What is the first thing ever you worked your ass off as a kid to buy?
I remember picking blueberries for 2 days straight with my bro to earn about 80 bucks to purchase a nintendo game. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past... worth the heat stroke, the chapped lips and the blisters on my feet. It's the first thing I've ever truly worked for, and it was worth every penny!
8 years ago by drunkenninja
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The only reason I got my first job was so that I could buy a PS2 so that I would be ready for GTA:3 when it came out. Luckily I only had to save up half the money as a 15/16yo trying to save up $700 is a bit much. So worth it. I still remember the first time I played that game... best feeling ever.
I can't believe that game is almost 14 years old. Time has flew by too fast.
It was a Gameboy Colour with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I remember going into the Game store and i was £5 short, but the guy behind the checkout covered it for me, no idea why. Might have had something to do with my nan telling him how long I had been saving for it. Still have it, all working to this day :)
I collected cans door to door to help pay for a school camping trip. The parents ended up pitching in about half but I still felt accomplished considering the trip cost about 350 bucks.
Was it a good trip? It sounds like you worked really hard for it... 175 bucks worth of cans is no small feat.
I remember I was 5 or 6.
My mom's side of the family was never doing too well with money. My grandpa had died when my mom was 9, and my grandma had to work her ass off to raise her 3 children.
My uncle, who was 20 at the time, would oftentimes have other guys from the neighborhood over and they'd play Rummy for money. Of course I was not allowed to interfere, but I wanted to play the game so much, I was fascinated by how concentrated everyone in the room was and how I wasn't allowed to interfere.
So whenever I told my mom I want to play (the rummy game was not my uncle's, so I couldn't use that one) she told me I'd have to raise money in order to buy one. She'd send me to get stuff from the shop downstairs and allow me to keep a small part of the change in a piggy bank. One year later I had enough money and I went to the library with a huge, heavy bag of coins and bought the game (470 coins, to be precise).
It was an incredible feeling of achievement.
Now THATS dedication. BTW, how much is 470 coins exactly? A dollar amount would help tremendously here :)
The currency changed A LOT since then. It was worth 47.000 lei - I was raising 100 lei coins. I don't know what was the conversion rate back then, but I can say that based on how I felt it, it probably cost something like 40 lei noawadays, which is like 10-15 us dollars.
That's about right for a game like that. Tell me... did you start your own underground gambling ring with the game? If so, how much money did you make back? :D
Haha, I wish. I was playing with my mother, aunt-to-be and uncle. I became really good at it, I was playing against them competitively at that age but I never got into gambling :(
Now we live in different cities, but whenever we meet for Christmas or Easter or whatever it's tradition to play at least a game or two.
I was trying to be funny :D It's cool you still have a tradition going even after all that time. Good for you!
I was trying to be funny too, I never actually considered gambling. Yet...
The only way to win is not to play.
A 36" CRT TV. Before that I was playing my Genesis and Super NES on some 70's Solora TV. It was quite the upgrade. I helped my dad move boxes of cabinets around at his business. Was worth all the effort. I still got it in my classic gaming room.
Mine is similar, but I went for the tiniest 13 inch TV. It was still 300 dollars but at age 12 that was a boat load of money at the time.
The first thing I properly saved up for was a PC when I was 17. It cost me £600 and I felt incredibly proud of myself once I achieved it. The PC was kickass too!
I tutored kids so I could buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the model that came with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt on one cartridge.
My first computer. Which was a MSX with a whopping 128k !! My parents put up half but i had to make the other half myself that was a lot of car washing and yard work. Phew still break a swaet thinking of it ! lol
Used 3 years of grass cutting money to buy an N64 & one video game (Mario 64.) Didn't spend any of my grass cutting money, just saved it till the N64 came out and decided that's what I wanted to use my money on.
Commodore 1541 drive for my Commodore 64 so I could finally save my BASIC programs and data files. I did a lot of yard work for neighbors to earn the cash to buy it from a toy store.
I'm not sure if it quite qualifies as working my ass off or not, but all of my spare cash from 7th grade to 12th grade was funneled into my Magic the Gathering addiction... "Please just one more booster pack, I promise I'll ref the soccer game next week..."
When I was 10 or 11, I once found a kiost in a mall that was selling all the premium rares for 15 cents per card. I'm talking cards that were valued at $10-50. The person at the shop was a temporary that had no idea what was going on. I bought like $500 worth of cards for like $8, all I had.