Someday I hope to live child-free. And in order see that fantasy happen, I have to get them out of my house…independent…living on their own. And to achieve that goal, I must teach them how to support themselves, so they don’t come back and live in my basement with their six children and deadbeat spouse. See, I have goals.
One thing I’ve worked really hard at, is teaching our kids about money. It’s ultra-important to me that my kids are not reliant on others for their income. I want them to pay their own way…to work hard for a living…and to someday get the heck out of my house.
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| Hooked Espresso across from Ninilchik School |
So last summer we bought a little coffee shop here in Ninilchik, called it Hooked, and put Destini to work. But we didn’t just give our kid a business…nope. We loaned her the down payment…put the license in her name…and put her completely in charge, at sixteen.
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| Kids drinks too! |
It didn’t take her long to realize that a tiny drive-thru coffee shop in Ninilchik, Alaska, is not a ‘get-rich-quick-scheme” and that working seven days a week the summer of your sixteenth year, is not an easy commitment to make.
But she did it. She worked, and she worked, and then…she worked some more. Six a.m. opening, ten hour days, seven days a week. And when she got really cranky…I’d work a day or two and give her some time to sleep. She’d also committed to a Youth Leadership Conference in Indianapolis, so I took over for six days while she was gone. But other than an occasional fill-in, Destini worked pretty much non-stop for three months straight.
And walked away with little more than pocket change.
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| A fishing village needs a fishing theme… |
But she didn’t come away with nothing. She learned invaluable lessons about running a business. She learned about taxes, profit margins, pricing, and ethical business practices. She learned to calculate to the penny, how much it costs to create a product. She came up with marketing strategies, product ideas and based them on cost versus price. And she learned the hard way that sometimes you work your butt off for seemingly no return at all.
It’s the American way.
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| Destini and Kaylee (i.e. the girl who is way too good for Billy but dates him anyway) |
This year I announced that since I have even more kids in the house than last year, there is no way I can work…short of a few hours here and there. So she made an executive decision…and hired help. That means even less money in the pocket…but it’s a small price to pay for sanity and sometimes at seventeen, late night summer fun is even more important than making the big dollar.
She’ll have her whole life ahead of her for that.
(visit HOOKED ESPRESSO and ‘like’ her page…we’ll surprise her with new fans!) 
