Now that I have two young teenagers, it has dawned on me when is a good time to start earning money, at what age should they start working?

I believe it is very important for our young to learn the value of money and to appreciate that time and effort is put in earning that money, as well as there are possible smarter ways to make money. I also believe that it is possible to teach them when young that ‘what you do with your money’ is more important than the amount you earn.

It seems in our education system learning about money is left out, is this why there are so many people living in debt, poverty, on welfare? Even at a political level we have smart people making decisions about the money earned from our taxes, that have gone through the education process not learning about money and as a consequence our country is in debt. I’m not an expert I am still learning about money, but I enjoy learning about money and I am sharing that and installing that with my children, so that they will grow up having some knowledge and education of money.

So were to start. I was mowing lawns for money when I was younger than my children, so is it ok for a 13 and 14 year old to be working, in today’s day and age?

I think so, for my 13 year old son I have spoken to him about the benefits of earning your own money, I talked about savings for the large goals like a trip to Japan he wants to do next year, as well as just having some money to spend on things he likes, I also talked to him about developing his own business and the benefits of leverage.

So we have set out looking for work for him, we came up with mowing lawns in his neighbourhood, as well as other small tasks such as weeding for example. So I designed a flyer for him, printed off over 600 on coloured paper ($30 for a ream) and got them cut each sheet of A4 paper had 8 flyers on each, to get it cut up cost only $1. Then we put our walking shoes on and made a Saturday afternoon of it, we must have put over 400 flyers into letterboxes, before we called it a day.

In a few days he got 4 calls, which may not sound like much to some but to my son it was well worth it, in fact its great as far as I’m concerned, as we will hand out flyers again in the same area in two months time, in fact the following weekend we expanded the range out just a little and handed out another 300, that may result in another 3 calls, it may amount to nothing, but it is not going to slow us down, we have 100s more flyers and a very large neighbourhood.

What we envisage happening is that he will get more jobs than he can handle so he can employ (contract out) work to other young kids of his age keen to make some money, which is were leverage comes from.
I will be there mentoring him every step of the way, for as long as he wants me too.
He starts his first job this Saturday

But I am in a dilemma, what about my 14 year old daughter? What can she do? What does 14 year old girls want to do? I have approached some outlets and they are set at 15 being the youngest they will hire.
She doesn’t want to mow lawns or do a mail run, she gives me very little clue as to what she may like to do, so this weekend while he brother is doing his first job, I will be taking her out around her neighbourhood businesses to see if I can get her a weekend job, she said she would wash dishes in a café if she could.

So what other options are out there?

- Eric

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