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I saw the following question posted out on the internet, the person looking for an answer and I had to share it with you.

“I am helping someone with their budget and trying to brainstorm some ideas for helping the make extra money. But the family doesn’t need, right now, to have either parent go running off to a part-time job, and spending all of their time there. Ideally, I am trying to come up with something that would be somewhat fun, or educational, that the whole family could take some part in… including a pre-teen and younger siblings.”

OK, all the standard bullshit suggestions aside, unless you’ve got an Amish family it is really, hard (impossible) to get a modern family excited about making a budget and then enslaving all the kids to work hard to make money.

Sure a garage sale or boot sale, as my Brit friends call it, might be a fun family event for one weekend, but not every weekend. There are even laws about making your pre-teen and younger kids work to make a meaningful income. Hum, maybe a family coal mine. Just thinking out loud.

Seriously, WTF!

A healthier approach would be to make a weekend job for mom and dad that the kids can come along and be constructive, only if they want to be. Don’t enslave them for the financial transgressions of the parents.

And while there are families that might actually do that, have you been out driving in the country and seen the honor boxes next to the produce stand, it’s because people don’t want to waste their time doing low paid crap.

The family would be better off spending within their income. It ain’t rocket science and it sure as hell isn’t a barrel of fun. Making extra money is work and work is either a labor of love or an uncomfortable pain in the ass that you dread and hate to face.

Even at the farmer markets I’ve been to, you don’t see single agers grilling the italian sausages or whipping up a fresh load of ostrich burgers. If they could get paid for shitting their britches, then maybe we’d have something.

I had my first business when I was 12 or so. It was a bike shop and I repaired neighborhood kids bikes for fun and profit. As a 12 year old I made a fortune, but in family dollars, it was chump change.

Besides, think about this, you drag the whole family along to make money, are you going to pay the kids? Maybe we could trade some good old childhood for minimum wage, it’s going up I hear.

I don’t mean to be too sarcastic here, but I do come from sturdy American stock so it’s in my genes. Instead I’ll have to go back to my earlier answer, WTF!

Parents, either reduce your expenses or send one of the rents off for a PT job. They will be away from the family but that’s just the way it works to work for many.

Maybe if this question caught me on a sympathy day my answer would be different, but dammit, Mama worked three jobs to keep the kids feed, not made the kids work three jobs.

I wonder whose pain we are trying to avoid here, the parent off working or the kid missing the parent working. Hum.

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Steve

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