Money for Nothing - making cash as a kid

[NavyDiver]

I often feel my kids get it tough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0

As a kid I was lucky to have access to a horse, saddle bags and a gold pan. $0 to$1000+ per trip
Brought a sow (pig) Matilda gave me 10-20 pigglets twice a year sold at $80ish each. I did have to give a few to mum and dad.
Catching chooks at 2am for $10-20 was honestly a rip off I did a few dozen times only.

Fees up time- what did you do?

[Ferret]

Used to go up to the rifle range to dig out lead slugs. Melt them all down and sell it to the scrapies. Forget what I used to get out of that but I'd speculate you were doing far better than me.

[V8Ian]

I was a paperboy, quite ubiquitous in the day, for the princely sum of $2.00 for six afternoons a week.

[Homestar]

I mowed lawns around town on the weekends. Made a decent quid. Also bred rabbits, although Dad used to put the odd one in the pot for tea...

[bblaze]

paper boy, 5am starts, six days a week. The real money was made saturaday nights with weekrnd papers and good tips (had to find a party house, even if not on your own route and be first there). Finished that job on Friday I left school and start work Monday. 4 years all up
Shooting possums and rabbits for skins. Picking blackberries in season.
Even had a go at making and selling reubarb wine, was doing ok too but a couple of old dears got drunk. We thought it was non alcoholic, got in a mite of trouble with the coppers for that, was a 13 or so at the time.
Collected and sold bags of rags, my first boss was a good customer. He reckoned by given me a job he might get a bag of rags without a couple pound of rocks

Had more cash back then than now I reckon but I worked for it
cheers

blaze

[scarry]

I worked at the local Cut Price store,usually only Sat mornings.

I used to pack the groceries in large paper bags and take them to the customers cars.

Also did a bit of stocking the shelves.

I remember once we left a pallet load of ice cream on the loading dock for the weekend[bigsad]

Strange how some mistakes stay in the mind...

I think pay was around $10.00 for 4 hours,and a free can of drink.

Then once i started my apprenticeship,i used to work at nights for a guy who fixed only domestic fridges,under his house.
Geez he taught me a lot,and only paid in cash.
Those were the days.

[V8Ian]

I worked at the local Cut Price store,usually only Sat mornings.

I used to pack the groceries in large paper bags and take them to the customers cars.

Also did a bit of stocking the shelves.

I remember once we left a pallet load of ice cream on the loading dock for the weekend[bigsad]

Strange how some mistakes stay in the mind...

I think pay was around $10.00 for 4 hours,and a free can of drink.

Then once i started my apprenticeship,i used to work at nights for a guy who fixed only domestic fridges,under his house.
Geez he taught me a lot,and only paid in cash.
Those were the days.
Oh the irony, considering your ultimate career. [biggrin]

[crash]

Use to buy week old chickens - raise them to cooking size, slaughter them and sell them as roasting chooks. Luckily dad provided the feed.
Free time during summer was picking bottles - 10cents a bottle I got. Use to hit the jack pot around some free way signs as it was common practice of trying to hit the sign by throwing a bottle out your window as you drove past.
Did a lot of odd jobs - cleaning yards, raking leaves etc.
First "real" job was washing dishes in a restaurant at $5.25 / hr

[Don 130]

I delivered milk (pints in glass bottles) to houses via a hand cart. Can't remember the pay, but as shoes were too slippery on frost covered roads, I wore none. Bare feet gave better traction and feel, and going fast enough to get to school on time meant my feet didn't get cold but my fingers wouldn't work. I also mowed old peoples lawns on weekends.
Don.

[loanrangie]

We would raid the bottle recycling depot for soft drink bottles to get the 20c each, then straight down to the milk bar for mixed lollies or the squash center for a few games of Galaxian.

[jonesfam]

I would go to the Golf Club & find Golf Balls.
Once a week, on a Monday afternoon, & find around 1/2 a bucket.
On Saturday I would sell them at the club while Mum & Dad played.
Some folk would get a bit miffed when they would buy their own balls back.
8c a ball I seem to remember.

Also went to the corner shop, got a few bottles from the back & cashed them in around the front, feel a bit guilty about that one.

.50c Pocket Money if all my chores were done + 10c for stopping the dog biting the garbage & **** pot men.

Good money back then.

Jonesfam

[RANDLOVER]

More of a barter system, my mate and I would catch snakes and give them to his older brother to sell at high school, this paid for fishing tackle and food and drinks when we went fishing. Later with another mate as teens, we would catch fish and swap them for beers at the local informal drinking hole.

We also used to nag our Dad to give us all the empty glass soft drink bottles, which kept us in snacks and cap guns for the school holidays.

[Tombie]

Hahaha, remember the craze in the 80s of wearing O’rings?

Kids would wear them on their wrists, smaller ones on their earrings etc.

Dad was in the hydraulics game so I’d order thousands from him at bulk pricing and then sell them to other school kids for a ridiculous mark up.

Hardly an effort [emoji41]

[Tote]

Catching and selling Yabbies in the farm dam for Dad's workmates who were fishermen. In my teens driving tractors for the neighbour in the school holidays, although looking back I probably broke far more expensive gear than I was worth. One incident that comes to mind is wondering what would happen when I actuated the ram to fold a large set of harrows whilst driving along. The ram bent like a banana with my explanation of "I dunno how it broke" not getting a very enthusiastic response.

I'm not sure that I would be as patient with someone driving my gear today. As a mattere of interest the cocky involved ended up in the uper house of NSW parlament

Regards,
Tote

[crash]

Hahaha, remember the craze in the 80s of wearing O’rings?

Kids would wear them on their wrists, smaller ones on their earrings etc.

Dad was in the hydraulics game so I’d order thousands from him at bulk pricing and then sell them to other school kids for a ridiculous mark up.

Hardly an effort [emoji41]
Reminds me, a mate and I would get permission to go to the local library (off school grounds) at lunch time and we would always stop at the local super market - would buy packets of jaw breakers - 2 for 25 cents. I would sell them for 25 cents each on the school bus on the way home. I quickly learned not to give out credit - cash or no jaw breakers!

[scarry]

Oh the irony, considering your ultimate career. [biggrin]

Still make those sorts of **** ups today,i am just better skilled at landing the blame on others[bigrolf]

Yer that was the beginning of it all,shortly after the Cut Price store it was working on the school holidays with one of the Ellabys,part of the clan that owned one of the largest commercial refrigeration companies in Brisbane.Pubs,clubs,Trawlers was their game.

We used to take those large Coke bottles for refunds as well,from memory, we used to get 20c a bottle,enough for a jelly tip ice cream.
Then there was shoving some paper up the coin return chute of the public phone box,that would add a few more 20c for the day.[bighmmm][biggrin]

[LRJim]

Reminds me, a mate and I would get permission to go to the local library (off school grounds) at lunch time and we would always stop at the local super market - would buy packets of jaw breakers - 2 for 25 cents. I would sell them for 25 cents each on the school bus on the way home. I quickly learned not to give out credit - cash or no jaw breakers!Sounds like selling cigarettes [emoji23][emoji23] You would ask for a fiver now days...

[3toes]

Mowed lawns which became a job in itself ended up with 3 people helping me as had too much work.

Also did car detailing for local car dealers. Depended on what they required and the state of the car would take between a couple of hours to a full day per car. Paid according to time required. Was very satisfying to take a car which was a mess and having it looking showroom fresh when you finished.

[stealth]

My brother and I used to take a mattock and my grandmothers pack of farm dogs into the hills around Amphitheatre, Victoria, digging out rabbit burrows and the dogs would chase down a few. Sold the rabbits to a local buyer for 20 cents each. We’d work all day for $1 as we rarely got more than ten.
Later we got ferrets and when rabbits got to $1 each we might get 40 or so and then we hit the big time. With mattock, ferret box, nets and twenty pair of rabbits trapping up and down hills, climbing fences etc it was hard work for a couple of kids but a great grounding on appreciating the value of your hard earned money. We also collected bottles cans and scrap.
We still have a property in Amphitheatre and regularly joke about going into the hills with a cousins ferrets and then setting up a stall on the highway to sell fresh rabbits as there are no rabbit buyers anymore.
I’m 60 now and after a few beers ..... aah to hard these days.... “Still a good idea though!”
...next time.

[Bigbjorn]

Working early mornings before school delivering block ice on the local ice man's truck. Ten bob a morning. A skinny little kid humping two blocks of ice in tongs down the side of a house and up the back stairs often to see a note on the door "no ice today". A majority of homes in the district did not have refrigeration then. Indeed, some did not yet have electricity if the owners could not afford the installation. Delivery trades like the baker, milko, ice man had prosperous businesses then.

[Bigbjorn]

Mowed lawns which became a job in itself ended up with 3 people helping me as had too much work.

Also did car detailing for local car dealers. Depended on what they required and the state of the car would take between a couple of hours to a full day per car. Paid according to time required. Was very satisfying to take a car which was a mess and having it looking showroom fresh when you finished.

Car detailers here were usually toothsome young women in brief bikinis. Did you look good in that uniform?[bigwhistle]

[trout1105]

Peeling spuds at the local servo and sweeping/cleaning a workshop a couple of times a week and stump picking, roustabout and tractor driving on the weekends and school holidays kept me buisy most of the time [thumbsupbig]

[3toes]

Car detailers here were usually toothsome young women in brief bikinis. Did you look good in that uniform?[bigwhistle]

You might be thinking about a car wash or new car predelivery prep. You would not dress like that for car detailing even if you had the body for it

[Bigbjorn]

You might be thinking about a car wash or new car predelivery prep. You would not dress like that for car detailing even if you had the body for it

Used car yards here competed to have the best looking young bikini birds as detailers. You looked up and down "The Strip" or "The Magic Mile" and saw all the young chickies out cleaning and polishing cars in the yards. It was a matter of prestige amongst one's peers in the business to have the best looking birds out the front of your yard. Yorkshire climate might be more amenable to woolen neck to knee swimmers. Probably needed Claude Jeremiah Greengrass' greatcoat.

[mick88]

Trapping and Ferreting rabbits and selling them as fresh meat to households "door to door" around the area, with the surplus sold to a local Chiller/Rabbit Buyer up the end of town. The skins from the ones that were sold as fresh meat door to door were kept and turned inside out and salted, then dried on wire hoops, then sold. As we lived in an irrigation area there were plenty of dirt and concrete channels about which meant a good supply of yabbies and asparagus, the small yabs sold to local fishermen, the big ones eaten at home, the asparagus bunched and sold door to door for 1/- and later 10 cents. Longnecks were the common container for beer back then, stubbies and "tin" cans hadn't hit the scene, so we scrounged/collected the longnecks and any bonus soft drink bottles we could find then sell the beer bottles to the local "Bottle O" (as we called them) and soft drink bottles to corner stores, usually for a drink or an icecream.
When I eventually started an apprenticeship the pay pretty ordinary as a first year, $19 week, so i would spotlight a couple of nights a week and get 80c pair for rabbits. Fuel was cheap, 12-14c litre, .22 ammo $1.40 a packet, and 40-50 pair of rabbits would gross $30-40 for the night, plus any foxes shot were an absolute bonus of about $20-25, and some reaching as much as $40. A Fur/Skin Buyer from "Aladdin Furs" used to come to town once a month and prop at a local service station, to buy the skins. He always gave a bit better price than the local guys.
By the time i gave up shooting (for income top-up) in the late seventies rabbits (and hares) were bringing $2.60 a pair which was very good coin.
Eventually the fur trade for fox skins died out because of the stigma associated with wearing animal skins, but the fur hat still continues today, and rabbit numbers eventually took a dive due to control methods, myxo, and eventually the calicivirus being released.
The rabbit, regarded as one of Australia's biggest pests, but a huge source of income and tucker for a lot of Aussies over the years.

Cheers, Mick.

[crash]

I use to do a lot of trapping as a teenager. Mostly foxes - never caught a coyote - they were worth a lot more than foxes but harder to trap. Muskrats (type of water rat) were fairly easy to catch. Only ever trapped on the family property. When I was trapping there were not any beavers on our land but remember helping dad catch them.
Every now and then we would get a raccoon, weasel or mink.
Would check the trap line before going to school, then again once again when I got home from school and then skin any animals that I had caught for the day before supper. Once hides were dried they were packaged up and sent off to the fur auctions. Cannot remember the prices I was getting but do remember getting check for $1.00 for a muskrat hide that eventually sold after being at the auction house for nearly 2 years - the letter said the hide was in poor condition - which I knew, it was not in the best of condition when I sent it in.