Hannah Beaulieu gets what she wants the old-fashioned way – she earns it

LEWISTON – Hannah Beaulieu has worked half her life, and she’s only 18.

For the past nine years, seven days a week, Beaulieu has gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to deliver newspapers.

A self-described miser, she saves almost every penny she earns. She’s deposited most of her $50 weekly earnings and enjoys watching it grow.

“I used to calculate the amount of interest I’d make every month,” she said.

She saved enough money to buy a new car, with cash, when she was 16. Her father wasn’t surprised

“She’s always been more mature than other kids her age,” said John Beaulieu. “She knows what she wants. She worked hard to save for it.”

A senior at St. Dominic Regional High School, Beaulieu knows some kids whose parents buy them cars. There’s nothing wrong with that, she said. “But you appreciate it more when you’ve earned it.”

She’s also used her earnings to help others.

As an eighth-grader she paid for herself and her mother, Anne, to fly to Bosnia and help poor children living in a refugee camp. She still sends $10 a month to a girl she befriended there.

Beaulieu’s working days began when she was 9. Her family’s paper carrier came by to say he was giving up the route. He asked Hannah’s brother, Ryan, if he wanted it. Ryan didn’t, but Hannah did.

She was already doing odd jobs, mowing lawns and pet sitting. “I really liked earning money when I was little,” she said.

And she liked saving it. Her friends would spend theirs on candy. Not Hannah.

For her 10th birthday her parents helped her get her own checking account. At St. Joe’s elementary school, she often wrote her own checks to pay for lunch. “I liked being independent,” she said.

When she was 10 she was honored by the Sun Journal as the carrier of the year. A newspaper ad showed her in her Catholic school jumper, smiling with a newspaper sack around her shoulder. She uses the same sack today.

Some days delivering papers is difficult, she said. In the winter it gets so cold that her eyelashes freeze. It takes an hour each morning for her and her dog, Emma, to deliver the route. “I figured one hour isn’t that bad,” she said. “I’m a hard worker. And once I had that car I realized that I really needed to work.” She has no car payment but she has insurance and gas expenses.

She tries to save her money for special things, she said. “I live by: ‘nothing’s worth having unless it’s worth working hard for.'”

This Friday she will graduate from high school. She plans to have three jobs this summer: working at St. Dom’s summer camp, delivering papers and helping part-time at a pharmacy.

She’ll deliver newspapers until the fall, when she leaves for the University of Connecticut where she’ll major in pharmacy. “I’ve always been good in science and math. I like the idea of medicine without the blood.”

Then there’s the income.

“I like the job security, and the salary, of course,” she said. It’ll take her six years of study to become a pharmacist. But the pay straight out of college is $100,000 to $110,000, she said. “When we were at the Boston School of Pharmacy they said, ‘If you dare to go to a place like Maine, it’s even more.'”

Beaulieu is excited about going to college. “But I’m not excited about the loans.”