the car for my 16th, 17th, 18th birthday and graduation presents. It taught me a lot about responsibility and how to manage insurance. My whole goal was to hold on to that car until it ran out and died. At the end of vet school, we had to make a decision to get rid of it. I don’t regret not having that quinceañera. It was the best decision ever.
  • It had to be a Buick. My parents always had these old Buicks. I don’t even remember the model. I would remember that we got a Buick from my grandparents, and the car would talk to you. The door would be open, and it would say, “The door is ajar” and “Buckle your seatbelts.” It taught me not to put a lot of value in cars. It gets you from point A to point B.
  • My first car was a 1996 Honda Civic that was my brother’s hand-me-down. It came with me through so many parts of my life: through training, through residency, through friendships, and relationships. I was getting peer pressured by my parents to get a new car that was safer, because it was kind of old school. I loved it. I loved that it was more of a compact car. It just fit me really well. It felt like it was a part of me when I was driving. It was kind of hard to part with.
  • It was a 1986 Saab 900S. I loved that car. It was practical and fashionable. It had style. It held up. Cars are one of those quality, well-built things that can last and keep their shape and form. It really held well. I felt really safe driving it.
  • In 1992, I got to drive my grandparents’ 1977 Buick Electra. It was 15-ish years old. It taught me a couple of things. No. 1, if you have a car that can get you from point A to point B, you’re in a good place. No. 2, it’s nice for family to help family.
  • It was a 1983 Toyota Tercel. Its name was Murray. When you opened the door, the alarm went like, ‘Neeeeeeee.’ It whined, like a guy named Murray might. I got it from a cousin. It wasn’t even working. It took $500 to get it working again. It taught me how awesome it is to have a car after not having one. I loved the crap out of that car even though it was a piece of crap. It was mine. I drove it back and forth from New Orleans to New England several times during college. It was a death trap, but I didn’t die. The difference between not having a thing and even having a bad example of that thing is huge. No car vs. any car, that’s a huge difference. When I got married, she said I should get an Audi. I got a nice Audi A4. I liked it. It was very nice. Did that Audi make me happier than Murray? No, not really.
More information here:

Money Song of the Week

A few months ago, my twins got their driver’s licenses, and even though everybody with high school-age kids tells you just how much your car insurance premiums increase once they learn to drive, you don’t actually understand it until those new premiums slap you in the face. We’re talking about a doubling of the price of our insurance (and a bunch of it comes from them being insured on the Tesla; maybe I should rethink that idea).

To celebrate my kids providing their parents with a little extra freedom from having to drive them to all their extracurriculars, let’s listen to a 2000 tune from The Mountain Goats called Insurance Fraud #2. I saw The Mountain Goats open for Jason Isbell several years ago, but I know very little about this folk rock band. I do know one thing, though: The song called Insurance Fraud #2 is about insurance fraud (and how it’s not a great idea).

As John Darnielle sings,

“Burned-out shell of a Volkswagen/Blood stains on the driveway/Torn up Mercedes, by the side of the highway/Big plans, big plans/Let me tell you something, sister/You will never get away with it.”

What you hear in the song is pretty much what you get. As Darnielle explained during a show in 2019, “This is a song in which our narrator counsels the wayward traveler not to fall prey to seductive, deep dreams of insurance fraud.”

Otherwise, you might, if you get caught, eventually end up on this list. Better, I guess, just to pay the exorbitant costs (or check out Rate to see if you can lower the premiums).

More information here:

Instagram of the Week

This really isn’t an Instagram Reel about money. It’s more about legacy.

I was born in the late 1970s, and I have a solid understanding of pop culture. But in the following clip, I only recognized 25 of the 47 celebrities. Maybe Baby Boomers would know all of them, but I’m willing to bet that most Gen Xers wouldn’t be much more successful at identifying the old-school celebrities than me. And I don’t think my Gen Z twins would recognize any of them except for maybe, possibly Jack Albertson because of his role in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


It’s just a depressing reminder that most people, even if you currently live on the covers of magazines, won’t know who you are a couple of generations from now.

What do you think? What was your first car? Did it teach you something about finances or money?