It’s October, and you know what that means—spooky season is officially here!
Between costumes, parties, and the excitement of trick-or-treating, your kids are about to score a mountain of candy. But what if you could turn that sugar stash into more than just a sweet treat?
This Halloween, let’s use all that candy to sneak in some fun, practical lessons about money management! Join me for six creative ways to introduce your kids to essential money concepts.
Anna's Takeaways:
FREE GUIDE- Kid Money Boss: School isn’t teaching my son about Money. It’s up to us Parents. Here are 9 tools I am using to team my son, everything I never learned as a kid.
Hey, Money Bosses. Anna is here, and
welcome back to the Money Boss Podcast. I am excited for this
episode. I'm excited for all the episodes, but this one should be
fun, because I want to really use this theme of holidays
upcoming and start to kind of be creative how we teach money
lessons to our kids. So let's talk a little bit about how
Halloween candy, and I know it's coming down the road, could be
used to start introducing these money concepts that we've been
talking about for quite some time on the podcast already. So
with that in mind, I know there's a lot of promotion going
on at the moment. People are starting to put up their
Halloween decorations. I actually am going to dig that up
this evening and start to even though it's like just the
beginning of the month of October, it's going to be here
before we know it. And something really fun that we are doing
this year is that, well, first of all, we're going to see my
family on the east coast, but also going to spend the
Halloween with them, and it's been years. We've lived in
California for 10 years now. It's been years since I was
actually in Maryland for the Halloween. I love all the fall,
and so looking forward to that. So I already know we're going to
have a lot of Halloween candy, because my family, my brother,
has kids, and I know we're going to go trick or treating, so I
want you to kind of think about All right, here's what's
happening with the kids, and I think this, if I further think
about this concept, how do we use the candy as a teaching
lesson? The kids, probably of all ages, can benefit from this.
I've been talking quite a bit with you about the different
types of accounts you can set up and and the three jars concept
and introducing allowance. So keep those concepts in the back
of your head while we kind of going through that. So here are
my kind of six ways, slash analogies, how you can use
Halloween candy to learn more about what your kids are
understanding about money, and start to introduce these
concepts to them and make them more real. Because which kid out
there in the world doesn't like candy? I don't think I can find
anyone. So here we go. Okay, I've got six ideas for you. So
number one is, how motivated are your kids to work for this
candy? I know everybody loves it, but How hard are they
willing to work so, you know, granted that you had already
purchased them a costume or created one from scratch
yourself. I wish I was that handy. What are they willing to
do in order for you to take them out for trick or treating,
right? Or even buy them a costume? Of course, I'm lacking
ideas at the moment for my almost three year old, but and
he's been telling me, it's funny, he's been telling me
lately that he does not want to go trick or treating. I'm not
sure what that's about. He only has really two years of
experience doing that, probably just something he watched on
YouTube about Halloween being scary. But I'm still going to
figure out a way for him to earn, right, this opportunity to
go out and Trick or treat, or an opportunity for us to spend
money and buy him the costume, so it's not something that it's
expected right every year for the parents to do. So I wonder,
what is it that you're going to do to motivate them to actually
earn this awesome, awesome experience. So that's number
one. Number two, let's talk about saving versus spending
concept, and if we're using candy as a currency. So our
currency here is candy, and kids understand that concept very
well. Is there any candy left in their blow buckets before you
get home for trick or treating. So look at that right, and then
talk to them about these concepts, right? When you have a
lot of candy, and that's what's going to happen on that night.
What do you do with it? Do you just eat all of it on that one
night? And maybe you eat more than normal. But is there an
opportunity for you to introduce the idea of maybe putting some
of that candy aside and come back to tomorrow, right? Or come
back to it, or save it for for the rest of the week, so that
you can enjoy it a little bit every day. I think the three
jars concept would be really, really handy in this, because
that includes the save, spend and give jar. You know, maybe if
they spread them out, even buying those jars would be
really cool. I will include the link in the show notes. I have
found a really inexpensive plastic jars on Amazon that have
a little lid and it has a select for you to drop points. I don't
think you can put candy, but you can still probably use those
jars to accomplish the same thing. So go back and listen to
that episode. I think it's a really handy for this particular
concept. But I can almost see how like using the candy,
spreading it out into these three jars. And you know, maybe
some of the candy you can give away to mommy and daddy, right,
two days from now. Or you can, you know, you can eat whatever
it is that you designated to spending, which is your eating
bucket, and then the one you're saving you're going to keep for
a little bit. So I hope that makes sense. Number three on my
list is budgeting versus binging. So introduce the daily
limit on how much candy can they eat per day, right? And compare
that to real money. So if you have five pieces of candy you
are allowed to eat from that batch that you collected on the
Halloween night. How long is that going to last you? And the
same thing, if you had $5 or $50 or whatever that number is, how
long is that going to last you? Can you spend $5 every day?
Maybe you buy a cup of coffee or a lunch or something like that.
So use the candy as the currency to start to introduce that
being, you know, having a plan versus, just like eating it all
right? And again, I'm not, after not giving kids the opportunity
to enjoy this holiday by any means, but trying to create this
parallel between smart money decisions and lessons for the
kids and using candy as a fun, fun currency. Okay, number four
is, how do we teach them the tax? How do we teach them that
money that we make candy that we get on our trick or treating
trip is going to have to have a tax and so maybe lay out an
example where they have 10 pieces, and then two out of
those pieces are going to go into a tax bucket, right? So
that's they don't get to keep 10 pieces of the candy, because
that's how it works in real life. Again, that way, when the
real life comes up and they get a paycheck, a real paycheck,
they're not expected to keep 100% of it, because that's how
it works in real life. So introduce the tax component as
well. Number five, introduce the investing component. So if we
did continue with the three jar approach, you don't have to. You
can break it out any way you want, even use just like a zip
lock bags for this matter. Don't complicate it. If you keep the
candy for a week, right? And whatever it is, 10 pieces, 20
pieces in this bag, and you commit to not eating it. One
week from now, I will put five more candies in that bag, if
that stays there for another week. So week two, I will add
another five pieces of the candy that they like, if it stays
there in week three and week four and so forth. So the idea
is that. Them to all the sudden in a little bit of time to see,
oh, wow, I started with 10 pieces of candy. A week later, I
now have my 10 plus mommy or daddy or grandpa or grandpa are
going to match it up with the five pieces of candy I now have
15. Maybe I can eat one and I still have more than I initially
had, and so forth. So I hope this is actually a really cool
example. And I know that you gotta eat that candy at some
point because it's gonna go back, but let's do it for a
month and see if this concept will sink about All right. This
is how money grows. This is how you actually create real wealth,
even if we're just using the candy concept here. And my last
one for all of it, I couldn't live without it, because it
still kind of circles back to the basic principles of money
management. Is,
how can we instill in them the charitable intentions, right? So
how can they be willing to share and for younger kids, that's a
big, big lesson too, with everything that they've got. So
explain to them, right? And hopefully, if you prefer, maybe
follow the order that I'm describing these steps, and
because you can kind of build on, hey, we are going to grow
the money or slash the candy by five pieces next week. And so
since you have more, could you share one piece of that or two
pieces of that, because you're going to still get more than you
initially started. So I know that, or maybe you introduced
the concept of kids that didn't have the opportunity to have a
costume and go trick or treating. Now that's a good
option for them to share, right? That you know, that particular
candy, or whatever it is, any other you know, Halloween
related kind of thing. So those are my six ideas that I've got
for this exciting holiday. I'm starting to enjoy it more and
more as Liam grows up, and really trying to, like, find
creative ways, not just to, you know, go the traditional route
of, like, blowing money on costumes and and simply just
eating candy until you, like, pass out. Let me know what
you're doing with your kids for this Halloween season and the
next couple of weeks. And how do you keep them engaged and
creative, and still, you're introducing these lessons for
their finances. So I hope this could become a tradition for
your family, so that maybe try some things this year and then
keep on going. But I'm really liking that the currency that we
presented here, and yeah, chocolate candy sounds like a
lot of fun. All right, money bosses, that's all I've got for
you today until next time. Remember you are the bosses of
your own money.