Today is Election Day in the United States, where I, and most of my readers, live. Because this will post around the time that most East Coast polls are closing, I have to imagine that if you are actually reading this today, you are looking for a break from election coverage, and that if you are reading this on Wednesday, you are happy to be done with election coverage.

With that in mind, I thought it might be nice to discuss something fun and not at all related to politics, but still related to personal finance. And since it is only one week after Halloween, I came up with this idea:

Using Halloween to Teach Your Child About Personal Finances

The fact that I do not yet have any kids should not yet deter you from seeing me as an expert on this matter, as I once was a kid, and definitely had candy issues.

 

Natural Inclinations It may seem at first that there is a strict dichotomy in children between those that would eat all of their candy at once and those that like to go slowly, saving some for later. But there is more to it than that, because within each of those groups are the kids who will go through their candy and sort out things they don’t like and give them away, but there are also kids who will hoard (and eat) all of it, regardless of whether they like it or not because it is their’s.

Within the group of eat it all at oncers, are the kids who understand that they ate all of their candy and therefore have no more and the ones who will be mad that the savers still have candy and proclaim it unfair, asking that the saver be forced to share.

Within the group of savers, there will be kids who taunt the oncers with the fact that they still have candy. Some will use candy as currency to get the oncers to do things for them. Others will just go quietly about their business, having one or two pieces of candy every day without making a big deal of it, and sometimes the oncers won’t even notice. Savers that share their candy may make a big deal out of it or may just happily do so. If an adult tries to force sharing due to the oncers cries of “not fair”, the savers will almost certainly give the same cry back.

 

Candy is currency Candy may even be more valuable than cash. I mean, think about how much candy bars cost and how much candy kids get at Halloween. They’ve suddenly come into a windfall, and we all know that windfalls need planning.

 

Options as parents include:

• taking all the candy away from the kids at the end of the night, sorting out your favorites and then doling out the rest over time
• placing all the candy in a communal family bowl
• allowing the kids to pick out 5 pieces of candy they want for themselves and then taking the rest (to be doled out or shared later)
• keeping each bag of candy separate (assuming multiple kids), but taking the bags away so that the kids have to come to you to get the candy
• allowing the kids to have access to their candy bags for a day or two but then taking it away
• allowing kids to keep indefinite control over their candy bags and only stepping in when violence seem imminent

 

Lesson Plans What lessons can we teach our kids using Halloween candy? We can teach about various economic systems- communism, socialism, capitalism, and tyranny (where everything gets taken away and little to none gets back to the kids themselves). We can teach about taxation, or even interest (if parents are willing to add candy to stashes that are saved).

We can use it to teach valuable social lessons about sharing or simply being gracious to those with less- though often we don’t think of money the same way we do other resources, such as toys.

 

Experience as the Ultimate Teacher At the same time, most of us learn better from experiencing something on our own than we do from anything forced from our parents. And that’s why I argue to let kids have control over their own candy (with limits for health). A oncer will actually experience what it is like to run out when others still have something. A taunting saver will learn that others don’t take well to flaunting.

If you want your kid to be a saver, don’t try to force it with their Halloween candy, instead, let them experience it and figure out for themselves that it’s always nice to have something stashed away for a rainy day (or at least until the Advent calendar starts up).