Restaurant! Start in the kitchen or busing tables. Move up to waiter and bartender over the high school and college years.
Restaurant! Start in the kitchen or busing tables. Move up to waiter and bartender over the high school and college years.
Customer service or sales. Or something that will teach him about finance.
McDonald's. Start as a high school part timer...own a franchise by 30. Own many of them by 40.
Maybe this would work if the kids future ambitious and interests aligned exactly with a successful business his family friends happened to have going AND were willing to take on an "intern" for. Maybe not everyone is $ driven and wants to be a soul sucking developer?Aslo online classes are not only a fantastic way to figure out what you want to do they are also an inexpensive option and make up a ton of slack of slow moving university's - especially in technical fields (ie. some compsci grads barely know how to program) so what you said there is incorrect as well. Although you probably wouldn't know any of this as your primary "skill" is schmoozing bankers to lend money so you can continue chasing the almighty buck.
realer advice wrote:
I like the idea of gearing work toward possible career options. I hate the idea of making it center around coursework. The kid isn't going to learn anything in an online class that he wouldn't have learned eventually in college anyway.
When I was about the OP's son's age, I got together with some family friends who flipped houses and owned a bunch of rental properties. I started out doing nothing but grunt work, but I constantly tried to learn more and more about the business side of things. Eventually I started helping them find new deals and doing some financial analysis (with healthy oversight and review). That was the most important experience in my life with regard to eventually becoming a real estate developer.
If I'd spent the same time completing online coursework, I would have just learned a bunch of stuff that I was going to learn in undergrad anyway.
If you're into the idea of paying your kid to do things that will help him toward a career, pay him to go DO something, not to take classes. Have him volunteer for a health organization or something.
nobody gives a crap how bright a 16 year old is
work at a grocery store
What about an escort agency? I watched a documentary called "Risky Business" in which a teenager is forced to go into business to pay for a mistake with an expensive car and it was highly lucrative.
Helper for plumber or HVAC guy on sidejobs, cash only!
rickyrolled wrote:
Maybe this would work if the kids future ambitious and interests aligned exactly with a successful business his family friends happened to have going AND were willing to take on an "intern" for.
Maybe not everyone is $ driven and wants to be a soul sucking developer?
Aslo online classes are not only a fantastic way to figure out what you want to do they are also an inexpensive option and make up a ton of slack of slow moving university's - especially in technical fields (ie. some compsci grads barely know how to program) so what you said there is incorrect as well.
Although you probably wouldn't know any of this as your primary "skill" is schmoozing bankers to lend money so you can continue chasing the almighty buck.
Not sure why you've made such assumptions about my motives. At this point, I've spent the majority of my career in the non-profit world doing economic development projects that benefit low-income communities and economically struggling neighborhoods.
Anyway, my story is just one example. If you're interested in paying your kid to further his career interests, there are plenty of options available. My kid is interested in medicine. I'd way rather send him off to volunteer at a community health organization than have him sit in front of a computer for a few extra hours per week just so that he can learn a few facts a bit earlier than he would otherwise.
You mention programming. You can learn programming from a book and then spend your time actually applying that skill to a project. Wouldn't that be more interesting and meaningful than wasting time on a course that only serves the purpose of slowing down your learning (self-study is always faster. The only point of a formal course is to demonstrate to others that you've jumped through certain hoops.).