My first clear memory of money stems from my days as a paperboy.
For those too young to remember, newspapers (literal, physical bundles of paper) were important conduits of information just a couple of decades ago. And to get one to the front door of the majority of houses in the nation posed a problem of logistics. Hiring adults, even at legal minimum wage, would have been prohibitively expensive and besides, they had more complex jobs to do.
Thus, an army of boys and girls took up the task through the generations. My sister and I were two such children.
The job consisted of delivering newspapers to each subscribers house twice a week, and then collecting payments once a month, in cash.
After that we'd calculate and set aside the amount owed to the newspaper company, and then split the remainder 50/50 (we split the houses on our one route). Sometimes we got tips, since "keep the change" was a semi-common practice in the days of cumbersome physical cash, and Christmas time was particularly generous in this regard.
The particular memory that sticks in my head is one time when we weren't able to split the cash evenly, so it was decided by our parents that my sister would get a $5 bill and give me $2.50 from her piggy bank.
I was very young at the time and couldn't get my head around this. No matter how much they went through it with me, all I could see was that she was getting $5 and I was getting $2.50. I felt cheated.
I'm a lot better at math now.
For those too young to remember, newspapers (literal, physical bundles of paper) were important conduits of information just a couple of decades ago. And to get one to the front door of the majority of houses in the nation posed a problem of logistics. Hiring adults, even at legal minimum wage, would have been prohibitively expensive and besides, they had more complex jobs to do.
Thus, an army of boys and girls took up the task through the generations. My sister and I were two such children.
The job consisted of delivering newspapers to each subscribers house twice a week, and then collecting payments once a month, in cash.
After that we'd calculate and set aside the amount owed to the newspaper company, and then split the remainder 50/50 (we split the houses on our one route). Sometimes we got tips, since "keep the change" was a semi-common practice in the days of cumbersome physical cash, and Christmas time was particularly generous in this regard.
The particular memory that sticks in my head is one time when we weren't able to split the cash evenly, so it was decided by our parents that my sister would get a $5 bill and give me $2.50 from her piggy bank.
I was very young at the time and couldn't get my head around this. No matter how much they went through it with me, all I could see was that she was getting $5 and I was getting $2.50. I felt cheated.
I'm a lot better at math now.
21📜1
