This year, some child in my neighborhood will leave my house on Halloween with nothing but a lesson in money management and gambling.
I doubt they will appreciate it, but I hope they enjoy the experience enough not to trick out my house with eggs or toilet paper.
It’s the latest twist in my personal effort to do something different with Halloween, giving the children an experience they can talk about that might help them learn a lesson about finances.
I’m telling you about it now in the hope that maybe you will either follow my lead or come up with your own program to make Halloween something other than a gluttonous candy-fest. I have been doing this for three years now, my own spin on the “Cash for Candy” campaign that the National Financial Educators Council started in 2016.
I’m not interested in being a spoilsport, or even a killjoy trying to “improve” a great holiday tradition. I love living in a neighborhood that will send 80 to 100 costumed children to my door on Halloween night and I am happy to give them candy.
But I’d rather get the chance to make them think about candy as a currency, to think of money as giving them options and then having a chance to decide how they want to spend it.
With that in mind, I have changed my program each year, and this year has a very new and different twist.
In 2016, the grade-eligible children who came to my door were offered their three pieces of candy or the chance to draw a coin envelope from the money jar.
Each of the 50 envelopes I made up that year had at least one quarter in it; the “jackpot” was $5. The kids were aware of those parameters.
That year – and this is not a surprise when you are the only house in the neighborhood giving away money – I gave away all 50 envelopes (and would have given away two more if I had made them up) and had just four age-eligible kids choose to take sweets.
In 2017, age-eligible children could trade their three pieces of candy to pick from envelopes that had at least 25 cents and up to $3 each, or they could let me pick a random piece of fun-sized candy from their bag, trading up to pick from envelopes containing 50 cents minimum up to a $5 grand prize.
I expected most kids to take the money, but few to let me take their candy, and was dead wrong. All 48 children who took the money – again, four age-eligible kids stuck with the candy – played for big money.
That brings us to this year, and the potential for a child to go away with nothing but a financial lesson.
2) Trade one piece of fun-sized candy (picked randomly, they can’t just give me the stuff they don’t like) for an envelope that has at least 50 cents to a maximum of $4. Half of the envelopes will have the 50-cent minimum in them.
3) Trade three pieces of the small candies to pick from envelopes in which half of the pouches have no money but any envelope with cash has at least $1. Half of the winning envelopes will have the $1 minimum but the rest will have more, up to a $10 jackpot and two $5 prizes.
Each envelope this year will have a small paper re-capping the game for the kids (because I have to put something in the envelopes that otherwise would be empty).
From an investment standpoint, the one-candy, small-money option is best. There is no chance for the child to lose money, and they could get a return of 8 times the 50-cents worth of candy they are wagering. That said, I expect most kids to take the big-money option, because the gamble is worth it when most of them can cruise the neighborhood and get more candy than they can eat.
If you have children or grandkids, ask what they would do at my door. Help them see how the options can be viewed as an investment or a gamble.
The cost of doing this yourself are not as high as you might expect; my candy costs should be minimal this year (younger kids get the candy that the older ones trade) and the rest of my costs vary based on whether the jackpot envelopes are claimed.
And since none of my neighbors has identified themselves as a big winner – though those envelopes were claimed each year – I don’t expect complaints from anyone whose child’s envelope comes up empty.
The entire experience has been a blast, a particularly fun thing to do in the neighborhood now that my kids have grown and flown.
Challenging the children to think critically makes Halloween an even bigger treat than normal.
That’s a pretty good trick; you should try it.