Remember the good old days when you could set up a small table outside of your front lawn and sell cups of lemonade to passing strangers for a quarter? Those days are long gone for most of us and the reason is that it is just too dangerous for kids these days to even smile at a passing stranger, much less give him something to drink. Americans are a litigious breed and God forbid the guy chokes on a stray seed or is allergic to real lemons and then proceeds to sue the kids parents. This may be a bit of an extreme example but it does give rise to thinking of alternative money making ideas for kids on a budget.
Depends on how old your child is but they can join Junior Achievement and get brownie points for school at the same time. JA teaches kids how to make worthless items such as wooden puzzles or paperweights then shows them how to market and sell this junk to strangers or other JA kids parents. The good thing about Junior Achievement is that it teaches children to be enterprising and enjoy the greed of capitalism at an early age. I am sure that Gordon Gecko of Wall Street movie fame was a former JAer, he just had to be.
What other good money making ideas for kids can be healthy and profitable? Collecting is certainly a good thing and most kids have some sort of valuable collectible if they really look at it. Things like comic books, baseball cards, action figures, toys, video games, etc., can all be taken out of the closet and resold on Ebay. Even a kid, as long as he has a bank account, can get an account online at Paypal and start selling his valuable collectibles to someone else. Its like Steve Martin said, If you nail two pieces of wood together that no one has ever nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it.
P.T. Barnum said A sucker is born every minute. He also said No one ever became poor underestimating the intelligence of the American public, or words to that effect. What he meant, of course, is that we are a country that loves to buy junk, any junk, in any shape, size, or form. Money making ideas for kids should not be hard to think up. Our children are way brighter and more imaginative than we are. They will think of their own money making ideas soon enough if given some free rein. The problem is that as we get older we are ridiculed and shamed by our parents and peers into thinking we are nave and cant really make things work or start our own businesses. How many businesses die each year because people get talked out of starting them?
The entrepreneurial spirit of our children should not be beaten to the ground. We need to help them think of money making ideas for kids so that they can learn. So what if the idea is terrible and never makes a dime? Failure in and of itself is a learning experience and part of the process. Dont destroy a childs dreams before they have a chance to take hold and bloom. Those dreams could make a billion dollars. Just ask Bill Gates.