What was the easiest and/or hardest way you ever made money?
I’ll share mine.
Easiest ways I have made money
I think I’ll have to go with my cattle investment first. I just gave BF the money to buy calves, he bred them, oversaw the cowboys, paid their salaries and the anti-parasite shots for the animals, then we weighted them 18 months later and I made a 40% return.
Second next was when I was a waitress at Haagen Dazs on Paris’ most prestigious avenue, the Champs Elysées. A family of Saudi sat in my zone, and ordered ice cream. The bill came to around 20 euros, the guy gave me a 100 euros bill saying “you can keep the change”. You may know that the French almost NEVER tip, as a waitress I made about 10 euros an hour ($13) and the rare table would leave 50 cents or 1 euro as a tip. On the Champs Elysées it was awesome because most customers were tourists and they were tipping like I had never experienced. I would go home with two to three times my salary in tips, but that Saudi guy was the most amazing one.
I got paid to try lipsticks. I had to go to a place, pick up samples, try them, and drop my feedback a week later. I can’t remember where it was or I would go back for more samples. They were Yves Saint-Laurent!
The perfect baby-sitting gig. The kid was 18 months. I got there at 6pm, he saw his parents leave and waved cheerfully goodbye, then went to bed without crying. He was already fed, changed and ready to go down. I sat there for 5 hours, he did not wake up, I got paid.
The per diems. I had a job that included quite a bit of travel, and often to Paris, my hometown. They had a per diem, so for every meal while traveling for work you got $15 and every hotel night was compensated at $150. I got paid $165 to sleep at my mum’s, in my own bed, and have dinner with her.
Hardest ways I have made money
If we look at the rate per hour, I remember having worked a whole day and evening for $20 when I was a teen. My aunt worked in a library and they needed help to do the inventory, it was a tedious job, we were counting and listing books by hand (it was in the 1990s!), I was hungry, we finished really late, and the guy gave me $20. It is about $40 today so it was not so bad for a 12 year old, I remember I was happy to get so much money, but the hourly rate was just appalling, actually I think we went back the next day for most of the day too, and that may have been money for the two days.
Talking about taking advantage of teenagers, once I had a baby sitting gig, I must have been 12 or 13 too. A family I didn’t know, they were supposed to have 2 kids to watch, there were 4 including a baby who was just a few months old. It was hell for the whole afternoon, the baby didn’t stop crying and the kids were insufferable. When the mum came back, later than expected, she changed the agreement we had about my rate, and imposed the discount she wanted, say she owed 4 hours at $10, she said “let’s round it to $25” and pushed me through the door. Bitch.
When I was a girl scout, we would spend the days around Christmas bagging groceries at the supermarket, or packing Christmas presents at a toy store. If you have ever tried to pack a giant stuffed bear, you know the pain. Once again, we were counting on tips, and the French are really stingy, and not big on charity. The guys with 5 gigantic toys would still tip 2 euros after you spent half an hour finding a way to wrap paper around the most improbable shape. And the money was not even going in my pocket, so I think I would rather have stayed home and written a check to the girl scouts.
My most boring job was conducting satisfaction surveys in a call center. People would hang up on me all the time, but thankfully it still paid minimum wage. I would look at the watch while thinking about the money I was making and what I would buy with it. “15 minutes more, I can go out with my friends on Saturday.” “Oh, Friday already, my rent is paid!” And I eventually managed to know when the manager was listening to my conversations so as soon as he was offline I completed a couple of surveys at light speed to fill my quota.
And I have been in waitressing hell too. At Disneyland Paris I was in a tavern style restaurant for a while, carrying the biggest trays I’ve ever seen in the industry. Your feet hurt, your back hurts, the kids are cranky, the parents are exhausted by all the attractions and the walking around, and the queues, and looking at your overpriced menu where nothing looks good… it is not the happiest place on earth. One manager saw I wanted more money and asked me to come work more, then “forgot” to write down my additional hours on my paycheck. The hours were illegal since you have to go home for 12 hours after work, if you finish a shift at 11pm you can’t start before 11am the next day and he would ask me to come at 8am, which I would do but then find out he didn’t pay.
That’s it, over to you, how have you made your easiest/hardest buck?
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I spent a summer lifeguarding at at an upscale pool with very few swimmers and most of them adults who knew very well what they were doing. That was incredibly easy. I read a lot of books that summer. The hardest? I’ve never had any terrible jobs but I spent some time doing a TON of manual labor for a commercial real estate company for very little pay. It definitely gave me a lot of appreciation and respect for the people who do that full-time. It was hard work.
that was the best summer job ever! I was generally waitressing in summer, it was tough to finish at 2am when all your friends are out having fun.
I worked also in the fast food as service crew. I love the work but the school load made me to decide to stop working and focus on my study at that time. The hardest for me is working i the middle dessert no shelter and plus a sandstorm. I cannot imagine what profession i have to eat the sand while working or while under the extreme heat.
Yes, that is tough, people who go dig oil stay there for 4 months at a time and don’t see their family, with heat and sand all around, but I think at least they are paid well.
It’s never been easy.
Hardest, though… I’d have to say landscaping.
Unloading semi-trailers was definitely one of the harder ways I made money. I helped unload four semi-trailers one Saturday and worked 6am to 6pm. I may or may not have gotten only a few hours of sleep the night before 😉 I also think Pizza Hut was very hard work for very little money.
Anything that requires strength is pretty poorly paid. Those movers will retire at 50 with back pains for a life of hard work.
I agree about Pizza Hut! I waitressed there for $2.35 per hour while in college. Way less than minimum wage due to the expected amount of tips. Living in a small college town, the tips were wretched and so were the cocky arrogant college customers. Some tables left between 1 cent and 1 dollar. Wow, I really don’t miss that. On a side note, I am trying to teach my young children why it’s important to tip well! 🙂 I think I’ll have to write a post on that…
Waiters always make minimum wage in France. It makes sense to pay lower when you can guarantee the tips, but Pizza Hut is typically the place where people would spend hours and tip $1. Tough one!
I think that telemarketing, which I have never done, is a very hard job because everyone is rude and hangs up on you. I never listen to their sales pitch but I do say no thank you quickly and politely.
Waitress in a busy bar was easy with great tips. Waitress in a family pizza restaurant was very hard and people just didn’t tip very much no matter how wonderful the service and the food was.
Yes, telemarketing is hard! As a student you have a tough skin but I had coworkers in their 50s and really felt for them.
My easiest money was in 2009, when the stock market was at its lowest. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel: you simply can’t do anything wrong. I made more money with a few mouse clicks than the previous few years’ worth of hard work. Of course, this opportunity only comes around once every 7-10 years, and (key qualification) you have to have investable cash.
Hardest unquestionably was owning my own business with a partner. Never do that unless you know each other VERY well. In the end that failed. Expensive lesson, that.
4 years to go to do it again then! I am off to get as liquid as possible :).
I went the partner route too, it was ok, because we were very honest and open with each other but didn’t last.
Easiest money I make is in a savings account. Not a lot of money, but it is easy and consistent. I just with rates would rise from their current .84% back up to 2-4%. That would be a nice way of tripling or quadrupling this easy money.
Easy and a lot don’t usually go together! I have 3% on UK savings which is really good at the moment.
I used to play economics/market “games” in college. It was research for the graduate business school kids. I would play these games for 1-2 hours and make upwards of $600ish (sometimes as often as 3 times a week). The other easy one I did was a sleep study where they hooked my brain up to a cap to measure activity when I slept in this silent room in a big cozy chair.
both are awesome! $600 just for research especially. That is a ton of money for a college kid.
Easiest? I took a test for a research opportunity. $40 for 1 hr of my time.
Hardest? Babysitting as a teenager. My sister in law is so lucky she lives in a rich neighborhood and gets paid $15/hr to nanny. I would get paid pennies per hour to babysit kids. But money was money, and i used to save it up little by little to buy things for school.
I was in a rich neighborhood too, so the rate was awesome. I imagine it is tougher when people have less cash.
Nice topic Pauline! The easiest way I made money was putting up Christmas lights. I do it a few times every Fall and it is super easy. The hardest it was for me to make money was doing manual labor installing sprinkling systems. Very low pay for very physically taxing work!
Do you put up the lights for your neighbors or for the mall/shops? that is a cool side hustle!
I actually do it in my sister’s neighborhood. She lives in a more affluent area than I do and people there never want to put their own lights up. 🙂
The easiest money I made was when I was in college and I was paid to just walk into some of the stores to make sure the merchandise was stocked. It was super easy and I was paid the equivalent of $80/hour. My hardest money was when I started my e-commerce business and was paid peanuts for months until I finally broke through. I was paid the equivalent of about $1 per day for the longest time. That changed as time progressed, but starting the business was hard.
Wow $80 per hour because you had a system to do it superfast or they just paid well?
I forgot the hourly rate on blogging, but that is fun money, so not a hard way to make money..
I was able to do it super fast. I was paid per job, so by the time I was done for they day, my pay was roughly $80 per hour.
nice. I love those kinds of jobs you can automate and earn more if you do more.
Wow, they really took advantage of you as a teenager! Once when I was a teen I babysat for friends of my mother. They had one child and (little did I know then) I really didn’t have a choice in the matter since my mom and her friends wanted to go out for the night. That night I babysat for 7 hours and left with $30. Definitely wasn’t the money making opportunity I thought it was!
Not always but I had a LOT of jobs as a teen, so a few turned out wrong. Still at the time I was just happy to make $15 or $20.
It is hard to command higher rates for friends and family, I was lucky to find gigs with strangers and charge them higher.
The easiest money I’ve ever made was when I used to fill in for my aunt at her Hallmark store. Really, it was only busy if there was a wedding and someone was picking out China. Mostly I sat at the register and read a book, but it was incredibly boring.
The hardest might have been cleaning the meat slicer and ice cream machines at a convenience store I worked at in college. We also had to wash lots of dishes, make lots of fried food, and wear hair nets. We were always busy, so at least the time passed quickly.
Looks like you are still not over the hair nets haha. I would have been so afraid of slicing my fingers in those machines. Sometimes I see people with one less finger and always wonder where they lost it. brrrr.
Interesting stories! That sucks that people were so rude to you as a teenager – especially that babysitting gig! I worked in a toy store for my first job and it wasn’t particularly difficult. Dealing with kids and their parents isn’t fun, but my coworkers were great. I think the “easiest” money I made was from birthdays, graduation, holidays etc.
My hardest job was one I quit after two weeks because they didn’t bother training me. I worked at a food distributor taking orders from companies, and most of them were not friendly. What made it bad was that it was basically an endless barrage of phone calls and we were using an AS400 system which was kind of foreign to me.
Gift money I wouldn’t consider “making”, although that is thanks to being so nice you got it :).
I’ve had the “hey, train yourself” job too, not a fun one!
That’s awesome about the tip!! I haven’t had too many strenuous jobs, but I have had a lot of jobs where I had to be really peppy and “on” for the entire day, and that was always exhausting.
As an introvert I really don’t like those, but being a waitress motivated by tips was ok. Tough on the feet though.
Fun to read these stories and comments! I did a lot of babysitting in junior high and high school. Most of it was fine but I occasionally had the kid from hell who would NOT.STOP.CRYING. It was exhausting. But as my parents like to say, “Great birth control!” haha
Best job by far was my last internship. Got paid to gossip with the accounting team. haha it was so must fun!
Loved reading about your work history. My worst job was as a trailer editor which I blogged about, and I had some boring temp jobs and fast food when I was a teenager. I guess the easiest is right now when I get paid to add a text link to an existing blog. It shocks me how easy and fast it can be. I like that! lol!
yep, pretty easy money it is! I thought about putting it but for the hours put to set up a blog without which the ad wouldn’t exist it comes to a lower hourly rate.
Pauline, you are cracking me up!!!
Easiest job: Victory Video, a video rental in a grocery store. So boring but so easy.
Hardest job: Public school teacher. Long hours, little pay, impossible work load. I did love seeing kids learning the right way and with researched-based practices and knowing I was a part of it. It makes me sad that education needs to be that hard.
My mum is a teacher so I get your points pretty well, it is hard to teach 30 kids, barely makes up for the free summers.
Dude, I’d try the lipstick gig – today! Easy breezy! What a fun post, Pauline! The hardest way I made money was elementary music teaching. When you factor in all the planning, meetings, commuting, and before/after school duties, summers off meant nothing. It is purely for slaves.
The easiest money I ever made was playing gigs like weddings and dinner parties. Because it is classical guitar and not mindless strumming, everyone perceives the music as gorgeous even if it is mediocre. I can get away with playing the same 20 tunes over and over for 3 hours and easily get between $150-300 per hour.
What shade would you go for? haha. I wrote about making money at parties on MMYW, it is a great hourly rate for just one night. My musician friends say you do have to rehearse a lot to command those rates though, but if you do you can find multiple gigs like that.
The easiest way I make money is to save my money and make it work for me. I made easy money selling my house in the UK since what I paid and sold it for was a huge profit for me. I also made easy money moving to Canada with my money being worth more over here although I’ve smacked myself a few times for not taking it all over. In Canada I’ve made easy money testing food and give my feedback in a one hour focus group that pays me $100 cash with a light dinner and drink. Doesn’t get any better than that!!!
nice! I try to take advantage of currency variations too but you can never predict the future.
Those are some great true stories. I can’t believe you got a 100 Euro bill, that’s so cool. One of the hardest ways I earned money was telemarketing. Thank goodness I don’t have to do that anymore.
Once, in high school, I babysat for a guy who had his kids for a couple weeks in the summer. He worked all day long every weekday, so I think I babysat from 8-6 every day. The dude barely left any food in the house and I was bored to death on top of that, so I would pay to get the kids into the local pool and also buy their food.
At the end of the two weeks, the guy wrote me one huge check. A few days later I found out it bounced! My mom ended up giving me the money because she felt so bad and then tried to get it out of him, but he never would come to the door/answer phone calls. He was such a loser…boils my blood to think about it now!
What a jerk! Sorry you had to go through this. I would be so ashamed to behave like that, especially with a neighbor, as you see them every now and then after the shameless abuse.
I tried to make it as a professional investor and also as a professional poker player. I learned very quickly that there is no such thing as easy money and you only get out of anything what you put in to it. If I was starting all over again though, I would train to become a lawyer. I’ve never known a profession to make so much money from relatively easy work.
Easiest? …. When I played games and sold virtual millions for hard cash on ebay.
Hardest? My current job. I had to struggle through 3 years of super learning to get to a semi-comfortable point. Now I’m confident but it was rough.