Like with most people, the concept of money and how to earn it isn’t fully understood until you have your first job. Luckily for me, I got my first paid job at the age of 12.

Now you’re probably wondering, what 12-year-old can work a job? What about child labor laws? Well, these were not questions I had when I became a local newspaper delivery girl. This was back in the days when kids were able to do it without the use of a car or parental supervision. Think early 2000s era when the internet was around, but not accessible in most homes, and playing with your friends outside was allowed, just as long as you were back before dinner had to be made.

I remember telling my Mom that I wanted to make my own money (I wanted to help with the household but it was under the guise of wanting to be able to purchase my own stuff) and wanted to have a job that I could do at a young age without burdening my parents. I don’t remember if my Mom was the one that found the position, or if we had simply seen it in the local newspaper that they were hiring young kids to deliver these newspapers. But I will never forget the buzzing excitement that was in the air at my house the first time the bundle of newspapers arrived on my doorstep. I was tremendously excited, and all of my family was chipping in to help me develop a system for bagging, stacking, and transporting the newspaper for the neighborhood next to ours. 

Once everything was set, I was off to deliver about 50 newspapers. After what felt like an eternity, and what was actually like 1.5  hours, I returned to my house exhausted but satisfied that I had done a good job. Unlike what I saw in movies about delivering newspapers, I wanted to do the very best job I could. So for each paper, I went all the way up to the doorstep, carefully placed the paper down on people’s porches in a way that they would see it immediately as they opened the door, and then carefully walked down their drive back to my wagon full of papers that was in tow. 

I would deliver the newspaper once a week, on Thursdays specifically, and I would get paid the next day on the Friday after they were delivered. For the 50 papers, I would get about $30 which I thought was amazing! I had worked so hard for that $30! I knew none of my friends had jobs and that I would be the one with the pride of making my own money.

This is when I also created my first-ever budget, and I was super discouraged by it. 

At this time, the only true “bill” that I felt like I wanted to pay for my parents was my phone bill. Yes I had a phone at 12, but this was wayyy before the age of smartphones. I was still in elementary school but I walked home every day from school and my parents wouldn’t get home for at least another hour or two til after I got out. So to let them know I left school and got home safely I would text them on my little Nokia brick phone. This was one of the pay-per-minute/text phones and I thought it was the coolest thing cause it had a flashlight on the top that I could turn on with two clicks of the “OK” button. 

But I digress. At that time, the amount of texts that I was sending to my parents to let them know where I was, was costing about $30 every week! Immediately all my hopes and dreams for this money went out the window. I wanted to be able to help my mom out will other bills and be able to save some money as well. However, with all of it going to my phone bill, the dreams I had were immediately demolished. At that point, money kind of felt like a hopeless cause. I would work for it but only barely be able what I wanted to do with it.

Unfortunately and unannounced to me, this job didn’t last very long. After delivering for about 3 months, my employer no longer wanted kids to deliver the newspaper. I think I remember the termination letter saying that some of the kids weren’t consistent in their deliveries or were just throwing the papers where ever and people weren’t getting them for a long time. Instead, they moved over to hiring adults with cars to deliver the newspaper.

1. Was. Devastated.  

How could I continue to make money? Well, the short version of it was that I couldn’t. No one else was willing to hire 12-year-olds due to labor laws and such. So this was the first time I was ever out of a job. 

This wasn’t the end of my financial journey, however. This first job taught me about hard work and how to earn money by doing something beneficial for people. It also taught me how important it was to do a good job, even if I never got to see the person at the other end of it. This also taught me that I could budget, but I couldn’t budget for everything if I didn’t have the funds to back it up. I was fueled with the knowledge that I needed to make more money if I ever wanted to achieve any of my goals for the future.