I also have learned the hard way with jumping -- thankfully the car a Jeep GC was still under Warr. -- it was about 6 months old and I was using it to Jump another car -- I did think that this was even safer, although I do not now how I got that idea.

After that, I purchased one of those jumper batteries -- the thing is great -- we keep it in the office -- it has saved us many times over the years.

We have also used it when changing a weak batt - to keep all the memory chips powered.