Originally Posted by
Germany_chris
I did a bit of that when I first got out of the Army making very little money with a new wife and a baby I bought fixed and traded my way to better/more reliable cars. About 5 years ago I started teaching car maintenance and repair classes at the auto skill center on post the cheap junkers that young soldiers buy aren't cheap if you can't fix them yourself. The sad part of all of this to me is no one taught them this stuff before they headed off to adulthood, parents/schools don't need to be as extreme as my parents were but someone needs to teach these kids how to do basic maintenance and repair.
I learned or was taught a little, but car enthusiasm (and an available driveway) enabled me to continue through college and past. The lack of a dedicated place to put a car (especially an inoperable one when repairing) can really hamper things, hence wrenching on bikes in an apartment. "Shop classes" (woodworking, metalworking, auto mechanics) have been a sadly dying breed in high schools across the country, for many (IMO unfortunate) reasons (which I won't go into), as are, likely, any "life skills" (finance etc) classes. My grandpa went back to cheap cars soon enough, so the Lincoln got sold to someone else when things were better.