What did you spend your first paycheck on?

Why this question works

A first paycheck is a first taste of independence, and what a person did with it says a lot about who they were at that age. The record, the pair of boots, the tank of gas, the savings account: each choice is a tiny portrait. Your parent will probably laugh telling it, because the purchase that felt so important then usually looks sweet from here.

The question is also a gentle way into bigger subjects. Money habits start early, and this story often explains the adult you know: why your dad always pays cash, why your mom cannot walk past a sale, why both of them insisted you save half your allowance. It is a light conversation that helps you understand the household you grew up in. And because it is so specific, even a parent who says "I do not remember much" can answer it.

How to ask it

This is a perfect dinner table question, because everyone present has an answer and the stories bounce off each other. Ask it when someone in the family gets a first job or a new one, and go around the table from oldest to youngest.

Keep it fun. Guess before they answer, and be ready for an amount that sounds tiny today. Then ask whether they would spend it the same way again. If the money went to help the family, slow down and let that part be heard. It is a proud memory for many people, even when they tell it lightly.

Other ways to word it

• What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
• Do you remember how much your first paycheck was?
• Did you spend your first wages or save them?
• What had you been wanting that you could finally afford?

Follow-up ideas

• What job was the paycheck from?
• How did it feel to hold money you had earned yourself?
• Did you have to give some of it to your parents?
• Do you still have the thing you bought?
• What was the first big thing you saved up for?
• Who taught you how to handle money?
• What would you tell a teenager to do with a first paycheck?

An example answer

This is an invented example, written to show the kind of detail to listen for. Your dad’s answer will be his own.

"I bagged groceries the summer I turned sixteen, and my first check was a little under forty dollars. I can still see it. I cashed it at the store's service desk and walked directly across the street to the music shop, where there was a used guitar in the window that I had been visiting like a pet for six months."

"It cost thirty dollars, which left me almost nothing for two weeks, and the strings were so old that one snapped on the walk home. My father shook his head and said I should have bought work shoes. But he also sat on the back steps that night and listened to me play the only three chords I knew, over and over. I still have that guitar. It is not worth anything to anyone but me."

What to write down

Note the job, the year and the amount of that first paycheck, then what it bought and where. Write down what your parent's own mother or father said about the purchase. Record whether part of the money went to the family, and whether the thing they bought is still around. A sentence on what they would do with the money now makes a nice ending.

A question like this one sits in the work chapter of the Tell Me Your Story journals for Dad and Mom, with a page for the answer. It is one of the lighter pages in the book, and an easy one for a parent to start with.

See the Tell Me Your Story, Dad journal or the Tell Me Your Story, Mom journal. For more ideas, read questions to ask your parents or browse work questions.