Seven-year-old’s golden nest egg pays for Disney trip
However, the Monaghan schoolboy has extra reason to enjoy his trip because, while most parents must bring home the bacon to fund such an adventure, Joseph used his nugget and came up with a egg-cellent plan to pay his own way.
Two years ago, when he was just five years of age, his parents, Marie and Martin, taught him a valuable lesson – you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
His mother, Marie takes up the story.
“My son had only turned five when he came and asked me if we would go to Disney World as he wanted to meet Mickey Mouse and see all the magic,” she said.
“With just one child, I thought to myself, ‘well it’s easy for me to say yes, let’s go’. But instead on the spur of the moment, I said to him, ‘we will go on one condition, because this is a really expensive trip, you will have to pay your fare’.”
Ms Kirk told Today’s FM’s Ray D’Arcy Show that as soon as she had said that she thought “what have I said? he’s only five”.
“I looked into his big eyes and he turned to me and said ‘ok, but I am too young to get a job so I will have to think of something’,” she said.
“So off he went and came back and said get me chickens and I will sell the eggs.”
The scheme may have sounded bird-brained given the cost of such a trip. Nonetheless over the next two years, the chirpy child sold free range eggs to his grandparents and anyone else who would buy them. “He started off with six hens and now has around 14,” said his mother.
“Any money he got was put into a big plastic container in the sitting room and by this May he had his fare paid for. So any money he earns now is going towards his spending money, which he thinks is really cool, so he is now even pre-booking eggs.”
His grandmother Maureen said she was taken aback by the dedication of the little boy.
“Most adults set a time frame for saving the money, but he had a great little ethos. Over the two years he just kept saving the money in the plastic box and every so often he would count it to see how much he had saved.”
She did, however, admit that the price of the eggs was at the buyer’s “discretion”.
“He probably got more for each egg than he thought he would get,” she said.
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