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Not Just College

For parents of teenagers headed into the trades

Free Calculators and Checklists

Four of them, each built to settle a single question and then get out of the way. Nothing asks who you are. There is no account, no address to hand over and no list to leave later, because the whole thing executes inside your own browser tab and your entries never leave the device.

Three of the four open with the dollar fields blank, and that is deliberate. No trustworthy national average exists for what a first-year apprentice is paid or what a trade school charges, so a helpfully prefilled figure would be a guess in a good suit. Each tool tells you instead where your own real local number can be found.

  1. What Can My Teen Legally Do at Work?

    Pick an age and a task and see the federal position: prohibited, prohibited unless the teen is a registered apprentice or student-learner, or conditional. With citations.

  2. Training Cost Comparison

    Compare an apprenticeship, a trade school and community college over the years you choose, counting what your teen earns during training as well as what they pay.

  3. Apprentice Wage Progression

    Enter the journeyworker scale from your local and the percentage steps from the program's own written standards, and see the wage schedule. Nothing is prefilled.

  4. Trade School Red Flag Checklist

    A printable checklist built from FTC guidance, plus the lookups a parent can do alone. It reports what you have not verified, and never scores a school.