I never did the paper route thing, but when I was 13 I started working for this lady who was the president of the local SPCA. She had a big old house with a big yard, and I'd do housework and yardwork for her. It was 1983 when I started working for her, and I made $3.50 per hour. Since she was associated with the SPCA, she was always bringing home strays, or animals that would otherwise have been put to sleep. At her peak she had like 30 cats and 5 dogs!
It was a big house, but still!
Let's just say I had plenty to keep me busy! She actually bumped me to $4.00 per hour around 1985, which wasn't bad considering minimum wage was $3.35 at the time, and that $4.00 per hour was either cash or check, so I wasn't paying taxes or SS on it.
She passed away in 1986 from breast cancer, and after that I worked at a nursery school that summer, doing lawn/maintenance work, and then that fall worked at a veterinary clinic through the summer of '88. Then I got a job as a dishwasher at Denny's when I entered college, and soon became a host and then a waiter. By the time I finally got fed up (too heavy of a workload at college, plus my Granddad took ill with lung cancer and passed away) and quit in April 1990, I had a bank account total of around $22,000.
Unfortunately though I blew through it pretty quickly. Part of the problem is that I have one achilles heel...antique cars. I bought a '57 DeSoto in the fall of 1990, when I wasn't even working. I finally picked up a part time job at a department store (Hecht's, for those of you in the Maryland/DC/Va and vicinity) in the fall of 1991, and I think by that time I had spent down to around $18,000, which wasn't bad all things considered. From then on I really didn't track it like I should have, but I got a part time job with McDonnell Douglas in the fall of '92 making $10 an hour, and thought I had it made. By the December of 1994 when I bought my condo, I think I was down to around $5,000 or so. And once I got married in July 1995, my wife took care of what little was left in short order!
Damn it's amazing how fast it can go! Although looking back, I'm really shocked at how quickly I went from $18K in fall '91 to $5K a little over 3 years later. I did total a car (not the DeSoto) in early 1992, but got paid about what I paid for it, and went out and bought another one like it (a Dodge Dart). It wasn't as reliable as the other one had been though, and I had to put a lot more into repairs. And then in April 1994 I bought a '67 Catalina convertible, but I was also working full time by then, plus still had the part time job at Hechts. I really wish I'd tracked my expenses better back then!