Back in the 70s I mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled snow in the winter. For a few years I worked weekends for a realty company helping cleaning out old houses (2 bucks an hour under the table). Also mowed the apartment complex where my dad and I lived (same 2 bucks an hour deal).
I never had a Kool-Aid or lemonade stand when I was a kid, but my son did. Since our street didn’t get much traffic, he set up his stand a block away at a busy intersection. He made several dollars, and I lost several dollars because Kool-Aid was no longer cheap once they discontinued the kind that required your own sugar.
But my daughter and her cousin had the most interesting stand. We were visiting Mom in her 55+ park, and we adults were napping when the six-year-olds decided to sell strawberry milkshakes. They set up in Mom’s driveway. Small problem: no strawberries, no ice cream. No problem: they substituted parmesan cheese and red wine. I hasten to add that they didn’t sample their product, and, thanks to the fact their sign was on a Post-It note and their product looked pretty sketch, they made no sales.
Paper route and lawn mowing (pre-teen). Would set out in our neighborhood pushing Dad’s lawn mower with a gas can aboard, and hit every house I could. Didn’t rake leaves though, too much work and too many opinions for the meager take.
By high school I was full-time mowing a local resort’s grounds in the summer, and early am janitorial service at a local restaurant. By senior year had a contract doing pipe/valve repair for the city water works (bought an old city truck at auction for a whopping $275 – first of many pickups in my life).
Over the summer, I was out walking when I passed a lemonade stand run by a young girl. I had actually seen it earlier when driving home so I made sure to have some change on me to buy a cup. It was a one day affair though and I can’t imagine the street gets enough foot traffic to make it feel worthwhile.
A month or so ago, a couple girls came to my door and offered to sell homemade rubber band friendship bracelets. They said they were going on vacation soon and trying to raise a little pocket money for their trip. So now I have two rubber band bracelets sitting in my ashtray-turned-loose coin tray on my nightstand.
When I was young, probably around 8, my cousin and I drew a bunch of pictures and went door to door trying to sell them. She outsold me 2:1 (we sold three pictures) and one of those was a discount sale on a pair of drawings. I still don’t understand how “Dragon Flying Over Volcano Cave” didn’t sell but the art world is a cruel and unknowable thing.
This is your Story of Hope for the Future for today…
One of my young neighbors, who is the same age as my son, lost his father to cancer several years ago. The boy was only seven or so. He had previously lost his grandfather to cancer a year or so earlier. (Grandfather was an immensly popular sheriff in Franklin County for years.)
Anyway, he decided to put up a lemonade stand at the opening of the parking area for the local Labor Day festival, and advertised that he would be donating the proceeds to the OSU James Cancer Center for research toward a cancer-free world.
I don’t know what he made, that weekend, but it was substantial for a lemonade stand. Local news covered it, and he decided to keep the momentum going. He organized (with the help of his mother and aunts, who are ridiculously wonderful people…) a bake sale for the July 4th street fair, a Buckeyes tailgate in October, etcetera. He is a junior in high school, now, and has raised a couple hundred thousand dollars, all of which has gone to The James Cancer Center.
He’s one heck of a great young man.
When I was nine, I learned that the waste-disposal plants downtown would pay the princely sum of $1.80 for 100 pounds of old newspapers. I started asking the neighbors for their old newspapers. Then I wrote to a columnist for my hometown paper and asked him to publish my name and number and my offer to pick up people’s old newspapers anywhere in the city. (Got a lot of papers that way!) On weekends, my ever-indulgent dad and I would pile the yellowing papers into the trunk and back seat of his tiny orange Toyota and drive down to the plant to unload them so I could collect my bounty.
Shoveled snow and mowed lawns for 2 elderly neighbor women. In the late 60s-early 70s I think I got $1 for each lawn/shoveling. I periodically think I ought to have been more industrious and expanded my “business”, as there were plenty of older people living alone in their bungalows on the NW side of Chicago. I used our heavy non-power push mower. Shoveling and mowing was also my job at our house.
Bit of a hijack, but how much do you think ought to be the going rate for lemonade today? I was roundly mocked by family and friends recently, when I commented that 1 was WAY too much for a glass of lemonade. It oughta be a quarter or - at most - .50. EVERYONE said I was completely out of touch. In my defense, I don’t even want the damned lemonade. I’m happy to toss change the way of my neighbor kids, but when it gets to folding money… 
Also, anyone notice these days how kids yell to announce the lemonade stands? It almost feels like they are accosting passersby. This old grouch almost feels like paying them if they’ll just shut up!
I house-sat for some of my neighbors when they would go on vacation. Bring in the mail and newspaper, drag the trash can out to the curb on trash day, open and close curtains, turn on the porch light, that sort of stuff. I don’t remember how much money I made but it seemed decent for a pre-teen back then and some of the neighbors would also bring me a souvenir from where they went.
I had a paper route in my neighborhood in the 7th and 8th grade. Started out in the 6th grade subbing for the current carrier, who’d taken it over from his brother, who’d taken it from his brother-- family with four boys.
This was circa 1978, so a papergirl wasn’t that unusual, and the contract I signed with the paper said “carrier,” not “paper boy.”
I earned about $70/month, which was more or less $50 from the papers themselves, and the rest in tips. I took my route very seriously, and got lots of tips, and lots of compliments.
I collected once a month.
I just checked an inflation calculator, and it says that $70 in 1978 is worth almost $450 now. Wow. I would have guessed closer to $150.
At any rate, I always had money. I told my parents I no longer needed an allowance, nor lunch money, and it was a very serious thing for me to do that. I covered our paper as well-- they didn’t need to pay for a paper for 2 years.
A lot of my money went into pinball machines and buying lunches after I road my bike and went downtown on non-school days and met up with friends. Some of it went to D&D books, figures, and other paraphernalia, and some went into my coin collection.
I didn’t save much, but the coin collection turned out to be an investment. I put maybe $1500 (there was some bat mitzvah money involved as well) into it in the late 70s, and then it ended up in the closet. I moved it a few times, and it was in a box somewhere for years.
Had it evaluated when my son was born in 2006, and the estimate was almost $20,000, because coins had blown up. Not that a dealer just buying the collection would pay that much-- I’d probably get an offer of about $12,000. If I took the time and trouble to sell them all on eBay, though, I could get a lot.
I loved having that paper route. I really did learn a lot about work ethics and handling money-- exactly what a first job is supposed to teach. The fact that a back-up for emergencies now is to sell a coin or two is an unanticipated consequence.
I just went house to house with my red wagon collecting soda bottles.
Then spent all the money on candy.
I would weed my parents’ and neighbors’ gardens and clean up lawn debris after storms. I also made and sold bracelets through junior high and high school.
My fellow wrestlers and I also made extra cash working for our wrestling coach doing estate auctions. He didn’t pay us much, but we made good tips carrying items for buyers. Four of us made $200 loading some wagon wheels into a dude’s truck.
Omg, this is hilarious!
Agree. And a very uplifting story.
A friend’s daughter would sell crayon portraits of her grade school classmates to them. She’d charge extra to draw a frame around the border.
When we’d have our annual block yard sale, my daughters quickly decided there was no money in lemonade. Instead they made up a big pot of Thai iced tea. That, plus brownies, meant they usually cleared more than I did from selling my second-hand stuff.
I was charged 50¢ and felt that a half buck was pretty charitable for a small cup of watery Country Time or whatever I got. Obviously I didn’t walk away mad because, you know, kid’s front yard lemonade stand but there’s no other context where I’d be happy about it 
I never sold anything or had a paper route, but I did quite a bit of babysitting from 1968 to 1971. I could make $50 in a good week, but I also turned down quite a few jobs because I was playing HS football and actually had a social life. (For some reason, a male babysitter was in pretty high demand. Most of my regular customers had only boys.)
This used to make my older brother a bit upset. He worked at a local grocery store and netted about $70/week. He was constantly borrowing money from me. I doubt much of it was paid back.
My younger brother had a paper route and made virtually nothing doing it. Honestly, I couldn’t see why he even bothered. He learned discipline and to get up early, but the money was shockingly bad. OTOH, he did win some subscription contest and got a trip to FL one year.
I tried at least one lemonade stand, just as a sort of “this seems like a thing I’m supposed to do” kind of exercise. Problem number one was that I lived on a road without much traffic. Problem number two was that I’ve never liked lemonade or kool-aid, so I wasn’t a great salesperson because I wasn’t going to try any of it. It went nowhere.
It will surprise nobody to hear that my major money-maker before I was old enough to babysit children was dog-sitting and dog-walking. I had two neighbors whose dogs I would let out or take for a walk after school, while they were still at work. And others whose pets I would check in on when they were out of town.
I remember a day or two spent selling hand-painted seashells on the sidewalk in front of my grandparents’ house. A lot of people stopped to talk, I don’t recall any money changing hands.
Any left? 