Duncan Owen, 28, from Trenewydd, Powys, works as an accountant in Cardiff. He started earning money as a young boy of 11.

"I started earning when I was about 11, labouring on a neighbour's farm. Because I was so young, I was mainly just following the other workers about at the start. I wanted to be a farmer back then because I enjoyed the hard work and working outside and I loved driving the tractors around. It wasn't much fun, though, when it was raining. When I'm sitting in the office now and it's pouring down outside, I think - it could be worse, I could be farming!

I worked there until I was about 18, on weekends and holidays. My first pay packet was an ewe, which I got for six months' work - and that was working every weekend! After a year's work, they gave me another four ewes. There were 1000 ewes on the farm and I got to choose mine - the best five! So I'd earned five ewes in a year and they ran with the rest of the flock on the farm but they had a mark on them which showed they were mine. I lambed them and, when they gave birth, I got to keep the lambs as my next pay packet. When we sold them, I got to keep the money. I think I got about £35 each and there were eight lambs all in all.

After that, they started paying me about £1.20 an hour. It all added up and I used it to buy my first motorbike - a field bike when I was about 13. I also used to get free logs for my parents when we used to fill the farm's shed up. I used to take a load of logs home - my parents would pay me for them. So that was a nice little earner on top.

Farming basically funded university for me. Although my parents gave me about £900 a term, the money from working there paid for my social life and clothes etc.

I loved the work, it was really valuable because it gave me a work ethic. I learnt the value of money at a really young age. Money's hard to come by and it gave me a sense of achievement when I could afford to buy something. It was good not having to rely on my parents to buy everything for me and it made me think twice about buying things because I'd worked so hard for the money. The things I saved up for and bought myself all meant more to me somehow."

Duncan, Trenewydd

For more infromation see our article on 'Pocket Money'.