Some kids buy bikes or skates with the money they earn. Others save it for college.
But not L. Scott Frantz.
He invested his first dollar in stocks and bonds.
Not a surprise for a youngster who appreciated the value of – well – even a penny.
At six years old, a neighbor offered to pay him a penny for every 100 leaves that he raked.
“I’d rake leaves for an hour and half, put those leaves in a big bag, and then I’d drag it into the garage where I spent three hours counting them,” he said. “It’s a goofy thing. I spent much more time counting the leaves than raking them.”
But neighbors seemed to like the job he did. Three or four other neighbors hired him to rake their yards as well.
Frantz found a better gig at age 14, with what he calls “the best job in the whole world.”
After obtaining a scuba diving license, he was paid $80 an hour to clean the bottoms of boats at a Stamford marina. Frantz worked three to five hours a day for five weeks during the summer when he was 14- and 15-years old.
At the time, the water at the marina was very dirty, and not too many were willing to get into it to do the job, he recalled.
When he wasn’t cleaning the bottoms of boats, he worked on the marina’s dock working odd jobs for $2.20 an hour.
“Obviously, you know which job I’d rather have been doing,” he said.
With such a hefty paycheck at such an early age, Frantz did something most kids don’t even consider doing. He researched the stock market and began to make investments in stocks and bonds before graduating from high school.
“You don’t really know what you are doing when you get into it,” he said. “You read about it – about the peaks and valleys of the market. I had a little bit of an infatuation with it. I realized you can make money if you are a little lucky and smart about it.”
Although he initially wasn’t so sure about investing in the stock market, one thing was for sure. Frantz didn’t squander his earnings.
“I saved that money, the vast majority,” he said, initially stashing his earnings into a bank account, and after figuring out which stocks and bonds he wanted to purchase, invested the money.
Stories about other stock market investors, who started as children — like Warren Buffett, who invested all his paper route earnings — fascinated Frantz.
Today, Frantz heads Haebler Capital Corp., an equity investment firm in Greenwich. He also chairs the boards for the Connecticut Development Authority and Bradley International Airport.
“There are incredible opportunities in this country,” Frantz said. “It’s a great country to live in. If you take time to study how the system works, the opportunities are incredible.”
