It’s October and that means the Halloween season is here! Trick or treating is so much fun for the kids and there is so much candy. How can we use that candy to teach our kids all about money management? Today I want to share 6 ways that we can start introducing these money concepts.
1. How motivated are your kids to work for this candy?
- This teaches them the value of money and working for something that they would like to do.
2. Saving versus spending concept
- If using candy as the currency, after trick-or-treating, evaluate: is there any candy left? When you have a lot of candy left, what do you do with it? Do you eat all of it or do you put some aside and have some for tomorrow or even save some for the rest of the week so that you can enjoy a little every day.
- The three jar concept that I have mentioned in previous episodes comes in really handy here. It includes 3 jars (save, spend, give). In the give jar, they can give the candy to a friend or Mommy and Daddy. In the spend jar, they can have that as the eating jar. In the save jar, they can keep the candy a little longer to have for another day.
3. Budgeting versus binging
- Have a daily limit on how much candy that they can eat per day and compare to real money.
- For instance, if they have 5 pieces of candy, how long will those 5 pieces of candy last? Or will they just eat all of the candy in one day? Budgeting vs. binging.
4. Taxes
- How do we teach them that the money we get in our future paycheck is going to have a tax? We can teach them taxes with the candy they receive at trick-or-treating.
- Example: If we have 10 pieces of candy, take 2 of those pieces out of the bucket. We don’t get to keep those 10 pieces of candy because that’s how it works in real life. Teach them this so that when they have their first job, they understand that they don’t get to keep 100% of their paycheck.
5. Investing
- Continue with the 3 jar approach. If they have 10 pieces of candy and they commit to not eating it for 1 week, Mommy and Daddy will put 5 pieces of candy in the jar. If that stays there another week, I will add 5 more pieces of candy again and so on and so forth. You can try this for about a month or so to see how much they will invest in their candy account.
6. Share with others.
- Build on your investing component: since you have more now, can you share one or two pieces of that?
- Introduce the concept that other kids don’t have the opportunity to have a costume and go trick-or-treating so that’s a good option to teach them to share.
I’m not saying for the kids to not enjoy this holiday by any means, but I’m trying to create this parallel between smart money decisions for the kids and using candy as a fun currency!
Let me know what you are doing this Halloween! How are you keeping the kids engaged in creative ways and still introducing these lessons for their finances?
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
- 6 ways that we can incorporate Halloween candy and money
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