My son wants a Nintendo Switch, and I told him if he earns the $ himself in sweat equity he can buy it for himself. Any ideas for services he can offer around the neighborhood would be helpful! We were thinking pulling weeds, taking out trash cans, picking up dog poop, etc. Has to be services an 8 yo is capable of and he can do himself (with my supervision of course)! Any ideas are appreciated.
Ways for 8 year old to make $$ from helping neighbors?
byu/Practical-Zebra-1141 inpersonalfinance
Posted by Practical-Zebra-1141
14 Comments
Watering outside plants for people traveling. Pick up peoples’ mail. Sweep front porch. Pick up pine cones.
I don’t know if this would be age appropriate, but light pet sitting like checking on an indoor cat’s food and water, feeding fish or birds.
Some neighbor kids offered a trash can cleaning service, which I thought was brave.
Lemonade stand.
Pet feeding/dog walking if responsible.
trash cans would be a good one – $10-20 per household per week, 10 neighbors and that’s $100-$200 per week. Just go for a walk around the night before and the night it get’s picked up just go for another walk and put them back.
I used to live by an amusement park — my childhood friend and i would fill up our houses with parked cars since the amusement park parking was outrageous, that same summer I bought my first nintendo — it would be $10 for smaller cars and $20 for bigger cars
the problem with this is how few people carry actual cash nowadays lol.
i know this is a little different from what you are asking for but i paid my youngest cousin to learn things. examples being: making progress in learning a new language, researching and making a list of pc parts for his first pc build, etc.
Hitman, nobody would suspect him and even if he gets caught he’ll be charged as a minor. Or, and this might sound crazy, you reward him for good grades and reinforce learning and being a good student as opposed to child labor. But the hitman thing is more reasonable.
8 seems young to go out to work. Too young to be wandering in and out of people’s houses, basements, and garages. You don’t know who or what is going on in your neighbors’ houses. Even the smartest 8 year old is relatively naive and defenseless. This is not a good idea. Can you not find enough chores around the house to give rewards for?
Fall is coming up and I bet he can make good money from raking and bagging up leaves. I think an 8 year old is capable of doing that
I would gladly pay any kid to pull weeds. We currently have 2 kids under 2, let’s just say the weeds have been winning.
Maybe the could just ask neighbors depending on what the yard may need
Washing cars, raking leaves, walking the dogs, watering outside plants.
extra chores around your house for his allowance like unloading the dishwasher, folding & putting away clothes, sweeping the porch, sidewalk, carrying in groceries, make Parents bed, sort & donate toys to charity (great condition & clean only – my pet peeve from working at a nonprofit where people donate disgusting items grrrrrr) , help wash car, vacuum car,
Do any neighbors have fruit-bearing trees or shrubs? Picking up the fallen fruit so it doesn’t rot and get smelly was one of my jobs as a young kid. My parents paid me by the bucket of fallen apples from the trees in our yard.
If you’re in bear country, picking the fruit that’s on the trees can reduce bear visits to the yard, too.
What about selling some of his toys or other high-value things he’s grown out of? You can list them on Marketplace or Craigslist, EBay, etc or do a garage sale.
The “work” he could put in is learning how to price stuff, understanding what kinds of items people would be interested in buying, and helping to write the ads by brainstorming what information buyers would want to know about the items.
It requires work on your part, but helps build skills and cleans out stuff you no longer need.
When my daughter was 9 she was walking dogs for a couple of neighbors. She earned a few dollars per walk/per dog.
I’m assuming this is more about earning it via sweat equity than it is the actual money, right? Maybe you should approach the neighbors and let them know what’s going on. Possibly even provide the money for the chores, as not to many neighbors are paying enough to an 8 y/o for chores that will make for a meaningful saving. Switches are expensive.
Where this backfires is if your son works for 6-8 months and earns $150-$200 and realizes how hard it is for an 8 y/o to earn $500 and never reaches the goal. For sweat equity with a 8 y/o to work they need to actually be able to achieve the goal in a reasonable time.
Also, consider going 50/50 with your son.
I had a neighbor kid offer to clean up dog poo, and happily paid him $5 bucks for about 10-15 minutes of work in 2017. I only had a small strip that my dog would do his business on, though. For bigger yards, obviously he should be asking for more, but to me it was a win-win