How Early Did You Start Earning $$$?

Annie

Diamond Member
Nov 22, 2003
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Came to mind because of this thread:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/127718-sucking-all-of-the-joy-out-of-life-4.html#post2586263

When we were kids my brother, our friends, and myself came up with all sorts of ways to make money. Our earliest was a kool-aid stand. Yes, really! We started out at 2 cents a cup, by the time we were 7 we're selling same stuff for .15. We also sold candy, with a 50% mark up. Yes, we knew our neighbors!

I was 7 when I got a job putting IGA grocer flyers on door knobs. I had to roll and rubberband them. I earned $4 a week, which was much better than the .25 my allowance was.

Around 9 we spent the summer washing cars for our neighbors, one guy gave us $10, Mr. Plumery, I still think of you fondly, RIP. The rest, I think paid $3.

I think it was the same summer my best friend and I baked bread with my mom. It was SOOOO good. We decided to sell it. So we went around for about 5 blocks taking orders and collecting in advance. We made like 10 loaves and that was that. We forgot to write the names and addresses. :coffee:

We cut lawns and sold boxed cards from the comic book backs. Actually paid for a canoe trip to Canadian Waters back in jr. high with that money.

I left the world of self-employment at 14, got a waitress job. Really excellent money! #32 on the list from Chicago Magazine. ;)
 

I was born at the end of the depression which was also the beginning of WWII. I sold tomatoes from our garden, in the summertime, eggs from our chickens to the neighbors, and got hired to do some odd jobs like mowing and leveling dirt. At eleven I was appointed yard mower, at thirteen my dad nullified my summer vacations, forever after, by making me a hod carrier with his masonry crew, driving to jobs that were always 50 miles away, in the capital city.

Then I took care of an old neighbor lady's horses and stoked her coal furnace each day after school, and one summer I took a job as a guide for a blind student who was in medical school at IU. We travelled the state by greyhound bus trying to find a market for brooms made by the blind. Before I enlisted in the Marine Corps. I was working each summer as a hod carrier, then at the last as a stone cutter, travelling with the crew up to near Chicago, driving 4 hours to get home for the week-ends.
 
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I was the bartender (OK, beer gofer) for my fathers' neighborhood fish fries in the summer, worked for tips starting at age 5 or 6.
 
My first forray into making money was my own personal yard sale at 9 years old. I put up some milk crates, through some plywood over it, and put up my old toys for sale. It didn't go so well, lol....although I had a few nice neighbors who bought stuff to be nice.

My 2nd foray was the same milk crates and table with lemonade. Worked better but not too good.

Then at around 12 I asked my neighbor if i could mow his lawn for 10 bucks...my first steady job :lol:

At 14 I got a "real job" and have worked ever since.
 
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Babysitting of course, lemonade stands on the golf course, and watching my parent's friends dog, so they didn't have to put it in a kennel.

GOOD $$ Back in the Stone Age!
 
I had a paper route when I was 12.

Do kids still deliver newspapers?
 
I mowed some lawns, but never got serious about it. At the age of 11 and 1/2 I got a paper route and have been involved in product distribution ever since. This was not a career path that I chose. It just kind of happened.

First on foot then in trucks then from an office and so it went.

There is a certain satisfaction in starting the day with a full load and ending with an empty truck. You know you did something. You can see the difference.

Now, the paper on the desk is there when I arrive and there is different paper when I leave. Accomplishments are there, but the evidence is harder to grasp. A percent here and a process improvement there.

I used to see the world through a windshield and now through a computer screen.
 
Well, I started living with my Grandparents after my mother died when I was 8. My grandfather would ask me if I was interested in getting some money, and he'd hire me out to the neighbors for odd jobs and mowing.

During that time, I also loved to fish in the creeks where I grew up in Montana, but one day, my grandmother told me that she'd skin me alive if I brought another fish into the house (the freezer was FULL).

Well, I still loved to fish, and wasn't really much of a catch and release guy, as well as had forgotten what my grandmother told me the day before and I had a creel full of fresh trout. Well, I stopped by where some Californians had a summer home on my way back to my house and asked them if they'd like some fish.

I spent the rest of the summer fishing for them, and towards the end of the summer, I came up on my little 20 inch beat up bicycle with a creel full of fish and saw a new 10 speed on the sidewalk.

I was wondering if they'd found someone else to fish for them. After I gave them a creel full of fish, they looked at me and told me that new 10 speed on the sidewalk was mine.

Best first job I ever had in my life.

And now, that it's been a few years since then, and I'm an old man of 46, I STILL ride 10-15 miles/day.

After that? Worked in a stockyard my Senior summer. After I got ran over by a Black Angus bull while working there, I was down at the Navy recruiters office a week later, and in boot camp 3 days after my 18th birthday.

Retired from there in 2002, and have been a bum ever since.
 
Age 5-7 gathered eggs from chicken coupe, washed them & boxed them into cartons for sale. Took out garbage, plucked chicken feathers, helped butcher, gathered veggies from garden, snapped, peeled, sliced, diced & canned them. Feed & watered hogs & chickens. Most of this was 7 days a week. At age 8 I started mowing many yards & acres on top of all the chores above.
 
Well, I started living with my Grandparents after my mother died when I was 8. My grandfather would ask me if I was interested in getting some money, and he'd hire me out to the neighbors for odd jobs and mowing.

During that time, I also loved to fish in the creeks where I grew up in Montana, but one day, my grandmother told me that she'd skin me alive if I brought another fish into the house (the freezer was FULL).

Well, I still loved to fish, and wasn't really much of a catch and release guy, as well as had forgotten what my grandmother told me the day before and I had a creel full of fresh trout. Well, I stopped by where some Californians had a summer home on my way back to my house and asked them if they'd like some fish.

I spent the rest of the summer fishing for them, and towards the end of the summer, I came up on my little 20 inch beat up bicycle with a creel full of fish and saw a new 10 speed on the sidewalk.

I was wondering if they'd found someone else to fish for them. After I gave them a creel full of fish, they looked at me and told me that new 10 speed on the sidewalk was mine.

Best first job I ever had in my life.

And now, that it's been a few years since then, and I'm an old man of 46, I STILL ride 10-15 miles/day.

After that? Worked in a stockyard my Senior summer. After I got ran over by a Black Angus bull while working there, I was down at the Navy recruiters office a week later, and in boot camp 3 days after my 18th birthday.

Retired from there in 2002, and have been a bum ever since.

Have a beer on me.

Sweetwater+420+Extra+Pale+Ale.jpg
 
MY first job, I suppose was when we lived in California and my parents had a friend who had an avocado tree in their yard but they both hated the things and told me I could take as many as I want and sell them. I spent many an evening sitting out with m red wagon full of avocados. Living in a condominium complex with roughly 500 other people made it easy.

Then we moved to Arkansas when i was 12 and besides my dad opening his own automotive repair shop and me working for him during the summer I hauled hay, lots of fucking hay.

Then when I was 17 I went to boot camp after my junior year of high school, then well the rest is history. Now I'm retired at the young age of 39.
 
I started making money when I had a paper route. I must have been around 10 or 11. I had that paper route for well over a year. Didn't have a lot of papers to deliver so I only made around $10.00 a week. When I was 12 I helped a farmer I knew pick cucumbers nearly all summer. He had a thing you would ride on hooked up to the back of his tractor and would run it over the cucumber fields. There were about 8 of us kids on that contraption. We made great bucks and picked a shitload of cucumbers. He was a friend of the family so I stayed with him for over a month picking cucumbers. I went home with $150.00 which was huge money back then. I used it to buy my new school clothes and books when school started that fall. Then I did various farming chores like helping in the hay fields, chopping weeds in peanut fields, and the usual kind of stuff. Didn't get rich but always had pocket money when the rest of my friends were broke. Then I began working in a hardware store. I made 25 cents an hour. Next I worked at a place and helped deliver washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, stoves and refrigerators. I made a whole $1.00 an hour. This was when I was 15. When I turned 16 I began to work at the local hospital as an orderly in the Emergency Room and I worked there after school and on weekends until I joined the Navy. I made great money at that job and made $1.50 an hour which was big time money for a kid to make back then. Seems like I have always had some sort of job.
 
My first real job...after doing the usual babysitting,was when I was 13. I started cleaning office building's. I think I made $ 4.00 an hour,but I don't really remember if that's accurate. Later when I hit high school I started working in a restaurant as a hostess. Have held a job of some kind ever since.
 
Started babysitting at 12, mowed the lawn (ours) around then too. I had to convince my dad that I could do that, that it wasn't just a 'boy' thing. :rolleyes: When I was 17 I worked at Hit or Miss clothing store for several years while in school. Worked full time during the summers at different jobs. Used to house/kid/pet/plant sit for folks that went away from age 18-22 or so. One house I was watching I went to water their outside plants and found a gold necklace on the patio. Turns out the place was robbed.
 
I started babysitting at the tender age of 11 years old. When I turned 16, I worked at a gas station, a drapers, and Jack in the Box until I started college.
 
Started out as a male prostitute. I'd offer to have sex with the neighborhood women, most of the time for free.
 
I started getting paying jobs helping neighbors on theri farms at about 10 or 11.
Prior to 10 I had my chores around the home farm.
At 15 I worked in a grocery and moved up to meatcutter at 16.
At 18 I was working full time and paying my way in tech school.
At 19 I was drafted to nam. the pay and working conditions sucked.
 
Started out as a male prostitute. I'd offer to have sex with the neighborhood women, most of the time for free.

Is that a "sell at a loss make it up in volume" business model?
 

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