Advise and Consent

I have been spending entirely too much time on Tiger Droppings lately, but the OT (off-topic) board just sucks me in. All morning I have been bravely trying not to post unsolicited advice to one poster who has a thorny problem, or from my point of view, non-problem:

Girlfriend's parents are getting her a "new" car for graduation. She wants a high mileage Infiniti which I think is stupid. Anybody have any suggestions on a 4 door car that gets good gas mileage that I can talk her into?

He is soliciting advice, but not the advice I want to give, which is, “Stay out of it.” Notice the salient points. It is the girlfriend’s parents who are buying the car. It will be the girlfriend’s car. There is no indication that anyone has asked the young man’s advice, let alone suggested that he should solicit further advice from a random group of people with too much time on their hands and unknown expertise in the realm of cars.  

We have further indications of the boyfriend’s motives later in the thread:

quote:
your girlfriend is stupid

 Obviously, so I need to be the voice of reason here as usual.

Uh-oh. 

I really, really, really want to post a MYOB post to this person, but discretion is the better part of valor. Besides, that’s why I have a blog.

As of this writing there are 65 replies to the post, none of which have raised the question of how the  car became the boyfriend’s problem. A side argument has emerged between those who think the young lady is being pretentious and those who don’t, which led to another side argument over whether any white collar worker needs to drive a pick-up truck, but no arguments over how far people should go to involve themselves in their non-spouse SO’s decisions.

Oh, let’s not be so prim and proper about it. It’s really a question of how far men should go to involve themselves in their girlfriend’s decisions, because if she had been trying to talk him out of buying the car he wanted, the thread title would have been, My girlfriend is trying to tell me what kind of car to buy. What’s the best way to break up with her? It isn’t even true to say, “It’s really a question of how far men should go to involve themselves in their girlfriend’s decisions", because apparently in 60 some odd people’s minds, that isn’t even a question.

Perhaps I am being unfair to the young man. Maybe his plan is to wait until GF says something like, “You don’t look excited about my new car” to say, “I just keep thinking that if you got a low mileage Honda Accord and saved up what you would be paying on a car lease every month, in a few years you could trade in the Accord and use the cash for a big down payment on a newer Infiniti with lower mileage. That’s what I’d do, anyway.” If he’s considering a long term future with the young woman, it makes sense to be concerned with how she handles money and if status symbols are important to her.

But then I get back to “I need to be the voice of reason here as usual”, and honestly, I doubt he’s going to be that tactful.

I need to take my own advice and butt out. At least he knows his girlfriend, while I don’t know any of these people. That’s why I am writing here instead of telling him, “If I were you, I’d stay out of this and leave it to your girlfriend and her parents. Otherwise, high mileage or not, I don’t think you’re going to outlast the car.”