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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

The "The extra $155 was a processing fee" on the $100 fine is very uniquely American. I've lived in a few countries, and I've never seen or experienced that in any of them.

The whole concept of court fees kind of undermines justice. For example in some situation pleading guilty to a traffic citation is cheaper than being found innocent simply because the court fees are still required regardless of guilt (and may exceed the fine itself).

I really don't understand it. The US is full of these little fees and costs tacked onto everything. Even applying to go to college has a fee and getting a free public education might cost hundreds of dollars in fees.

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I worked at the state courts in California for a while. The "Penalty Assessment" fee amused/enraged me; at the time IIRC it was $17.50 per $10 of statutory fine. So the effective cost of a $100 statutory fine was $100 + $175 PA + court costs ($40 or more) + special fees ($1 if the charge could be adjudicated in night court, for example). So a $100 offense started at an actual out-the-door cost of about $315.

Being a fee, "Penalty Assessment" could be changed administratively as opposed to changing the actual fine which needed legislation.

The first time I encountered court fees came as a shock to me.

I missed the deadline to plead guilty and had to show up for Traffic Court. Got up there, plead guilty to my $75 ticket (I think, I can't really remember, just a normal speeding ticket), and the judge said "Pay $325 at the cashier", and I gawked.

I had no idea there was such a thing as court fees, especially one that high, especially considering I spent a grand total of 20 seconds in front of the judge.

Thankfully I didn't say anything, and just quietly paid it. At the time I was living paycheck to paycheck, and that extra unexpected $250 charge was really hard to deal with.

Tell me about it. I'm in between cars at the moment, and getting a $500~$1000 beater is more trouble than its worth at the moment because it'd be $200 in lyft fees, $75 in paperwork fees, and all the places necessary to do the paperwork are open on different days.

I'm spending $300 a month on lyft because of it.

just fyi, $300 a month on Lyft is much cheaper than the average car (~$750/month) - though not an apples to apples comparison.

I think that estimate might be a bit high for most places outside the west coast. I'm in Chicago, and I'd estimate it at about $300/mo for payment + ~$100-150/mo in gas + ~$60/mo insurance + ~$100/mo savings for maintenance (not necessary if leasing) = ~$460-610/mo). And you can probably find a cheaper car payment than that if you're not getting something quite so new.

But it's still more expensive than people might think. My girlfriend thought she was going to save a bunch of money by getting a car instead of taking Ubers to work and I had to break it to her that since she was spending about $500/mo on Uber, getting her own car wouldn't save her much, if any, money (but at least has other benefits). She was expecting it to save her at least $200 a month, which would have covered just the car payment.

Why not get a used car? Or a base model? $500/month seems pretty high for a car payment. I was paying $350/month for a Volkswagen Jetta with the highest trim package.

I said $300/mo for the car payment. It got up to $500/mo with gas, insurance, and maintenance. If you're referring to where I actually said $500/mo, I was saying she's spending that much per month on hiring Uber/Lyft rides to get to and from work.

Keep in mind, that Uber cost effectively already prices in gas, maintenance, and insurance for the Uber driver, which are costs she'd have to make that she wasn't really considering when wanting to get her own car (or at least didn't realize how much it all costs).

I bought a used car and I'm paying a little under $300/mo in car payments (one more year and it's fully paid off). My girlfriend was looking to buy a much newer, but still used car (or lease a new car, she's still undecided), and was looking at roughly $300/mo for car payments either way.

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