When did you start working ?

[TexasHusker]

I financed a violin with a payment of $41.66 a month for two years when I was 12. I got a 110 customer paper route and worked 6 days a week, riding my bicycle 4 miles round trip each day except Saturday. Every day after school I folded papers, delivered them all, and was home by 630.

On Sundays, I had to do 8 Miles because the papers were so big I had to make 2 trips. That started at about 430am and ended about 8am in time to get ready for church.

For a week each month, I had to go door to door collecting. That was hard work right there!

I can count on a hand the times that I asked my fathers help due to weather, but I basically got my bike out and did that route regardless, including bitter cold and deep snow.

At 14, I sprang free from the Paper route because I was old enough to get a job, so I bussed tables at a local seafood place from 5pm to midnight every Friday and Saturday. I only had to ride my bike a mile each way and made more $ than the paper route! By law I could only work 20 hours per week max. Tell you this, working in a bar/restaurant at age 14 alongside a bunch of 18 to 20 somethings, let’s just say I learned a lot about the world really fast.

At 16 I could actually work full time as a waiter so I did. Every weekend throughout high school.

I was basically responsible for all my expenses except food at the house. I bought almost all my own clothes. Car, gas, insurance - all on me. But looking back, I really missed most of my middle and high school. No proms, no dates, no class ring, no senior picture, no school annual. No sports. I always felt kinda cheated.

I guess this is why I spoil my kids so much. I’ve been blessed with wealth beyond my comprehension, and I’m making up for a lot of that lost leisure time now, as I barely work.

Amazing how different things are for my kids.

[disneysteve]

I worked every summer at a day camp from the time I was 13 until the time I was a 2nd year medical student and no longer had my summers off.

As for during the school year, I had a job for a little while senior year of high school. I think that only lasted a few months.

I'm trying to remember if I had any other jobs. I did some babysitting here and there. And I used to help one of my neighbor's kids with homework.

[GoodSteward]

I have cut grass for family and friends since I was able to ride a mower (10-11 I believe). That was more for leisure money at that age, but my first real job was working at a golf course edging sand pits and doing yard work all day in the middle of GA summer (100 Degree 100% humidity lol) at 15. I built my own first pc from that job.

From there, a year later I was helping my brother's boss finish remodeling a building to open a Japanese restaurant (not a single Oriental person to be found! lol). Once they opened, I was asked to work. So I worked evenings and Saturdays starting at 16. Cooking, making plates, washing dishes and busting tables. I still know how to make Japanese food, including that shrimp sauce lol. Once I graduated, I went full time at that restaurant eventually being a shift manager there. I've pretty much always had a job since I was 16.

Once I had a full-time job, I paid for a lot of my own stuff including my first car. It was a used 5yr old 98 Camry, and I made every payment on it (My dad financed it). Before that, I used some dangerously messed up cars. One was an Oldsmobile Achieva that had a broken steering wheel column, and once it warmed up you couldn't downshift from 2nd so you had to drive quickly and in first gear mostly. Haha. People called it the death trap.

[bjl584]

I mowed grass and did odd jobs for family members as far back as maybe 12. I got a "real" job shortly after turning 16. (The legal age to work.) I worked retail nights and weekends during school. Over the summers I worked a full time schedule. I was responsible for my own car, gas, insurance, oil changes, repairs.

[bjl584]

I wonder the differences in outcome there will be from a kid who is made to work from a young age, like a lot of the respondents in this thread, to a kid who is handed a $50,000 car and never made to do anything, like the ones in the other thread on that subject?

[kork13]

I mostly just did odd jobs through middle/high school... Mowing lawns and babysitting we're the most common, though for a little while (age 10 maybe?) I vacuumed a few neighbors' homes. Unfortunately, my parents never let me go for a proper job (they were afraid my schoolwork would suffer), in spite of my best attempts to convince them to let me work in a photography studio during high school. So after high school I signed on the line to join the Air Force, went to the Air Force Academy (got a small monthly stipend there), and have been in the military ever since.

I think my younger brothers benefited from my pleading though, because both of them were able (even encouraged) to get various jobs during high school.

[greenskeeper]

My first job as a looper I didn't get paid, but was told by the Lama that on my death bed I will receive total consciousness.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

[GoodSteward]

My first job as a looper I didn't get paid, but was told by the Lama that on my death bed I will receive total consciousness.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Nothing like free labor....for the other guy.

[msomnipotent]

My first real job with a schedule and paycheck was when I was 11 and worked in a service station. So by the time I was 13, I already knew how to do basic maintenance and repairs on a car and drive, so getting a car that I could pay for wasn't a completely absurd idea and that person that talked my parents out of letting me get the car should have shut their mouth! So anyway, before that, I did things like rake leaves and shovel snow, and my parents forced me to help my older sister with a paper route. I also worked in an ice cream shop when I was 13 to 14 and started at a restaurant at 15. I had to quit all of my jobs at 16 when I joined the work program at school and worked at a hospital. I got to leave school at 11 am and go to work until 5pm.

Like TH, I had almost no social life and had to pay for everything myself. I used to be adamant that my daughter would work so she could get a leg up on the competition, but I have come to realize that she probably wouldn't. Technically, I did have an advantage, but only if I wanted another crappy job. Even working at the hospital, I got any low-level promotion I wanted but the good jobs needed a college degree.

[Fishindude77]

As soon as we were able to do physical work, my contractor Dad would take my brothers & I out to his construction sites on the weekend where we would do all the clean up, pick rocks, plant grass, or whatever, was probably about 8 when I started. We'd get breakfast, lunch and a few bucks cash out of the deal, and he didn't have to pay expensive employees to do it. By 13 or so I had all the lawn mowing I could handle, a pretty steady seasonal job.

Dad would never give us money, but he would provide all the work we wanted to earn some money. I had money in my pocket most of the time growing up, while some friends were broke or had to ask their parents for cash.

[FLA]

We were expected to pay for cars insurance, gas, clothes and pay towards college so I started babysitting at 12. Saw there was much better money in mowing lawns so I did that and still babysat until I could get a real job at 15. I worked as a waitress in a nursing home. I worked my butt off and like TH, I feel like I missed some of the things my friends who didn't have to work got to do. But I did prom and went to parties, played the violin. I didn't care about sports. I learned a lot about handling finances from working young and was very responsible with money. I wouldn't have traded my experience with those of my friends.

[TexasHusker]

We were expected to pay for cars insurance, gas, clothes and pay towards college so I started babysitting at 12. Saw there was much better money in mowing lawns so I did that and still babysat until I could get a real job at 15. I worked as a waitress in a nursing home. I worked my butt off and like TH, I feel like I missed some of the things my friends who didn't have to work got to do. But I did prom and went to parties, played the violin. I didn't care about sports. I learned a lot about handling finances from working young and was very responsible with money. I wouldn't have traded my experience with those of my friends.

You still got your fiddle? I've got mine. Haven't touched it since May 1984.

[FLA]

nope, last year I gave it to a friend whose DD was just starting out, I hadn't touched it since 1988. DD played violin but my ex deemed my violin not nearly good enough for her (it probably wasn't).

[TexasHusker]

nope, last year I gave it to a friend whose DD was just starting out, I hadn't touched it since 1988. DD played violin but my ex deemed my violin not nearly good enough for her (it probably wasn't).

I paid like $1000 for mine in 1981-ish? I figured it would be worth more now. Nope. In fact it might be worth less.

My second cousin plays in the London Royal Philharmonic who has a violin made in 1742. I've never asked what he paid for it.

[FLA]

I paid like $1000 for mine in 1981-ish? I figured it would be worth more now. Nope. In fact it might be worth less.

My second cousin plays in the London Royal Philharmonic who has a violin made in 1742. I've never asked what he paid for it.

That’s cool.

my ex used to be in the David Bromberg band and David makes and sells violins. He showed Claire and me a stunning Stradivarius. We got her violins through him, they were really great. Her last one is a keeper.