12 year old wants to earn some money

98jdougl

the kids at my school used to do that fron first year- my dad thought it was a well clever idea

More to the point piggles did say 'in later years' for fags/gum/spray and was advising the sweets aspect

Poppy9

A 13 year old girl at my DD school was suspended for selling fags on school premises.

vanpiggy

Have you got a bank account? You could sell the broken mobile phone as broken on envirofone or mazuma?

gforster

Just had this same conversation with my daughter who is 11 and is keen to earn extra money.

The idea she came up with today was washing wheelie bins. She has made a few leaflets and knocked on a few doors and is offering to collect, clean and return neighbours wheelie bins for £1.50 each 2 for £2 and an extra £1 to do the 3 recylcling boxes the council give us.

This way she can get £3 per house and do it every fortnight.

There are 150 houses she can get to in under 2 mins, she reckons on 10 houses which is £15 a week and should keep her in Latte's on saturdays with her friends in town.

Poppy9

Are we talking big wheelie bins?

I have to say, rather her than me as I hate cleaning just my food recycling box and cheat and leave the lid open and let the rain clean it (it's always raining in Wales:D).

I do admire her dedication and enterprise but think she's selling herself short as it's going to take quite a bit of work to clean them. I would charge more and do it monthly. Also what happens if she damages them as I assume she needs to tip them over to clean them?

Rolandtheroadie

Poppy9 wrote: »

Also what happens if she damages them as I assume she needs to tip them over to clean them?

Will it cause any more damage than hoisting them up on the back of a lorry and tipping them?

Poppy9

scotsman4th wrote: »

Will it cause any more damage than hoisting them up on the back of a lorry and tipping them?

Probably not unless but if it cracks when she tips it over you don't want funny neighbours blaming her.

gforster

You might be right about doing it monthly for slightly more money.

In terms of how hard it will be of course it is going to be a horrible job but I think the world is full of people who are unemployed because they are too good to do dirty jobs.

I think it will teach her the value of money, every time she spends £10 on a CD she will remember the five bins she had to climb into to get that money.....

Also I believe that if do jobs like this at a young age it encourages you to aspire to better things in later life, I started at 12 on a market stall doing some really gross jobs and i carried on working hard while at school and college to earn my pocket money. In the end I really enjoyed those days working on the market but am glad I worked hard to get where I am now in a much cushier well paid job.

As for damaging the bins, I don't know what they are like round your way but you could take a sledge hammer to these bins and not damage them, they are solid !

Lethal

Theres not much choice when it comes to that age. I'm 16 now but i remember when i used to go to my old school from Year 7 to year 10 i had a little job. Basically an ice cream van came to our school playground every lunchtime and it sold crisps drinks chocolates and ice creams. Students used to throw all the litter on the ground and the headmaster asked the ice cream van owner to clean up after themselves. And he used to give the job to a girl, but when she reached Year 11 and left school i enquired and took the job. Basically you had to spend 20 minutes walking about with those metal sticks wher you press the handle and its two ends contract, usually used for picking up leaves, and then putting it in a black bag.

Ofcourse i got a lot of abuse, people kicking rubbish about making it difficult to pick up etc. but the pay was bloody good. For 20 minutes a day i received £3, a ribena (sold for 60p at the van) and a chocolate (sold for 50p at the van). So per hour i got £9 plus £3 worth of snacks.

Maybe if theres a lot of litter thrown on the ground in your school, you could ask your head of year / deputy head teacher / head teacher if they would let you do that.

However, this just goes to show that whilst some jobs are really bad and disgusting to do, you won't have many alternatives at that age. So i suggest you try what i said above and consider the bin option as suggested above.

Also what me and my friend did throughout Year 7-9 is buy sweets, drinks and crisps from corner shops then sell them at a mark up of 10-30p. We divided the playground in 2 halfs and covered each one. After the first month we got regulars which helped alot.

However, teachers were against such things so when they asked what we were doing, we just told them we were making money for charity.

But yeah, unfortunately you'll need to wait till your 16 for "proper" jobs.

Also you could ask your mum to sign you up to Youngpoll if she's signed up to onepoll. Could make you a bit of money hopefully

But yeah good luck, and while it may seem that your getting nowhere at your age now, once you hit 16 you'll progress and similarly when you hit 18.

Becles

Thanks all.

So far he's spent the weekend clearing out his room and I've got a pile of old computer games and stuff here that I'm going to help him put on ebay later. He's also going to sign up to youngpoll.