Tycoon in the Making

Our oldest child Sarah has always been an active one. Not active as in hyper but she always has several irons in the fire so to speak. Sarah is not, and never has been content to just relax or hang-out. As a newborn baby before we had even gotten her home from the hospital she had crafted several boondoggle key chains out of surgical tubing and was happily handing them out to the hospital staff on her way out the door.

That ambition has been a double-edged sword. It has served her well in school as she is always right on top of her assignments, but she also is always looking for ways to do extra-credit. We have single-handedly supported the poster-board industry for the past several years.

Now that she is 13, Sarah has found that if she properly directs that ambition, she can earn herself money. If it were up to Sarah, the child labor laws would be revoked and she would be working somewhere full-time. We are hoping this desire lingers when she is 16. Until that time though, she is forced to find ways to earn money in the neighborhood.

Earning potential is limited. But here is how the week has gone so far…

Monday: Lemonade Stand – An American classic but not a real eye-catcher. Sarah recruits several of the younger neighborhood kids who look up to her as a god as cheap labor and sets up shop at one of their homes better suited to catch traffic heading to and from the residential neighborhoods to the main thoroughfares. Net profit - $9.

$9 isn’t bad when you are really just having fun anyhow but Sarah has higher ambitions. Taking money that she earned babysitting, Sarah purchased a shave-ice machine and decided to put that plus our freezer’s ice-maker to work for her.

Tuesday: Shaved-Ice Stand – I should have known she was up to something when I got a call in a meeting at work asking “Dad, where in the garage is the cooler?”. Again they set up in the busy location and increase signage (what did I tell you about the poster-board industry?) In fact I recalled seeing signs on my own drive home from work and thinking “mmm… nummy”, not knowing it was my own daughter running the stand.

Net profit - $20. Nicely done. I let her know that if they did that every day, she could rent a small studio apartment by the end of the month. She knows I was kidding… I hope.
Who knows what she has cooking up for today but no doubt it will be even bigger and better than yesterday. She’s probably out investing in a turkey fryer or something.