Ha, same here. I thought my catering side job was pretty sweet (7€ an hour!) until I once scratched someones car on the way to work and it cost me 350€, which was more than I had earned in that job.
I've since realised that cars are very expensive and you should probably not take a job that requires a lot of driving around in your own car if you don't get reimbursed for it.
No doubt. I had an IT job that required me to drive around to schools in the city. Well, I didn't have some special parking pass or anything. If I got a ticket, or hit a red light camera, I'd make negative money for the day potentially. I ended up biking everywhere. The traffic in the city was so bad such that there was no time difference anyhow.
Those repairs are the deeply-embedded, systemic problems that creep up and ambush you one day before work, forcing you to decide between a $1k car repair -- often the barest minimum-cost repair you can find and negotiate -- or forking over a few times that much for an entirely different car to drive.
I can usually get a rental for ~$20/day, which buys time to find a better vehicle. A teenager can't get a rental, but they can probably borrow a car from their parents for a few days/weeks until a decent opportunity comes up.
$2000 will get you a pretty decent vehicle and is probably a better investment than a $1000 repair.
