When and did you make your very first money? What, why and how did you use it?

First wages I ever earned was when I was my grandfather's assistant in his tailor shop. I started when I was 15, and he paid me $1.15/hr in cash. He kept a ledger, but I don't think he had me on any type of official employee record or whatever. I mainly bought school clothes, plus a winter coat, and a couple pairs of sneakers with that money.

2 yrs later, I got a job at a gas station near my parents' new house. I worked full-time for 1.40/hr and got a raise after a 30-day probationary period...to $165, I think. I used that money to buy my first car. Then I got married and, not long after, I used my savings to move us into apartment and fill it with mostly 2nd-hand furniture.

The apartment was only $110/mo for 2 bedrooms and our own fenced yard, so we felt like we were doing pretty great, and that life would just keep getting better. Then we had a baby, and another, and I had to keep finding bigger homes and better paying jobs.
 
I too, started out babysitting in Jr. High for about 50cents an hour. I worked for my cousins in a bindery for a couple weeks one summer in high school but don't remember the wage. Once I became a junior in high school I got a proper job at the local Library as a page ( was a runner to the stacks for books that were not on the general shelves) I was paid $2.35/hour and saved up. The summer after I graduated High School, I worked as an au pair (nanny) for 2 little girls in The Hague, Netherlands for $25 Gulden a week plus room & board. AH, those were the days!
 
My mother was a gardener, and she had roses, peonies, and all sorts of other flowers, as well as we had fruit trees and berry bushes. My mom wanted sawdust or wood shavings around some of the plants and also in the paths in the garden area. We had a small neighborhood grocery store, and kids were always wanting to earn money for their penny candy, so my mom would put us to work, hauling cartloads of the sawdust in her green garden cart.

We made 10 cents per load, and could haul as many or as few loads as we wanted to. Some of the kids just wanted to make that dime and spend it on candy, but I saved mine up for something that i really wanted. After i got my pony, everything i worked for went for something to do with having a horse.

Usually, if it was something that would take me a long time to save up for, my mom would pay part of the price for me; so I always had the motivation to earn my dimes and save them for something I wanted. Sometimes, it was just to have extra money for the Roy Rogers comic books when we went to the store that sold magazines and comic books.

After i got my pony, I also had to haul cartloads of horse manure; but I didnā€™t get paid for that, and it was part of my motherā€™s bargaining before she bought me the pony. But I loved my pony, and so I guess you could say I was paid, just not in cash money.

This is me with my pony, getting ready for the 4-H Horse Show, probably around 11-12 years old.

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I posted this back in 2019, so this is just a copy and paste effort.

My first real job was as a bag boy at Publix. Publix is a grocery store chain that originated in Florida. I say real job, because it was one that required me to get a Social Security card. Back in those days that's when you got you Social Security Card. For your first job. I was 16. Nowadays I think they sign you up in the Hospital as soon as you are born.

$1.00 buck an hour. It started in June of 1963 at the grand opening of the Publix on Belcher Road and Gulf to Bay blvd, in Clearwater. They hired a whole bunch of us for the grand opening, gave us about a 1/2 hour orientation and then told us to show up in time to clock in before 9:00 am when the doors opened. We had to wear white shirts, black pants, black shoes and a black tie. You could bring your own tie or you could wear one of theirs which were clip on bow ties.

I thought the bow ties looked gay, so I brought my own 99 cent clip on regular tie. You had to be all ready to go before you clocked in. One time a couple of us clocked in and then went into the back and put on our ties and then went to work. That probably took two or three minutes. But as soon as we got back up front the assistant manager was there and chewed us a new one. "We're not paying you to get dressed!".

Anyway, back to day one. When those doors opened at 9 am the customers just streamed in. I had never seen a store so busy in my life. It was a baptism under fire. They had given us a few instructions on bagging during the orientation. Cans on the bottom, lighter stuff on top, wet and cold stuff in a separate bag. They were real anal about bag use back then. We were not allowed to double bag anything except for frozen stuff.

They used the brown paper bags then. The biggest size were the "50 lbs bags" Next the 25 lbs, the 10, then 5's. We were supposed to economize to the max on the bags. Which was BS because if you put very many cans into a single bag it was gonna tear. But if we double bagged them you would get your butt chewed a new one by one of the assistant managers.

There was one exception. If the customer asked for double bags we could do it then. I used to pray for customers that had gotten wise to this and asked for double bags so I wouldn't have to worry about them tearing. Somewhere around the 1980's Publix got wise and quit trying to nickle and dime on the bags and they started to double all bags. But not while I was working there.

But I digress. Back to day one. It was on a Thursday. The Grand Opening was to run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Back then Publix closed on Sundays. They didn't tell us nuthin. So we just started bagging groceries non stop. I was wondering if that was going to be it for my life. Just non stop grocery bagging till the end of time. Back then the average grocery order came to about $25 bucks which would be four of the big 50 lbs bags filling up one grocery cart. That probably represented about a weeks groceries for an average family.

But then around noon they started telling us in shifts that we could take a lunch break now. That was the first time I found out that we would get a break. I can't remember how long we had. I think a half hour, but it might have been more. But you had to clock out of course and then clock back in when you were done. I remember what I got for lunch though. I went back to the cold case and got a cuban sandwich and then a quart of skim milk form the dairy case. The cuban was 25 cents. The milk was the same. So 50 cents plus two cents tax for lunch. I ate it in the back of the store, then clocked back in.

We got another break around dinner time. Then it was non stop bagging till closing time. They locked the doors at 9 pm but there were still customers in the store. So a few of us kept bagging while the rest started clean up. First you swept the aisles. Lot of cigarette butts on the floor because smoking was allowed in the stores back then. Then we wet moped, followed that up with a dry mop, then a wax mop, and finally we ran the buffer. And of course some unlucky dude got to do the bathrooms. Scrubbing out commodes and picking cigarette butts out of the urinals was not the greatest job in the world.


I got home but I could not sleep. I would close my eyes and all I could see was an endless stream of groceries coming at me that I had to bag. And I'm wondering if this is going to be it for the summer? Thirteen hours a day six days a week? I kind of complained to my mom that night about how they hadn't given us a clue as to what our schedules were going to be and what if this is it? Thirteen hours a day six days a week? And all she said back to me was "Think of all the money you will make".

Anyway, Saturday was a repeat of the first two days. By now I've got the process down pretty good. I'm just a grocery bagging robot. One of my favorite assignments was if I could be lucky enough to be the guy that the assistant manager picked to go out into the parking lot and round up all the carts and bring them back in. That was a plum assignment to me. Fresh air and freedom from those groceries, even if just for a little while.

A lot of the other guys didnā€™t like that because they wanted to keep bagging so that they could make tips. Publix had a no tipping policy but during our orientation they had told us that it was OK to take them if the customer offered. Being an introvert I didnā€™t get as many tips as some of the other guys because I was not one to smile or strike up a banter with the customers. I was much happier out by myself rounding up carts in the parking lot.

I still shop at Publix to this day. Itā€™s a nice clean store and they are big on customer service. But itā€™s a little more casual. Back in the day we were expected to treat customers like they were Gods that had descended from heaven to walk the earth.

As for what I did with the money I made, I don't remember.
 
I started out at age 11/12 delivering Pennysavers (a weekly classified-ad publication) once a week, then moved on to a real, daily newspaper route, then babysitting when I got a little older, and when I turned 16 and could get a more formal job, I started working as a cashier in a grocery store.

As for what I spent it on, I'm like a lot of the folks here: candy, records, and magazines, then makeup and clothes when I was older.
 
We girls were 3, 6, 9 when we were cigarette butt picker uppers.
We three also were fruit pickers and sellers.
My mom would have my older sister and I save each milk carton we emptied; then she (and I) would have to cut milk cartons to use as fruit containers.
We would pick fruit from our trees in our yard: plums, peaches, lemons, limes and put them in the milk cartons and then load up our wagon.
Then we three little girls would go door to door until we sold all the cartons of fruit.

I think we are 11, 9 and 6 in this photo and no we did not wear those mom made school dresses doing work".
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I was given a small "allowance" for things like making my bed plus cleaning & straightening the room I shared with my younger brother. Additionally, I was expected to sweep up tree detritus in the back yard, and wash the family car.

That didn't add up to much more than $ for candy and tiny boxes of straight pretzels. At 12 or so, I wanted a cardigan sweater that was in style, and which my parents either couldn't afford at the time or didn't like the style of. I got jobs as a yard boy, and bought the sweater. The next summer a friend my age and I wanted to build a mini-bike from spare parts (lawnmower engine, etc). I picked fruit in orchards.

My small goals gave me incentive to do things.
 
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I worked for neighbor farmers, bailing hay, Plowing and disking in springs,
Hauling and unloading ear corn in the falls. Milking parlor for one farmer.
I bought my first old car and Suits for school events / graduation. Raised
a litter of baby pigs for work at home / allowance.

Part time jobs getting thru advanced school & Electrical / mechanical certificates.

A truck stop 1st summer after graduation. That fall I bought a new mustang.
I was probably a little tough on that car but it was a good vehicle.
 
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Trade said:
My first real job was as a bag boy at Publix. Publix is a grocery store chain that originated in Florida. I say real job, because it was one that required me to get a Social Security card. Back in those days that's when you got you Social Security Card. For your first job. I was 16. Nowadays I think they sign you up in the Hospital as soon as you are born.

$1.00 buck an hour. It started in June of 1963 at the grand opening of the Publix on Belcher Road and Gulf to Bay blvd, in Clearwater.
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In term of the general U.S. inflation rate, 1963 to now, $1 at that time was equivalent to $10 in today's money.
 
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