Making money by selling your Halloween candy?

This might sound counter intuitive. Your child spends weeks, sometimes even months, creating a costume and getting together with friends to go trick or treating, then turns around and sells the candy? According to Fox28 in Indiana, this is exactly what some kids are doing and what dentists are encouraging them to do.

In Madison, Indiana, dentists are paying children to bring their candy into the dental office and are actually paying $1 per pound of candy. As I was thinking about this concept, I thought it was interesting and definitely thought provoking. To me, this takes all the fun out of Halloween. This poor child goes trick or treating, then is tempted by a big bag of candy that was so innocently asked for at a strangers door, only to be rushed to the dentist office the next day. Not only do kids not like going to the dentist’s office, but then to top it off, they have to give the dentist their candy!

Then I thought about how this might be a good parenting strategy. It would definitely be an entrepreneurial learning experience for the child to go out, collect a free product, in this case candy, then get paid real cash for it! Further life lessons could be taught to the child by stashing that money away in a savings account or the child could even buy a game that the whole family could play and enjoy together. I am so glad that I was taught how to be a good business woman and to save money and use it wisely. This is a hard concept to teach and the best way to do it is by example.

This idea actually has quite a few good points. The kids miss out on all those cavities they most certainly would have developed, and mom and dad get to teach good financial skills in the process.

Although sometimes it's fun to just let kids be kids and eat a whole bunch of candy one night out of the year!

http://www.fox28.com/Global/story.asp?S=11439774