As a young teen, I didn’t know all of the options and I surely didn’t know everything, but I did know what was NOT going to happen…living in the Warren household was not going to be a free joy ride, I wasn’t going to get a free first truck, I wasn’t going to just be able to play sports every afternoon and travel the country camping every weekend, I wasn’t going to get a free cell phone and be added to any family plans for anything (except health and dental insurance).
I like to refer to the plan that my dad proposed to me as the “401 Dr. Warren” plan. If I saved $2000, then he would match me $2000, but because I was a workaholic teen and might have saved up $20,000, leaving him quite a bit of money to match, he put a cap on it.
I’m so grateful that I had to learn the hard way lessons that will truly shape my whole life. “So, you need to earn $2000, plus a few hundred dollars for the insurance and tax bills from now, age 12, until you can drive at age 16. That sounds to me like you need to squirrel away about $500-600 per year, at minimum. You are going to have to earn some money, boy.” Well, I didn’t know how I was going to do it at the time, but it sure did get my wheels spinning in my head.
My parents laid out a chore sheet. It had a list of things around the house that I could do to earn money. Household chores like one load of laundry was $.50, vacuum the house $2, take out the trash, $.75. There were things that had to be done like make my bed, help with dishes after dinner, clean my room, and take out the trash when mom said. I thought, there has to be a better way to save money for my truck than folding my brother and sister’s clothes.
Stay tuned and check out what happened. The birth of entrepreneurship…
