I don't recall ever saving money for something specific.

My parents were extremely "frugal" as they say and passed that to me. I have always saved money in general, but used to find SPENDING my money very hard. It used to pain me to buy a Coke and a candy bar while out mowing yards all day for hire as a teenager... I have now however mostly gotten over that!

I guess the fist purchase of any consequence was a set of Sears Mechanics Tools. I bought them through my Uncle that worked in procurement at a factory and could get them below retail for me. I was about 14 at the time. My Dad made me take the info on the set to a mechanic at local shop for his opinion on the set before I could order them... he put his blessing on them. I have lost a couple and broke a couple and may not be able to find them all when needed but ~50 years later I still have 95+ percent of them.

I saved bottles and cans to buy a Daiwa fishing rod and reel from Gemco.

I don't fish but I still collect recyclables.

A Sheridan pellet gun. I cleaned construction sites for the money. I'll never forget negotiating with the contractor (who knew my dad) over my pay. He wanted to know if I wanted paid by the job or by the hour. Then we "haggled" over the job price. (He took it easy on me but at the time I thought I was a real high roller!)

I bought the green man called a Manglor:

http://www.toysyouhad.com/Manglors.htm

My parents let me save my money in an envelope they put in the cupboard...if I remember correctly it was $6.83

I sold seeds door to door to get a croquet set.

quote:

Originally posted by GT-40DOC:
A used Whizzer motor bike. It cost $25, and that was a lot of money in those days!!

I really don't need one, but a restored Whizzer is something I'd really like to have at some point.

A 13" black and white TV for my bedroom. My dad made me a deal that he'd pay half if I saved the other half. Of course, he figured I'd never save that much. Two months later, we went TV shopping.

A Schwinn 5 speed derailleur bike, circa 1965. From paper route money. Candy apple red.

Hookers and blow... I started early. Just kidding.

I picked & sold strawberries to the local grocery store for a new bike. Age 11. The old bike was broke down and prices had gone up.

My first bike I had to save up $4, in 1951. Forgot what I did to make that jackpot.

The first real bigger thing I remember was a Team Murray BMX style bicycle. I was maybe 10 years old and it was the first bicycle I’d seen to look like that. It was gold and silver. It was $80 IIRC. I had to have it. I sold anything my friends would buy. Star Wars guys, hot wheels. Anything. I even had a yard sale that I think I didn’t sell a thing. But I got the bike. I’m sure my parents helped.

Skis, boots, poles, and bindings. I grew out of them in a year and had spent the money I had earned on lift passes

From an early age, my brother and I were doing something to make money. There were all sorts of options for kids in the mid to late 60s. The first thing we did was take order for seeds (for flowers and vegetables), moved on to cards (orders for custom imprinted Christmas cards) and also sold boxes of all occasion cards. As I got older I realize our neighbors must have gotten tired of seeing us on their doorstep - and realized they were extremely kind to buy that stuff (year after year). I'm sure they were relieved when I was old enough to get a to a paper route and retired from door to door selling.

From day one, dad made us set 10% aside for the church, at last 10% into savings, and then the rest was discretionary. I appreciate Dad and Mom getting us in the habit of saving. Generally funds were available when I wanted to get something. Dad said buy a modest first car then save (by paying yourself the car payment) so you could by a better one in the future with cash.

After thought - neighabors did like to see us show up on snowy days. For a modest fee we would clean off their cars and shovel their walks. We made pretty good money and had regular clients.

A 1980 Suzuki Rm 125 Dirt bike.

1960, at 8 y/o. A Motorola clock radio. If memory is correct it was about fourteen dollars, took me forever to save that much money. I wanted to be all grown up and get woken up by an alarm clock. It even had a snooze button on it.

That sure changed when I got older. Learned to hate alarm clocks.

Somewhere around the age of 13 I was cutting grass in the summer. The other kids cutting grass had their parents buy them a John Deere rider and I wanted one too. I would have loved to have a John Deere but they were too expensive. I don’t remember if it took a season or two but I saved enough to buy a Murray 11hp, 36” cut and a sweeper.

All excited, my dad took me to the register to pay and quickly got upset when they added tax to the bill. Think that was the moment I realized I was a conservative....

I don’t recall saving money for a purchase.

What I do clearly remember is saving S&H Green Stamps for getting all sorts of different things.
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A star wars lego set of the Endor Moon speeder bikes

A guitar. My first good one. An Ovation Artist acoustic. Would have been around 1978. And I still have it

my first saving was for a bike and i saved a lot for comic books. was a lot of fun, doesn't seems to be something kids do these days though

i was really invested in saving when i was 15 and wanted to start dating, i needed some new cloths i needed a gold change, a car and cash money, i took every job i could. very good times.