When I was around 10, I was making around $2000 a summer. A business partner and I mowed lawns and did yard work for neighbors and they loved us for it. This was a great job for me at the time because I had spare time when I wasn’t playing manhunt, or biking around aimlessly. We would charge a different rate for each of our customers, given their vastly different yard sizes, but it would average $15 per yard. Each yard would take us about an hour, so we were earning about $7 per hour, given the gas and other expenses.

Along with having more money than I knew what to do with at the time, I learned a few valuable lessons. Make sure to keep your customers happy, go above and beyond, and always exceed their expectations. These lessons have served me well ever since.

Each of my customers would tell their friends and neighbors about their yard and the job that we did, and soon we had more customers than we had time to manage. We were able to be selective when choosing new customers. At the time, I didn’t fully grasp the concept of outsourcing, and I’m glad I didn’t because I would probably still be mowing lawns. Nothing against the profession, it just isn’t for me.

Mowing lawns in the summer turned into shoveling snow in the winter, and again, we had the same problem; too many prospective customers and not enough time. We would each make a profit of over $200 during big snowstorm and living where we did, there were about 10 serious snowstorms a year and a few small ones.

Thinking back on all of this money, I wonder where it all went. I don’t really remember making any big purchases but I do remember losing a lot of wallets. I never opened up a savings account during this time, and I really wish now that I had. I wasn’t a great budgeter, and I had no financial blogs to read at that time to get me started. I wish I had stumbled onto this post. Then I definitely would have started a savings account and watched my money grow. I could have invested it in a mutual fund, or jumped on the Roth bandwagon early. I could have bought Microsoft or AT&T.

If you have children about this age, have them read this post. It’ll either give them ideas about how to make money, or start them thinking about saving money the right way; not in a wallet.