Your mom has told me a bit about your life now that you are 11 years old. I know it's a big change for you and for us too. We are proud of you and glad that you seem to be adjusting well to your surroundings.
One thing I thought I'd talk to you about is money. I know they don't ever teach this in school. They will teach your math, which helps, but handling money is a big story. So I will try to help you out with some of the things I have learned about money.
There are people everywhere in the world who are very happy to cheat or con you. By that I mean they will lie, cheat, fool and trick you so they can get your money. It's their job, that's what they do to make a living. These awful people survive and feed off others; they don't care about you and will do whatever it takes in order to get your money.
You always have to be aware of this and have to tell yourself, I don't need this (whatever it is) today I can wait take and some time (the longer the better) to think it over. One of the biggest tools a con artist will use is your own greed. It's trite but true, if it sounds too good to be true it must be a lie.
My parents did not have a lot of money. They had a lot of kids and I was the oldest. My dad worked two jobs; he was a city fireman and he had his own painting and rug cleaning business. My mother didn't work outside the home until she got a job as the cook for my grade school.
School lunch then was not like Thailand, there was only one cafeteria and one cook and a couple of helpers. You could either bring your lunch or buy it at school. If you bought it it was cafeteria style which means you got a choice of things to eat but not a great selection. My point here is even though my parents worked very hard there was never enough money.
When I was your age now I got my first job as a newspaper boy. I liked the idea of having a job because up to this time I never had any money. It was very rare that my parents would have spare change to give me.
I had about 40 customers that lived in my neighborhood and I delivered newspapers to them everyday. I was recruited by a nice man who had lost one arm from the elbow down maybe in the war. He talked to my parents who were unsure at first but decided it would be good for me.
In the afternoons after school I would go to a little shack in Broad Ripple and pick up my newspapers on my bicycle. I would have to pay cash for my newspapers. It would take me between an hour and a half to 2 hours to deliver the papers.
At that time there was no internet, that didn't really get going until the 1990s. There were three TV channels and I remember they would go off the air around midnight and come back on about 6:00 a.m. Many people depended on newspapers to get in-depth information and detailed news along with a lot of other things you couldn't find any other place.
For instance the classified ads provided a means to find a job, rent an apartment, buy furniture, find a used car and many many other things. You could find out what was playing in the movie theaters around town and what time they started. You could find out what was going to be on TV that day. You could get the sports scores along with the stories of what happened. High School and college sports were big news. Newspapers were very important when I was growing up.
My favorite sections were the comics, the sports sections, most of the news headlines and Dear Abby. I read the entire paper everyday which means I turned and looked at every page while not necessarily reading all the stories just the ones that I enjoyed. You could find stories about people you knew or knew of and that was always of interest to people because they were local.
Dear Abby was an advice column. People would write into the newspaper and describe some problem they had and Dear Abby would print their problem and some answer to how to fix it. This was one of my favorites and I think it was for many people.
One of the worst things about the paper route was getting money from my customers. I would try to go about dinner time and knock on their door. Sometimes you had to knock a lot. Finally when they came they'd have to look around for the $0.40 for that week or whatever they owed me.
They paper gave me a book with one page for each customer. When they paid me for that week I would tear off a little tab and give it to them as a receipt. This way we both kept track of how much was owed and paid.
I think the paper cost about 7 cents for the daily, the Sunday was more because it was a much bigger paper. Some guys who delivered papers would save all their money, I hadn't learned about saving yet but they were the smart ones and generally had some specific thing for which they were saving. I wasn't too smart at age 11. I managed to pay for my papers but anything left over would go for candy, comic books, ice cream or soda pop. But I didn't spend more than I had and I think that's a secret of life.
The weather where I grew up is much different than here in Thailand. We had four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Winter was the worst because we got a lot of snow and my bicycle didn't work too well in the snow so I had to walk which took a lot more time and walking isn't easy in the snow either.
This is a little bit about my first experience dealing with money and believe me you will deal with money all your life. If you deal well with money, your life will be a lot easier and I think also happier. If you don't handle money well, you are going to have problems.
Here are a couple of tips to help you out. Don't spend more money than you have. In other words don't borrow money with a few very rare exceptions. The other side of the coin is don't lend money to your friends. This is a good way to lose friends because it's so easy for misunderstandings to happen.
If you don't have money and you're not likely to get any soon, learn to do without or find something free instead of whatever you were going to spend your money on. Doing without isn't so hard once you get the hang of it.
Finding free stuff or doing free stuff can be a lot of fun. There are always ways to find alternatives to get what you want without money. You will really feel proud of yourself once you do this a couple of times.
I wrote a lot more than I planned to but I guess that's okay. I think parents always like to help their kids by giving them the benefit of their experience. So that's why I thought I'd try writing to you. I hope you can learn from my experience. Unfortunately many of us only learn by trial and error so we make a lot of mistakes. Mistakes are okay however, try not to repeat them, make little ones rather than big ones, learn from them, and if it's a truly horrible mistake don't take it too hard and certainly don't get depressed. It is after all only money. Remember when you leave this world you don't take any money with you.
Take care of yourself, love you
Khun Ta
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