when I was 15 or 16, in order to raise money for my after school activities I was involved in, I went door to door , selling tickets for department store special sales, as well as boxes of fresh baked dozen donuts.

I quickly found out that the older neighboorhoods had retired peoples that were a lot less willing to donate than the newer neighborhoods with young couples ...

grew up with a family farm so we all "worked" as far back as I can remember.

my grandchildren "work" for me. older ones do actual chores ... little ones "help". they each have a "chore chart" that they look at weekly when they come around. the older ones help the little ones who are basically useless but they know they need to "work". they all have their own supplies - buckets, gloves, etc.

Age 11, paper route. In a good month I cleared $75! Did a little mowing ($5/yard) or pet sitting (varied $) for some of my route customers when they were on vacation.

At age 5 my parents moved back to the city, into one of my fathers rents -- in really bad shape. My mother was so stressed out that my dad could only work on the place on the weekends. So at 5-1/2 I decided to help out. My mother kept of thinking my dad for completing projects the he couldn't remember doing. At 10 I was enrolled in a few Community Classes.

I always worked on the side doing odd jobs and fixing things. At 13 I got a job working in the Jewelry Trade.

At sixteen I went to buy myself a new car and learned about the depreciation loss and then decided on buy a cheep use car and saving my money.

On my 18th birthday I purchased my first single family home. By 20 I had then purchased 5 more homes. At 30 I got my first apartment building. Along the way I got my contracting license and other business.

I was one of Ten Kids.

We were all on the 18 and out program, per Dad.

Same as Jim in O C.

11-12 yrs old, weed puller,mow lawns,paper route,

wash dishes.

16 years old, several neighboring Fathers found (paying) jobs

for me around their homes.

I was impressed with their pride of Ownership and the Love

these guys had for their Families.

At 12 and 13 I babysat a friend of my sister's 18 mo old daughter full time all summer at her apartment for .75 hour. I also cleaned her house and did minor meal prep for the baby and sometimes made breakfast for the mom if she was running late. (Mom went on to become a stockbroker. )

At 15 I worked on a farm picking 5 acres of asparagus every day (that job didn't last long!) then bussed dishes at a resturant.

And I've always worked since then.

Maybe 11 yr old did a paper route with my brother

one summer. Then maybe 15 yrs old helped my brother

with another paying job raking leaves at an elderly

ladies yard.

In between those years I used to help my mother get

the upstairs rooms cleaned and ready for the next

renter. Dad would pay my brother and I for little

jobs done around the house.

Started upside down and naked, slapped by the doctor and screaming. Been slapped around .ever since.

Age 10? Was in Cub Scouts and saw an ad in Boy's Life magazine to sell greeting cards. Made a few sales to neighbors (times were different then. People were neighborly and not every school kid was knocking on their door selling candy. Women were at home, available, and had some cash )

My Mom was my best customer.

Junior high: took photos of sailboats at my Dad's local sailing club and sold them to the boat owners.

BRAD

@Brad, that was hilarious.

My parents had a small apartment complex and later sold it to buy some houses. I watched them and then ended up helping them more as I got older. My mother owned a couple of businesses too so I had to help her from the age of 11 until I was in my mid-20s when I had a full-time job. I also had household chores and Summer jobs too before I graduated from college.

Did a ton of babysitting from about 12 on. A good thing too since I started out thinking a "big" family would be a neat thing. Couple of years of taking care of kids whittled that idea down quickly!

Started working in a grocery store at 16. When I graduated from high school I went full time doing that because I thought "heck, I don't need college". Took a couple of months to realize how stupid I was with that thinking. My parents were the kind that felt "when you were 18 you were on your own"; if I wanted to go to college I could pay for this myself. I was making $2.50 an hour at the time; put pretty much my entire $79 paycheck into the bank each week to save for college. Eventually worked my way through an undergraduate and double master degree program.

Gail

My first real job was washing dishes for the donut shop for .50 cents A DAY when I was 11. I'd work after school for about two hours.

After a few weeks school was out and I was "promoted" to making donuts. I used to get up at 3:30 am and ride my bike over, unlock the shop. Heat and clean the oil, mix the batter, cook the donuts, make the coffee. Open up at 5:30 and not one second later or the old geezers would be rapping on the glass!

The fact that an 11 year old kid was running the business, alone, never came up. I don't know if we had child labor laws in the 60's but I'm sure every one was broken.

The owner would tool in about 9 for the lunch crowd, I'd clean up and leave about noon. I got .50 an HOUR! And about $5 in tips, and all the fresh warm delicious donuts I could eat! That's back when a "tip" was a dime, a quarter was a high roller! I was rolling in the dough. :-) I worked there all summer.

When I was about 14 I worked part time on a charter schooner for a family friend who was the last of the iron men who sailed wooden ships. Scraping paint, varnishing, and getting hauled up the mast to chip and paint the galvanized rigging, because I was light. I lived up those masts for two years.

Sometimes me and the other galley slaves, err I mean deckhands, would get thrown over the side with brushes to scrub the bottom of the 80' long "ship" that drew 9'.

And some days I'd get down to the boat after school and we just take off and go sailing for a couple of hours.

That is also why to this day I can produce a mirror finish varnish and brush two part epoxy to a spray finish. I can also do wire-rope splices, well nearly any splice. And run a hand plane, and hand sharpen it. And steer a course, work a sextant, and find my way in the fog, and a thousand other things.

And I got to sail to Catalina Island a couple of times a month in the summer on charters. Got paid $30 a day plus about $100 tips on a three day trip. That was a sweet deal!

When I was about 15, along with still working on the boat part time, I started flipping condos with my grandmother who was a Realtor for Laguna Lesiure World. ALL sales had to go through their resale office as it was a co-op community.

She would buy places from estates because she had the inside track, I'd scrape the nicotine off the walls, and paint. We'd order new carpet and vinyl. Maybe a stove or dishwasher. Plant some flowers in the patio. She'd buy one bedrooms for like $12,000, we'd put maybe $1,000 into carpet and cleanup and flip them 2-4 weeks later for like $18,000.

I bought a brand new 1970 black Trans Am when I was 17, for cash. My friends were making $1.35 an hour flipping burgers after school. I was working weekends and banking a thousand dollars a month!

A few years later found me on the beach living in a VW camper in Key West. A decade or so after that I started a career as a photojournalist, stopped counting at 5,000 published photographs, bought a million dollar home overlooking Catalina in CA, and now I live in the desert and teach people how to shoot each other.

What an incredible ride it's been and there's a few years left! And they ain't gonna be spent in the dam desert!!! :-)

Like Ken, bought and sold calves at auction. Our grandparents bought our first heifers, which we were responsible for. My brother and I grew up helping our mother raise cattle on our grandparents 1300 acre ranch that was along the river.

I was in 3rd grade. I raked leaves for a neighbor in the fall. I made $3 and came running home so excited. I went up to my bedroom and wrote out a contract to take down to the neighbor to have him sign stating he wouldn't use any kid other than me to take his leaves.

My mom said that it's probably wasn't a good idea to do that and that the neighbor may not use me anymore.

I have always found odd things to do like that to make money.

I remember weeding this one neighbors garden when I was in 5th grade. I worked 8 hours on this project and when I was done, the lady asked, "How does $4 sound?"

I remember standing there covered in dirt thinking, "Are you kidding me?"

Haha. Even in 5th grade I knew that wasn't enough.

I didn't go back to work for her again.

So I know for a fact that if a person truly wants work, they'll find it.

Same thing with houses. If you want a flip or a rental,

you'll find one.

First job was delivering newspapers. Discovered I wasn't easily grossed out and on the "side" I would get dead animals out from under peoples houses.

I think I was 6 or 7, pulled my wagon around collected soda bottles at construction sites. cleaned them and brought them to the grocery store for the deposit

at 10 began cutting grass in the neighborhood. I cut a lot of grass and it paid great. There were no lawn service companies at that time for subdivision yards

READING THESE POSTS I SEE EVERYONE STARTED WORKING AT A YOUNG AGE AND HAD A GREAT WORK ETHIC AND A DRIVE TO SUCCEED.

I don't remember my exact age, but my Dad got me a "job" mowing a yard for an older gentleman that he had worked with. I wasn't big enough to start the lawnmower. My dad would haul me to his house in town - we lived in the country - start the lawnmower, and turn me loose. I would absolutely butcher the yard. My dad would then point out what I had done wrong and show me how to do it right. Eventually I could start the mower and mow it on my own. I mowed this gentleman's yard until I was in high school.

When I was 9 my Dad talked the man at the local newspaper into letting me have a paper route. He didn't want to because the rule was you had to be 10. I continued to have this route until I was 14 and added 2 others along the way.

We had cattle so there was always work to do there.

I would haul hay for others.

Yard work and miscellaneous work for neighbors.

We lived in the country but at 12 I strung, hoed, and picked beans. Picked strawberries, raspberries and boysenberries. All the kids did this and bought their school clothes. When I was 16, I worked in the cannery canning beans!

My father was let go from his job when he injured his eye so he bought his first rental house.

I started using the old Carlton Sheets system which I had to send away for and spend @$300 in 1999. Then realized most of it didn't apply, calling newspaper ads, etc. I did better using my own system which was looking at the "new" MLS listings and driving neighborhoods and calling ph#s in the yard. Learned something new with each purchase.

Bought 1st one conventional,ugh! 2nd one from a tired LL easier; 3rd one on a lease w/option to buy-then bought it; 4th one from an investor facing a balloon payment; 5th one cash,WAY easiest but left me hurting; 6th one from an estate sale (out of state heirs.

First job was delivering a couple hundred free advertising papers for a penny a paper per week. I was smart enough to see that it wasn't worth the wear-and-tear on me and my bike, and quit after 3 months.

More lucrative - picking strawberries for .25/quart, selling around the neighborhood for .50/quart. But seasonal!

Then a summertime job through high school and college, filling in at the county courthouse for vacationing clerks (yes, my folks were friends with the officeholder). Air conditioning and above minimum-wage pay made it attractive. I also learned just how hard some people DON'T work in county government - I would finish the daily work of one lady whenever she took a day off in about 1/2 a day. She yelled at me that I was making her look bad!

Grew up on a farm in PA...always had chores - without an allowance, then at 12 mowed neighbors' lawns for spending money. Also trapped muskrats in our creek that I sold for the fur. Hated to get up to check the traps at 5 AM! At 15

As the oldest of 5 kids, I started out babysitting. At 15 my first paying job ($1.80 per hr.)was at the nursing home where my mom was director of nursing. I worked in housekeeping- good preparation for cleaning my future rental properties. I loved talking to the residents and they were happy that a "youngin" would listen to the stories. It was always tough when one of them passed away.

In college I worked at the front desk of my dorm, sorting mail, answering the phone and checking out magazines. I became the student manager my second year and paid all of my college expenses.

How exciting it was when I graduated and got my first professional job making $13,650! Never did I imagine that one day I would collect more than that in rent money each month.

Just remembered: de-tassled corn. Walked then learned to use stilts. At 6'2", on stilts, ans still had to bend the stalk down the reach the tassel. Begged the farmer for more work so he let me plow from about 6-midnight. I was the "Midnight Plowboy"

Then I ran the fan mill and bagged seed soy beans during the winter.

Don't ask about the manure spreader incident.