Halloween Spending is Scary

I just came back from No Frills where I bought: two boxes of chips, two boxes of Mars bars (I really wanted the Cadbury option for the Caramilks but I just couldn't bring myself to buy something that had three peanut bars in it and only one non-peanut) and two boxes of Starburst. All in all, I spent approximately $60 on candy to give away. According to this article, that is about double the average that a Canadian home spends on Halloween, but we have a very busy neighbourhood.

I spent $45 on my son's Star Wars outfit. (Don't judge, he loves dressing up and will wear it many times and I'm not crafty.) I got away cheap on my eldest son's Men in Black costume at $14 for some items at Value Village and borrowing. My daughter's Goth Princess extravaganza was $20 for tulle, $10 for leggings (which she can wear again) and another $15 for sparkly accessories. Luckily, a friend is making her tutu for me in exchange for a series of healthy salads that will cost me but also benefit me. Value Village says that parents spend about an average of 30 bucks per kid, so we are over, but not so much to be embarrassing.

My husband and I are going to a party as the 99 percent and 1 percent (yes, you can steal the idea if you need to) so we will just use stuff around the house, and I will make a couple of protest signs. So we are under the average of $38 for costumes. 

We re-use our house decorations yearly, but always need new spiderwebs at $2.99 each which adds up to another 10 bucks. The Canadian average was $19 for the 41 percent who decorate. Yey, we fall under the average!

According to the article, the most expensive Halloween item is: a costume for the dog! The survey found that people will spend upward of $60 on their dog costume. What?? My dog doesn't get a costume. My dog is lucky that he gets dinner.

Our school sells pumpkins and since each kid needs a pumpkin and so does the master carver (my husband) that is four pumpkins and our school makes off with $36 in pumpkin sales from us. Which, when I look at the number written down, surprises me but at least the money goes to the school.

All in all I've spent a whopping $210 (so far) on Halloween and contributed to the $1.5 billion dollars that Canadians spend on this holiday. (I didn't add in the cost of the babysitter because that would make the number too high, and a night out is always good.)

Every year I ask the same question: When did Halloween become a national consumer holiday on the same level as Christmas?

So, how much did you spend? Is it worth it?

Want more chaos? Last year, I wrote about Halloween hoarding, and I had totally forgotten about Wonder Woman's tantrum until I looked at the photo.

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