Bullish: Thinking More Productively About Money

By Contributor Jen Dziura

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone.

When I was nine-years-old, I discovered that my allowance was the lowest of all the girls in my class (embarrassing!) and sometime later, started a small business making friendship bracelets and also reselling all the best (i.e., grossest) Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.

My classmate Crystal was rifling though my wares, which I kept in a Ziploc bag in my backpack. She questioned my business model – how come I was selling the good cards for more than they would cost in the store? (Seriously, don’t people’s parents explain these things to them?)

I said that, obviously, when you buy a pack of Garbage Pail Kids in the store, you don’t know which ones you’re getting, and also that marking things up was how all businesses operate. Stores, of course, buy things and then sell those things for more than they paid.

“That’s not true!” she said, incensed.

“Of course it is,” I said. “How else would they pay the rent and the people who work there?”

“You’re stupid,” she said, leaving without Harry Carrie, Adam Bomb, or Babbling Brooke.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.