Tax breaks do little to stimulate the economy, especially giving tax cuts to people who are already rich, they just keep it --... it doesn't work, so what do you get when that's a policy for eight years? If you haven't figured it out yet, it will soon become painfully clear... the real problem as demonstrated by a few responses above is people don't understand how when spending occurs in the right areas, it stimulates the economy-- Ignorance gets you responses like "we mostly spend it on imported junk at Target and Walmart, thereby transferring money from government coffers into the pockets of the rich owners of these chains."So what, if people go to Target and Walmart and spend their extra money?
What are you doing when you buy at Target and Walmart, other than buying foreign made goods? You might be adding an extra shift for the lowly Wal-mart check out girl, you're increasing traffic in the store, so maybe the floors need to be cleaned an extra day a week, so the outsourced cleaning crew gets a bit more business... the distribution routes(i.e. truckers. loaders, etc) have more liquidity, they pick up a couple of extra loads -- and what does that do, those people now have more money to buy the kids some clothes, maybe go to a movie, buy more food, go out to eat... etc, etc, etc - it's a huge snowball rolling down a hill, if it works correctly --
So don't be so short sighted on what spending can do and why the government needs to pump copious amounts of it into the economy, stop trying to micro manage, just as long as people spending forces the next guy to spend so that they can continue to make money, it will work ... and frankly if that means lining the pockets of wealthy interest, than so be it, we can worry about that later -- nothings moving, everyone is holding on for dear life to what they have, because we think once it goes... it's gone forever. The only worry is inflation, which is a problem because we don't manufacture goods like we once did...
Well, I for one... say spend away, I hope it works, or it's gonna get really ugly in the next couple of years.
Very cool. I like the frugality proverbs as well. Thanks for doing the interview, Philip. My husband lived in Turkey for a couple of years and loved it. We are trying to go back for an extended trip sometime as a couple. I hear it's a phenomenal country.
I just bought a Ray-O-Vac floatable lantern. It came WITH a 6V Heavy Duty Ray-O-Vac lantern battery for a measly $1.99 at a discount store. So heck no, ain't gonna cut the battery open.
The bulb though is a Krypton bulb. So I'm gonna cut that open, to get the Kryptonite.
$13 a week is about $52 a month. For people in debt, this makes a sizeable extra payment on a credit card and helps you pay it off faster. Once paid off, you'll have more money to spend because you have less money tied up in debt repayments.
whether it's in the form of a tax break or a rebate, give money to us consumers and we mostly spend it on imported junk at Target and Walmart, thereby transferring money from government coffers into the pockets of the rich owners of these chains.
that's why, although i don't think the infrastructure-building parts of the stimulus plan will work to fix the economy, i like them better. at least we're getting something for our money, and in many cases it's work that has been sorely overdue from years of neglect.
except for any such money that goes to Chicago. That'll just go into the pockets of Mayor Daley's cronies. Sigh.
$13 a week does little to stimulate my local economy. As long as the gas prices continue to drop, this will leave my budget with a little more breathing room. If anything, I'll use it to pad my rainy day fund or take your suggestion of putting towards my mortgage payment.
I hate the idea of the government giving away my money in order to have me spend it back into the system. If it didn't work in May, it sure won't help when 3 million people have lost their jobs and can use it to keep themselves going.
I live in Florida in an area served by a private water co-op. Our water comes from wells and us purified using reverse osmosis. This is about as close as you can come to distilled water, in other words, PURE. When we first moved here we noticed that the cat's water bowl NEVER got slimy, no matter how many days between washings. Point is, great water, and no funny taste like much of Florida water has. So into the house across the street moves an ex-cop and his girlfriend a few years ago. They and their dogs ONLY drink bottled water, despite my explanation of how good our water is. After a year or so of living here, the recycling truck accidentally missed picking up their bin one week. Though I offered to phone the county and have it picked up before the day was over, they have NEVER RECYCLED SINCE THEN! Every week, three to four large trash bags full of plastic bottles go into the dump from these two idiots alone! If I could just be given James Bond's license for just one day.....
Great post! I for one would love to hear more about your journey over those first 6 months- from concept to execution to profit. I'm sure others would like to as well.
The Nigerian Lotto scams - and all those of the sort - are interesting pieces of work. In some ways they are a stroke of genius and rife with all the right cliche's. It could be a movie if the details we're so mundane... the bad guys leverage an new, interesting, and to some scary technology and they plug away. They work hard and adapt. The FBI/IRS angle is a genius reinvention... now they can overcome trepedation by invoking 'trusted' paragons of authority within the US government. They have taken their negative image and wrapped it in the fabric of our government. The cliche of working as hard to do good as they do to perpetrate evil yielding better results probably fits well in this space.
And the other side of the equation is equally as interesting and disturbing. What does it say about someone who so wishes for the free path to wealth that they would so willingly fall into what is so obvious a trap - send me $1000 and I'll send you $1M... say it out loud. But rather, we have a huge segment of our society who looks for nothing but the quick fix.
I've heard that folks are most susceptible to scams - of all sorts - when they are either afriad or greedy. In today's economy these scams fit squarely at the instersection of both. The perfect storm is brewing - increased fear, increased greed, and 'endorsements' from the IRS and FBI... we're about to see this trend really take off
I've run long, but one more thought... last summer I listened to a This American Life podcast about these types of scams and a group of folks who baited the scammers and sort of scammed them back... a very compelling story and it's free on iTunes or Chicago Public Radio dot com
If your blog is tightly tailored, there are other money-making opportunities as well. I started writing about manga (Japanese comics) almost four years ago because my kids were reading them and there wasn't much information about them on the internet. It took about a year, but the blog caught on and led to a number of paid freelance writing opportunities.
Last year I noticed that while there was a lot of buzz around comics for children, no one was covering that field either. I rounded up a group of writers and started a second blog, with me as editor. That blog did so well that the editor of School Library Journal invited me to put it on his site, which I did—for a monthly fee. This allows me to pay the writers, cover expenses, and still have some left over.
A third income stream is to sell review copies on E-Bay. I'm not very good at this—the money isn't that great, so I'd rather keep the comics or donate them to a library. But I know other reviewers who pick up beer money that way.
I was a teenager in 1994 & couldn't make that kinda money - I babysat and worked 2 retail jobs in the summer. Working enough to earn 13k would leave no time for activities & those HS activities equal scholarships in many cases... better to start out with no college debt then to have a big IRA.
And as someone who works in a high school I can tell ya - schools are more demanding now. They don't make the kids work as hard but they do seem to take up a lot more time with everything. I wonder if it's intended to keep kids out of trouble...
I'll have to check my old bank stmts & see how much I made in high school- my Dad keeps everything. Which has no financial value but it is neat to go back in time by going through the old files...
As someone who works with teenagers, and a parent striving to raise a financially responsible 9 year old... even the most responsible kids would spent some amount of this - at least in this day & age of materialism.
Even my kid comes home demanding stuff - like an MP3 player - as if I'd ever buy him such a thing! It snowed yesterday & I handed him a shovel & told him to go earn the $ for his MP3 player. He told me it wasn't worth it - LOL.
I think they'd be better served using it to buy their first car, use the money for an emergency fund (for when the car breaks or gets totaled) and then when they go to college Financial aide will expect it to be used for tuition. The last time I was enrolled in college classes (2 years ago) my IRA was considered in my financial aid since some IRAs allow you to withdraw (penalty free) for college expenses.
One other thing - if the kid ever has any kind of hard luck in their life(and need disability, food assistance, even just help getting the car repaired) they will be expected to clean out that IRA regardless of any penalties. When my son's Dad left me & I was struggling I was forced to do so if I wanted to keep us off the streets. Although I hope no kid ever goes through such hardship - hopefully they make good decisions & never end up in such a situation.
Yes passion is perhaps the biggest thing that leads you in the right direct and lines you up with money, but what attracts the money itself is giving value. The more value you can give, the more value you will receive. Put both passion and value together and you have a recipe for wealth.
I HIGHLY doubt they have "sent people to jail" for returning ECB items, unless they are talking about someone running some kind of large-scale operation. However, for the reasons already discussed in these comments, I don't think you should return any more ECB items.
It's really a strange aspect of the program. I mean, nowhere -- that I have noticed -- do they SAY you can't return this stuff and still use the ECBs. Some other stores seem to be able to track rewards better and say, you must relinquish the bonus if you return the item. Seems like they SHOULD be able to say, this item can only be returned if you hand over those ECBs or have the ECBs just invalidate if the item is returned. But I guess their computer system is just not up to the task.
It just seems like common sense that it would be abusive to get the bonus and then return the goods. Yet, without them posting some kind of policy on it, I don't see how they could prosecute. There's nothing illegal about returning something. If at all, fraud would maybe occur upon using the ECBs after the product was returned, but if they don't SAY you can't use them, I don't see how that could be technically fraud either.
if you made $13,000 in 1994, as a 15-yo, I'd have to say that's extremely a-typical.
If you worked 20 hours a week 9 months a year, and 40 hours a week 3 months a year (which seems to me to be a *really* heavy work schedule for a 15YO!), that's still only about 1250 hours a year. To gross $13,000, you must have been making better than $10/hour, which is more than most jobs for kids in HS pay, even in 2009. In 1994, the minimum wage was $4.25/hour, and someone working FT at minimum wage would have grossed only $8500.
One of the major flaws with this thinking is that the "10% annual return" on the stock market is not realistic. That figure gets touted a lot as the supposed annual long-term rate of return on the market, but it's highly misleading. Instead, you should be looking at the compounded annual growth rate, which for the period from 1950 to today, just to pick a nice long time period, is a bit over 6.5%.
Now, throw into this mix the effect of inflation: for the same timeframe of 1950 to today, inflation has averaged a shade 4%. So stock market returns have only beat inflation by about 2.5%, on average, over the period from 1950 to today.
It's better than a stick in the eye, but not by much. After tucking away your hard-earned 8 grand for 50 years, getting 2.5 inflation-adjusted growth, how much can you expect to have waiting for you at retirement?
$27,496.97
Probably enough to live on for 6 months.
Another way to look at it and come to the same conclusion:
Let's say some hypothetical person retiring in 2008 had invested the equivalent of $8000, back when they graduated from high school in 1960. Adjusting backwards for inflation, $8000 in 2008 dollars is equivalent to $1160 back in 1960. That may have been a reasonable amount of money for a kid to earn working FT during the summer for 4 years straight--the minimum wage was $1.00 at the time.
If IRAs had existed in 1960 and our hypothetical retiree had invested that $1,160 in an S&P 500 index fund, how much would she have today? $1,160 would have bought about 20 shares of of the S&P, which stood at $58 in 1960. Even at the peak of the S&P back in 2007, those 20 shares would have only grown to about $28,000, and of course a year later, they're worth only about $17,000.
Now, here's yet another way to look at it: that initial $1,160 investment back in 1960 probably reflected 800-1000 hours worth labor (probably unpleasant), in order to wind up with $17,000 50 years later. But that same retiree could also have earned $17,000 for retirement in the year before she retired with an investment of a MERE 400-600 HOURS OF LABOR, assuming a career-ending salary of $60-80,000.
This last way of looking at it demonstrates that the real key to a secure retirement is steady income growth over the course of your career, as much as investment growth.
I think this was a great post! I love the Netflix idea. I also believe that most people completely disregard bodyweight only exercises, and it's a real shame. You don't need to buy any equipment to get in great shape.
I've posted a similar article here if anyone is interested.
I love this post.
I have a 17yr old and I wish I had been given all the advise she is getting. She is looking for a job to save for college and her car insurance instead of retirement, though. She is just having a hard time finding a place that is hiring. She had a babysitting job but the woman lost her job. The sad thing is I feel that it is so important for teenagers to learn the responsibility of a job but many of them can't find work. She is cleaning houses when she can but it's just not enough. But I think that is what everyone is saying now.
I'm going to try it today. Battery was completely dead, tried putting it on a charger and that didn't do much, car still won't start. I probably need a new one in that case, but I had a bottle of red wine in the fridge so I figured I'd give it a try. I'll post on whether it works for a toasted battery or not.
My first year working, between the ages of 15 and 16 my tax return shows I made $13,000. Is that not normal? Every year after that my income would increase slightly (and again, that isn't including babysitting money). So when I was thinking about teenagers saving $2,000 per summer, I was just assuming that wouldn't be their entire earnings for the year so they would still have money for their car and gas and such.
Based on the comments, it sounds as if teenagers are not making much of anything at all.
At 29... I didn't think I was that far removed from the life of a teenager, but apparently times have changed :)
A 16 year old could theoretically make that $2000 in the summer, but what about the expenses involved with having a car to get to work? Should the child take over the cost of gas and maintenance costs?
I'm certainly not an advocate of frivolous spending, but I also feel that kids need time to be just kids. I would encourage them not to spend every penny they earn, but they also don't need to start working towards retirement at that age.
Tax breaks do little to stimulate the economy, especially giving tax cuts to people who are already rich, they just keep it --... it doesn't work, so what do you get when that's a policy for eight years? If you haven't figured it out yet, it will soon become painfully clear... the real problem as demonstrated by a few responses above is people don't understand how when spending occurs in the right areas, it stimulates the economy-- Ignorance gets you responses like "we mostly spend it on imported junk at Target and Walmart, thereby transferring money from government coffers into the pockets of the rich owners of these chains."So what, if people go to Target and Walmart and spend their extra money?
What are you doing when you buy at Target and Walmart, other than buying foreign made goods? You might be adding an extra shift for the lowly Wal-mart check out girl, you're increasing traffic in the store, so maybe the floors need to be cleaned an extra day a week, so the outsourced cleaning crew gets a bit more business... the distribution routes(i.e. truckers. loaders, etc) have more liquidity, they pick up a couple of extra loads -- and what does that do, those people now have more money to buy the kids some clothes, maybe go to a movie, buy more food, go out to eat... etc, etc, etc - it's a huge snowball rolling down a hill, if it works correctly --
So don't be so short sighted on what spending can do and why the government needs to pump copious amounts of it into the economy, stop trying to micro manage, just as long as people spending forces the next guy to spend so that they can continue to make money, it will work ... and frankly if that means lining the pockets of wealthy interest, than so be it, we can worry about that later -- nothings moving, everyone is holding on for dear life to what they have, because we think once it goes... it's gone forever. The only worry is inflation, which is a problem because we don't manufacture goods like we once did...
Well, I for one... say spend away, I hope it works, or it's gonna get really ugly in the next couple of years.
Very cool. I like the frugality proverbs as well. Thanks for doing the interview, Philip. My husband lived in Turkey for a couple of years and loved it. We are trying to go back for an extended trip sometime as a couple. I hear it's a phenomenal country.
I just bought a Ray-O-Vac floatable lantern. It came WITH a 6V Heavy Duty Ray-O-Vac lantern battery for a measly $1.99 at a discount store. So heck no, ain't gonna cut the battery open.
The bulb though is a Krypton bulb. So I'm gonna cut that open, to get the Kryptonite.
$13 a week is about $52 a month. For people in debt, this makes a sizeable extra payment on a credit card and helps you pay it off faster. Once paid off, you'll have more money to spend because you have less money tied up in debt repayments.
whether it's in the form of a tax break or a rebate, give money to us consumers and we mostly spend it on imported junk at Target and Walmart, thereby transferring money from government coffers into the pockets of the rich owners of these chains.
that's why, although i don't think the infrastructure-building parts of the stimulus plan will work to fix the economy, i like them better. at least we're getting something for our money, and in many cases it's work that has been sorely overdue from years of neglect.
except for any such money that goes to Chicago. That'll just go into the pockets of Mayor Daley's cronies. Sigh.
I always like to read about other places; amazing how things can be different and yet so much the same. I especially liked the sayings you included.
$13 a week does little to stimulate my local economy. As long as the gas prices continue to drop, this will leave my budget with a little more breathing room. If anything, I'll use it to pad my rainy day fund or take your suggestion of putting towards my mortgage payment.
I hate the idea of the government giving away my money in order to have me spend it back into the system. If it didn't work in May, it sure won't help when 3 million people have lost their jobs and can use it to keep themselves going.
Your "bottled water" is TAP WATER + HUGE PROFIT to the company who SUCKERED YOU!
I live in Florida in an area served by a private water co-op. Our water comes from wells and us purified using reverse osmosis. This is about as close as you can come to distilled water, in other words, PURE. When we first moved here we noticed that the cat's water bowl NEVER got slimy, no matter how many days between washings. Point is, great water, and no funny taste like much of Florida water has. So into the house across the street moves an ex-cop and his girlfriend a few years ago. They and their dogs ONLY drink bottled water, despite my explanation of how good our water is. After a year or so of living here, the recycling truck accidentally missed picking up their bin one week. Though I offered to phone the county and have it picked up before the day was over, they have NEVER RECYCLED SINCE THEN! Every week, three to four large trash bags full of plastic bottles go into the dump from these two idiots alone! If I could just be given James Bond's license for just one day.....
How do you get a sales receipt if you buy it on eBay?
Great post! I for one would love to hear more about your journey over those first 6 months- from concept to execution to profit. I'm sure others would like to as well.
Keep up the great work
Ethan
ethanwaldmandotcom
The Nigerian Lotto scams - and all those of the sort - are interesting pieces of work. In some ways they are a stroke of genius and rife with all the right cliche's. It could be a movie if the details we're so mundane... the bad guys leverage an new, interesting, and to some scary technology and they plug away. They work hard and adapt. The FBI/IRS angle is a genius reinvention... now they can overcome trepedation by invoking 'trusted' paragons of authority within the US government. They have taken their negative image and wrapped it in the fabric of our government. The cliche of working as hard to do good as they do to perpetrate evil yielding better results probably fits well in this space.
And the other side of the equation is equally as interesting and disturbing. What does it say about someone who so wishes for the free path to wealth that they would so willingly fall into what is so obvious a trap - send me $1000 and I'll send you $1M... say it out loud. But rather, we have a huge segment of our society who looks for nothing but the quick fix.
I've heard that folks are most susceptible to scams - of all sorts - when they are either afriad or greedy. In today's economy these scams fit squarely at the instersection of both. The perfect storm is brewing - increased fear, increased greed, and 'endorsements' from the IRS and FBI... we're about to see this trend really take off
I've run long, but one more thought... last summer I listened to a This American Life podcast about these types of scams and a group of folks who baited the scammers and sort of scammed them back... a very compelling story and it's free on iTunes or Chicago Public Radio dot com
If your blog is tightly tailored, there are other money-making opportunities as well. I started writing about manga (Japanese comics) almost four years ago because my kids were reading them and there wasn't much information about them on the internet. It took about a year, but the blog caught on and led to a number of paid freelance writing opportunities.
Last year I noticed that while there was a lot of buzz around comics for children, no one was covering that field either. I rounded up a group of writers and started a second blog, with me as editor. That blog did so well that the editor of School Library Journal invited me to put it on his site, which I did—for a monthly fee. This allows me to pay the writers, cover expenses, and still have some left over.
A third income stream is to sell review copies on E-Bay. I'm not very good at this—the money isn't that great, so I'd rather keep the comics or donate them to a library. But I know other reviewers who pick up beer money that way.
I was a teenager in 1994 & couldn't make that kinda money - I babysat and worked 2 retail jobs in the summer. Working enough to earn 13k would leave no time for activities & those HS activities equal scholarships in many cases... better to start out with no college debt then to have a big IRA.
And as someone who works in a high school I can tell ya - schools are more demanding now. They don't make the kids work as hard but they do seem to take up a lot more time with everything. I wonder if it's intended to keep kids out of trouble...
I'll have to check my old bank stmts & see how much I made in high school- my Dad keeps everything. Which has no financial value but it is neat to go back in time by going through the old files...
As someone who works with teenagers, and a parent striving to raise a financially responsible 9 year old... even the most responsible kids would spent some amount of this - at least in this day & age of materialism.
Even my kid comes home demanding stuff - like an MP3 player - as if I'd ever buy him such a thing! It snowed yesterday & I handed him a shovel & told him to go earn the $ for his MP3 player. He told me it wasn't worth it - LOL.
I think they'd be better served using it to buy their first car, use the money for an emergency fund (for when the car breaks or gets totaled) and then when they go to college Financial aide will expect it to be used for tuition. The last time I was enrolled in college classes (2 years ago) my IRA was considered in my financial aid since some IRAs allow you to withdraw (penalty free) for college expenses.
One other thing - if the kid ever has any kind of hard luck in their life(and need disability, food assistance, even just help getting the car repaired) they will be expected to clean out that IRA regardless of any penalties. When my son's Dad left me & I was struggling I was forced to do so if I wanted to keep us off the streets. Although I hope no kid ever goes through such hardship - hopefully they make good decisions & never end up in such a situation.
Sorry I was so long winded.
Yes passion is perhaps the biggest thing that leads you in the right direct and lines you up with money, but what attracts the money itself is giving value. The more value you can give, the more value you will receive. Put both passion and value together and you have a recipe for wealth.
Xin, as with anything if you do it with passion the money will follow. I think passion is key to making money in any endeavor.
-Nate
I HIGHLY doubt they have "sent people to jail" for returning ECB items, unless they are talking about someone running some kind of large-scale operation. However, for the reasons already discussed in these comments, I don't think you should return any more ECB items.
It's really a strange aspect of the program. I mean, nowhere -- that I have noticed -- do they SAY you can't return this stuff and still use the ECBs. Some other stores seem to be able to track rewards better and say, you must relinquish the bonus if you return the item. Seems like they SHOULD be able to say, this item can only be returned if you hand over those ECBs or have the ECBs just invalidate if the item is returned. But I guess their computer system is just not up to the task.
It just seems like common sense that it would be abusive to get the bonus and then return the goods. Yet, without them posting some kind of policy on it, I don't see how they could prosecute. There's nothing illegal about returning something. If at all, fraud would maybe occur upon using the ECBs after the product was returned, but if they don't SAY you can't use them, I don't see how that could be technically fraud either.
I blog at www.shopliftingwithpermission.com.
if you made $13,000 in 1994, as a 15-yo, I'd have to say that's extremely a-typical.
If you worked 20 hours a week 9 months a year, and 40 hours a week 3 months a year (which seems to me to be a *really* heavy work schedule for a 15YO!), that's still only about 1250 hours a year. To gross $13,000, you must have been making better than $10/hour, which is more than most jobs for kids in HS pay, even in 2009. In 1994, the minimum wage was $4.25/hour, and someone working FT at minimum wage would have grossed only $8500.
One of the major flaws with this thinking is that the "10% annual return" on the stock market is not realistic. That figure gets touted a lot as the supposed annual long-term rate of return on the market, but it's highly misleading. Instead, you should be looking at the compounded annual growth rate, which for the period from 1950 to today, just to pick a nice long time period, is a bit over 6.5%.
Now, throw into this mix the effect of inflation: for the same timeframe of 1950 to today, inflation has averaged a shade 4%. So stock market returns have only beat inflation by about 2.5%, on average, over the period from 1950 to today.
It's better than a stick in the eye, but not by much. After tucking away your hard-earned 8 grand for 50 years, getting 2.5 inflation-adjusted growth, how much can you expect to have waiting for you at retirement?
$27,496.97
Probably enough to live on for 6 months.
Another way to look at it and come to the same conclusion:
Let's say some hypothetical person retiring in 2008 had invested the equivalent of $8000, back when they graduated from high school in 1960. Adjusting backwards for inflation, $8000 in 2008 dollars is equivalent to $1160 back in 1960. That may have been a reasonable amount of money for a kid to earn working FT during the summer for 4 years straight--the minimum wage was $1.00 at the time.
If IRAs had existed in 1960 and our hypothetical retiree had invested that $1,160 in an S&P 500 index fund, how much would she have today? $1,160 would have bought about 20 shares of of the S&P, which stood at $58 in 1960. Even at the peak of the S&P back in 2007, those 20 shares would have only grown to about $28,000, and of course a year later, they're worth only about $17,000.
Now, here's yet another way to look at it: that initial $1,160 investment back in 1960 probably reflected 800-1000 hours worth labor (probably unpleasant), in order to wind up with $17,000 50 years later. But that same retiree could also have earned $17,000 for retirement in the year before she retired with an investment of a MERE 400-600 HOURS OF LABOR, assuming a career-ending salary of $60-80,000.
This last way of looking at it demonstrates that the real key to a secure retirement is steady income growth over the course of your career, as much as investment growth.
I think this was a great post! I love the Netflix idea. I also believe that most people completely disregard bodyweight only exercises, and it's a real shame. You don't need to buy any equipment to get in great shape.
I've posted a similar article here if anyone is interested.
http://georgelouris.com/blog/why-you-should-skip-the-gym-and-build-your-...
#75
The remote for the Digital Stream DTX9950 (available at Radio Shack) can be programmed to turn on the tv and adjust volume.
I love this post.
I have a 17yr old and I wish I had been given all the advise she is getting. She is looking for a job to save for college and her car insurance instead of retirement, though. She is just having a hard time finding a place that is hiring. She had a babysitting job but the woman lost her job. The sad thing is I feel that it is so important for teenagers to learn the responsibility of a job but many of them can't find work. She is cleaning houses when she can but it's just not enough. But I think that is what everyone is saying now.
I'm going to try it today. Battery was completely dead, tried putting it on a charger and that didn't do much, car still won't start. I probably need a new one in that case, but I had a bottle of red wine in the fridge so I figured I'd give it a try. I'll post on whether it works for a toasted battery or not.
My first year working, between the ages of 15 and 16 my tax return shows I made $13,000. Is that not normal? Every year after that my income would increase slightly (and again, that isn't including babysitting money). So when I was thinking about teenagers saving $2,000 per summer, I was just assuming that wouldn't be their entire earnings for the year so they would still have money for their car and gas and such.
Based on the comments, it sounds as if teenagers are not making much of anything at all.
At 29... I didn't think I was that far removed from the life of a teenager, but apparently times have changed :)
A 16 year old could theoretically make that $2000 in the summer, but what about the expenses involved with having a car to get to work? Should the child take over the cost of gas and maintenance costs?
I'm certainly not an advocate of frivolous spending, but I also feel that kids need time to be just kids. I would encourage them not to spend every penny they earn, but they also don't need to start working towards retirement at that age.