How can MilliCal get $87?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Dear MilliCal,

I have been thinking more about your question today. In lawyer terms, we call that “analyzing” the issue. Based upon my analysis, and my review of the other posts, I have several new suggestions for you.

First, if you have a baby brother or sister, you can offer to watch and entertain your sibling. Your parents will tell you that you are too young to babysit. You should agree with them: you are too young to babysit, but you get older every day. When you are old enough to babysit, won’t they feel better if they know that you already know the ropes? So offer to “watch and entertain” your siblings while your parents are home. This will give mom and dad time to do other things, like read a book or browse the Dope, without worrying about you and your siblings. Charge at least a dollar an hour. Remember what I said earlier about being firm about your price. If your parents tell you that a dollar an hour is what full-fledged babysitters make, tell mom and dad, “I’m sorry to hear that you think your children’s happiness is not worth a dollar an hour.” Then look very, very sad. I think that will do the trick. If you do watch and entertain your sibling for an hour or two, you must provide good value for your services, so that mom and dad will want to hire you again. So think of some fun games to play.

Second, you can ask for an allowance. Some parents don’t want to give their kids an allowance, because they think that it teaches a kid to get something for nothing. But you should tell your parents that the allowance is a way to introduce you to “fiscal responsibility.” Tell them that with an allowance, you will learn to budget and learn to plan for the things you want, instead of having to wait for birthdays or holidays to get a present. Tell them an allowance will teach you independence, because you will have to rely on yourself to plan for what you want. You should also do some “market research” before you talk to mom and dad about an allowance. Prepare a chart, showing your parents what allowances your friends get, and what their ages are (of course, if your friends don’t get an allowance, you should just skip that part of your pitch). Long, long ago, in a time we called “the 1970s,” I got an allowance. It was hard to wait for something I wanted, but I knew that if I saved up, I could get whatever I wanted. Even if my sister said it was stupid. But what does she know, right?

All the suggestions everyone has given you so far are good ones. They all involve ways that you can sell goods (like your toys on eBay), or provide services (like doing chores or babysitting). My third suggestion is about using the arts to raise money. I have two thoughts: reading and plays. You like to read. How about if you set a goal, and ask people like mom and dad or your grandparents to “sponsor” your reading? Tell them you plan to read ten books this month (or five, or fifteen – whatever number you think is a good stretch for you). Ask them each to sponsor you, so that they will pay you twenty-five cents for each book you read in the month. If you can get four people to sponsor you, that’s a dollar a book. If you read ten books, that’s ten dollars.

The other thing you could do is to put on a play. Perhaps a play about how mom and dad met? You can write the play and ask dad to play himself. (But tell him that he will need to pay a dollar to be in it. It is a MilliCal production, after all.) Then tell mom you’re putting on a play about her and dad; if she wants to see it, the tickets are five dollars. The trick is to make sure it’s a play that your audience will want to see. On my parents’ first date, my dad forgot his wallet, and my mom had to pay for him. We still make fun of my dad for that. If the story of how your parents met is funny like that, your mom will definitely want to see a play about it. Also, make sure to serve refreshments at intermission. You should be able to charge a dollar or so for some punch and cookies.

Good luck!

Your friend,
Campion

42

Campion’s suggestion about sponsored reading gave me another idea - if MilliCal is an accomplished reader, perhaps there are elderly people in the neighborhood to whom she could read aloud. Not only might they be willing to pay a dollar or two an hour for this service, but they would probably also provide cookies.

(This is probably beyond her abilities right now, but my brother’s high school job was to “walk” an elderly man who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and was in a convalescent home. He used to take “Fred” on a tour of the facility every day, stopping in to speak with each of the other residents. Not only did he earn a substantial amount of money doing this, but he gained skills that have helped him a great deal as a father.)

43

millical speaking,
I did not like the one that said (That’s what grandparent’s are for) :frowning:

The ones that I liked alot were…
Taking care of animals.
Doing chores.
And saving up money. :slight_smile:
thankyou !

44

You sound like you are a very good girl. Your parents are very lucky to have such a nice daughter. In a place like this, there are some very helpful people, and some that are not so helpful, and some that are just teasing your father. Ask your parents to help sort out which are which. And good luck!

45

Hey MilliCal-

Along the lines of pet-sitting, I do did this before I was old enough to really get a job, and let me tell you, the money is really good and it’s so much fun! My usual rate was $10 a day for dogs (maybe more if it was a big dog) and $7 a day for cats, (and this was 10+ years ago). I started my business by making fliers and put them in my neighbor’s mailboxes. If someone my family didn’t know called asking for my services, then my parents would go with me but made sure I did all the work. Make sure to do a good job, and save everyone’s name and phone numbers that you have worked for so you can use them as a reference. Good luck!

46

I hope you get the doll you want, Millicat. Just be sure to take care of it! I think you’ll find the doll will mean more if you earn the money to buy it.

47

:smack:
This is for MilliCAL, too!

48

Hot mulled cider & donuts stand? It’s New England in the Fall, after all.

Time it for when the leaf peepers arrive in your town. They’ll be out-of-towners willing to pay for “an authentic New England experience,” so set your price point accordingly.

49

My lead programmer just resigned. How well does she know C? Has she ever worked with embedded programming and the Motorola chipset?

50

I think you’re onto something there, Khadaji.

My trucks’ brakes need some tuning up. Alternatively, my parents need to have their driveway repaved and maybe some shingling done on their house. Are Millical’s rates competitive? :smiley:

51

MilliCal should have opened the bidding at a higher level and allowed you to haggle her down to $87; this would have the added bonus of some spare change for her if you had caved earlier in the negotiations.

Seriously though, I’ll send $5 by PayPal if she would like to write and post here a short, original story about what happens to a child who tries everything he/she can to raise money for a toy.

52

BTW… if this offer is of interest, please email me (follow the link to my blog in my signature), as I may not notice the thread resurfacing…

53

Well, our neighbors had a Yard Sale over the weekend, so we brought out stuff as well. MilliCal brought out some things, too, and we sold some of her vast menagerie of stuffed animals. It won’t make much of a difference in the stuffed animal population in the hjouse (there’s still enough for breeding stock), but it did clear away some things no longer used. MilliCal netted $12 and change, all of which goes towards the desired Doll.

Mangetout, thanks for the offer, but I think we’ll pass. MilliCal will get the money, one way or the other.
.

54

So now she needs $75.00?
Maybe should could play the stock market.

55

I have an 8 year old who last week decided she wants to save $20 bucks to buy books at the school bookfair. (Note I take her to the library and buy books for her all the time, but for some reason she wants to buy these on her own.)

She already gets an allowance of $3 per week which she’s saving and I’ve been paying her $0.50 per day to “brush” her baby sister’s hair for me. So far she’s earned $2.50 doing this and one other chore.

Her main idea has been selling books to her school friends. She’s been writing her own books for quite some time, which most of the kids know about and have gotten a kick out of reading (my favorite was “Dawn of the Bread” - a story about a zombie muffin.)

Anyway, she’s been writing original books, complete with artwork, with unique stories starring the kids who commission her services. She is charging $3 per book and has written two so far.

If MilliCal is an artist or writer, perhaps she could do something similar?

56

My parents went through pretty much every technique known to man and invented a few. Everything from a flat rate allowance to a chart with various values assigned to the different items. Regular “chores” type stuff wasn’t on the chart. You were expected to make the bed, put your clothes in the laundry, etc. without financial recompense. It was the other tasks, folding and putting away a load of laundry for the entire family(including matching socks), mowing the lawn, trimming the bushes, weeding the garden, etc. which were on the chart. There was an interesting twist(which may not work in smaller households, we had eight kids in ours) in that if a task needed to be done and no one had signed up for it then mom and dad would assign it and there would be no payment for it. So if you avoided a particularly odious task, even though it had a correspondingly higher cash value, you ran the risk of being assigned it for NO cash. Slackers, who didn’t sign up for much of anything, ended up being the ones “assigned” tasks more often than people who had been busy in other areas. This chart was a pretty basic spreadsheet with dates across the top and tasks(with their cash value) in the leftmost row. Initialing your name in a box meant you HAD performed that task on that date. No initials until it was complete. At the end of each week you could tally the amount for each kid at the bottom and pay out.

My wife and I give a regular allowance with occasional incentive payments for specific ad-hoc tasks. Once the kids get a bit older(our oldest is 9) we’ll probably phase in an incentive “work for your cash” program.

I was an entrepeneur in my younger days. Everything from growing fresh veggies in the garden and selling them to my parents, to lawnwork, babysitting, recycyling, lemonade/snow cone sales, even selling Aloe Vera plants during the summer. My “burst of cash” crop was usually recycling and deposits. Hitting the streets/parks to gather up leftovers and then getting deposits or recycling cash for picking up other people’s trash was a win-win. Aside from birthday money there just isn’t much a 9 year old can do to get a bunch of cash quick. It may be worth it to start a saving account to store the cash and get a bit of experience dealing with an account and the register/ledger which comes along with it.

Enjoy,
Steven

57

Betting on horse races, maybe?

58

We’ve solved the problem – MilliCal now has the money she needs (although she’s still doing chores – we figured the allowance thing was a good idea).

We emptied her piggy banks, figuring on getting n extra few bucks in pennies that would take her a bit further towards that magical $87 goal. How many pennies could she have socked away?
Quite a fe, as it turns out. And not all pennies. There were quarters and nickels and dimes. Even without the pennies, we had over $100 in random silver, And then there was the $38 in pennies alone. And that’s not counting the half dollars, the Susan B. Anthony’s, and the Sackies she had squirreled away in there. Or the $23 in random bills.
Now she has enough to almost buy two dolls.

Moral: Check the piggy banks.

MilliCal is now checking under the sofa cushions.

59

Darn! I still really need a good embedded programmer!

Glad to hear that she got her doll, I hope she enjoys it.

60

She’ll need all of that money. The attraction of AG is not only the dolls, but all the accessories and such that you can buy for them, many of them more expensive than the doll itself. At least, that’s how I remembered them. The books are great with wonderful empowering messages, but the doll part is a bit of a rip-off (YMMV). Better than Pokemon I guess. Which one is she getting?