My kids go trick or treating. We live in a great candy neighborhood, so every year they come home with 100-200 pieces.
When they’re young we tell them Santa brings every boy and girl a present on Halloween and the more candy you leave him, the better a present he’d leave in exchange.
When the kids get old enough to realize Santa is a hoax, that’s when we start paying in cash. 25 cents per piece.
Did this with our oldest two and it worked great. They’d give up about 3/4 of their candy and buy a toy.
Our third child is 8 this year so called us out on the Santa thing. We explained the new deal.
He said “So then it’s my money and I can buy whatever I want with it? A new skateboard even? Anything?” “You bet.” “Swear?” “Yep.”
He goes and brings us all his candy. Even every Kit Kat, his favorite. I was shocked, but he’d been saving up for a skateboard for a bit so must’ve decided to go all in to push his savings over the edge.
Getting all the sugar out of his room was a best case scenario, easiest $31.75 I’d spent all week.
Next day I brought the candy to work. Then we went to Walmart after school and the kids ran to pick out their stuff. We met at the check out.
There’s my son, who has raided the clearance aisle and found two hundred Kit Kats for $10.00.
I started to tell him to put it back, but he said “What? You said I could buy whatever I wanted! You swore! I want my candy back then.”
His candy had already been eaten by my coworkers. And I did swear, and we put a lot of emphasis on the importance of keeping your word.
So... my son has almost twice as much candy as he would have from just keeping his trick or treating... and a new skateboard.
I don’t know who’s more p*ssed, my wife that this plan backfired so horrifically, or his older brothers that they never thought to do this.