About five per cent of 11-year-olds work, 26 per cent do so at age 13 and 42 per cent at 15, according to Dr Ella Iosua of the University of Otago, who has analysed data from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study.
My children are reaching the stage of working outside the home and many of their peers already do.
I don't buy the "there aren't any jobs in my area" argument. There are multinational takeaway companies, car yards, cafes and other sources of casual work in every suburb. I plugged the words "casual" and "weekend" into Seek and plenty of jobs came up that didn't need experience.
For tweens, I'm sure the Property Press or local newspapers can be found in most urban areas. In our area intermediate-aged children and older can get jobs refereeing sport for younger children. They might earn $5 a game and do two to four games an evening. The great thing is that they get paid in a lump sum at the end of the season, meaning they won't just fritter it away.
Babysitting and other informal jobs can provide relatively easy money. Babysitting pays $8-$12 an hour and after putting the kids to bed you can play on your iPod, watch TV or do your homework. Thanks to the fact the parents are usually out three to four hours, it's a nice big lump sum of money.
Advertised jobs are sometimes hard to get. As a result it's often easier to walk in off the street to ask if there is any work available. I've seen that happen recently at my local cafe and that's how I got jobs as a teen in restaurants. It gave me skills that have paid off throughout my career.
From time to time I've seen older teens and/or students make good money by offering a variety of services in their neighbourhood such as window cleaning, home beauty treatments and tutoring services. For more ideas visit tinyurl.com/teenjobideas
With a flyer drop around the neighbourhood a student can make a lot more than the minimum wage and they're learning business skills at the same time.
Older teens could consider training in a skill that they can then sell. I phoned education provider Netfit and asked how much it would cost to train to become a group exercise trainer.
The staff member diverted the conversation to Pilates. Trained teachers earn $40 to $60 a class. Or an enterprising student with a qualification in Pilates could make even more by running classes for $10 to $15 a person either at home, or in a hired space. The course costs a bit over $1500, so it's not cheap.
Brian Pethybridge, manager of the North Shore Budget Service, has seen the benefits of part-time work with his own daughters, who are now in their 20s. The girls delivered pamphlets for a few dollars a week as teenagers. "They learned how to earn, save, spend, gift, invest and pay off debt," he says. It was an important building block in their financial education.
Pethybridge sees many young people at his budgeting service who have never learned to earn their own money and many parents who still bail their children out.
Quite a few kids in my area turn their noses up at jobs such as delivering newspapers. But I believe $11-$12 a week for 90 minutes' work isn't too bad for a 12-year-old. It's only one night a week, so not too onerous in terms of responsibility.
If parents want their children to be financially independent then it's a good idea to initiate discussions with them about work and the income derived from it.
I found myself counselling my own teen this week after realising she had accepted a babysitting job without asking the rate. Next time, I said, she needed to be upfront and say: "my rate is" followed by a figure. Learn that young and in 10 years' time she won't be reticent to speak up at a job interview and ensure she gets a salary towards the top of the scale on offer.
Our next discussion was about saving some of the money. I sat her down and explained that she needed to save 10 per cent of that money for her long-term future (which, as we've discussed before, could involve buying her first home in her 20s). If she started now, I told her, by the time she wanted to buy a property she'd have a good chunk of the deposit saved.
The idea of saving 10 per cent was met with a perplexed look. "What do I do with the rest of it?" she asked. It turned out that she'd planned to save all of the money. Was I suggesting that she spend it? Oops.
I explained that I meant she should be putting 10 per cent of her earnings into long-term savings - meaning KiwiSaver - from her first pay packet. It was also to have short- and medium-term savings plans.
There are plenty of frugal teens like mine around. But it's more common for young earners to spend every cent of what they pocket. Saving 10 per cent isn't going to hurt them and it could lead to a light-bulb moment when eventually they see their KiwiSaver balance top $2000, then $3000. Investment growth plus a few dollars added here and there will soon add up to such a figure.
Teens can learn a lot about money through work. My teen, whose main income until now has been from walking dogs, is being schooled in the art of proactive communication. She has found out that it's not okay to cancel by text just as she's due to turn up. Her employers have to be kept in the loop of any schedule changes. That's what she'll have to do if she wants to keep a real job in the future.
Even if children only work around the home for money it's important to set rules and stick to them. A friend taught her girls a lesson by sacking them from their home cleaning job. "They have learnt that even your own mother can sack you if you're rude to the boss," she said.
Financial adviser Michael Cave of the Quantum Broker Group devised a system for his children that paid them a bonus if they finished a particular job within deadline. The incentive to earn more than the $5 flat fee on offer made them work much faster and learn a valuable lesson. Paying them by the hour wouldn't have created the work ethic it did, says Cave.
Expecting a high standard for paid work at home is important. Otherwise you're training them to do a substandard job, which won't get them far in life.
Some parents pooh-pooh these notions, saying it's more important for their children to be studying to get a good education. Yet Dr Iosua's study found that part-time work between ages 11 and 15 had no long-term harmful effects on their education. The benefits, on the other hand, are huge.
