United States | News & Politics

You do realize you can do both, no? Here's what I did:

• 2-year degree at the same time as high school graduation - took classes as the local community college instead of the high school
• finish 4-years college without debt in an in-demand field
• saved for and bought a house by 26 - I didn't make a ton of money, but we were able to meet the average household income most of those years (we lived very frugally until our first was born)

When I was working as a teen, my parents pushed me to save half of my money, and I was probably closer to 75% (after donating to my church). Here's my rough income history as a teen:

• 14 - ~$20/week in summers
• 15 - $5/hr, 10-20 hours/week (landscaping) + $10-20/week mowing lawns and some random odd jobs (helped a neighbor rip out a tree stump) - made >$1k that summer; Xbox + TV cost $500-ish
• 16-18 - $8/hr, ~2 hours/school day, 6-8 hours/day in summer break, $20/week mowing lawns, and $10/week cleaning an office; I spent very little, mostly just gas and a few video games; most went to my college fund

I tracked my own hours and reported them to get paid. In fact, I taught myself to write in PHP to automate tracking my hours (built a crappy web app), and I took a Java class and taught myself C# to get that $8/hr job. All of that was done on my own, my parents didn't push me at all, they just saw my hobbies and hooked me up with a family friend.

From 16-18, I was at the local college, which meant harder classes, but fewer classes, so I only had ~3 hours of class time each day. I studied hard, so I usually got my homework finished before my friends got done with school. In the fall, I would play Varsity tennis at the high school, and work just before (I would do homework in the evening those days).

By the time I went to college, I had a few thousand saved, which was enough to get me through my first year of college without working. From my second year on, I had:

• $8.50/hr (like $1 over minimum) - custodian - 1 semester
• $10.50/hr - IT tech support for the university - 1.5 years
• $13/hr (got married this year) - programming internship - rest of college; I got a salary offer from that job after finishing school making ~$60k (forget exactly how much)

My wife worked waiting tables until our first kid, which also helped. After a few years, we had saved enough for a down payment on a house (~$50k), and I had impeccable credit history (about 7 years of on-time payments).

The only help I got from my parents was:

• a crappy car - worth ~$1500
• tuition paid - so equivalent to free college
• help getting my first credit card (they cosigned)

If I didn't work as a kid, I wouldn't have developed marketable skills, work ethic, or budgeting skills. So I'm going to be doing that for my kids if possible.