If you’re using the Ultimate Allowance System, or any derivation there of, you will have figured out what you normally spend on your children for the holidays (all of them) and added it into their monthly allowance figures. Hopefully, you will have also encouraged them to figure out how to make a little of this discretionary themselves as well.
Regardless, once they have the money, in order to help them spend this money wisely, a bit of PLANNING is in order.
Planning is one of the things many adults have trouble with. They see a paid of shoes (at least for women:-), they want the pair of shoes. They buy the pair of shoes. Men probably add one more step…they may indeed question if they really need the shoes.
This lack of planning is what gets many adults in financial trouble. They don’t plan all the way to the poor house, as my mother would say. If you want to get older and have more money, you simply have to stop long enough and figure out how to do that.
And if you have $25 to creatively come up with the scariest costume for Halloween, well, you do the exact same thing…you sit down long enough to figure it out.
Once you HAVE figured out what you want to be for Halloween and have planned out, to the best of your ability, how you might put the costume together, the first place to visit is often your friendly, neighborhood thrift stores.
These stores have gotten really smart over the years…they set out huge displays now weeks before the scariest holiday of the year for party goers to paw and plow through. Even if you’re not dressing up for Halloween, it’s pretty funny just to visit a thrift store this time and year and watch everyone come up with combinations to watch. It’s a lot cheaper than a movie and just as fun!
After you’ve combed through the thrift and second hand stores, try your local dollar store, little corner market, and other odd establishments. We have several stores like this in Santa Barbara that I don’t really think people actually know the names of. We just refer to them as, “The weird store on such and such a street.” The other person will say, “Oh, yeah, I haven’t been there yet.” Every town has them!
Once you’ve planned and fetched all the necessary Halloween components on the requisite budget, you simply head home, assemble the pieces and poof, your a ……….
p.s. If you haven’t discovered The Ultimate Allowance for your kids, please check out www.ultimateallowancebook.com or visit www.creativewealthintl.org for more information on how to teach yourself and your children about money.
Enjoy.
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