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In my continuing desire to teach my kids, ages 7 and 9, how to deal with money, I came up with a plan to show them how to budget for something. I offered them a chance to decorate our house for Halloween and Christmas and gave them a budget of a rather generous amount (in my opinion): $200. This is in addition to the décor items we already own. They were pretty excited.

This is what I told them: Let’s look around at what’s available for Halloween and see how much it costs, then figure out what you want. Whatever is left over from your Halloween shopping, you can use for Christmas.

We hit the local Halloween store (the kind that opens up just for a month or so), Target and the dollar store. I was as surprised as they were at the high costs of items, as well how scary some of the Halloween stuff is. We were looking for fun/scary … and instead found zombie babies with bloody hands in their mouths.

One night, they went out with their mom to shop, and I was astonished at what they brought back – a lot of fun/scary items and a bunch of money left over. They had spent only $18 (gotta love the dollar store!). The house looks great with the new and old decorations … and the kids are really looking forward to spending the rest of their money ($182) on Christmas decorations.

Now … if I can talk them out of buying the 18-foot blow-up Santa Claus, it will be money well spent.