A few years ago I was a bit down on my luck and very broke.  Looking for extra work to make ends meet was taking up all my time and attention. Until my son, who was around 5 years old then, piped up about going Trick or Treating on Halloween, I completely forgot about candy, costumes and the like.

I couldn’t even afford to go to the dollar store to pick up some items for our garb so I had to make my son wear a white trash bag (instant ghost).  He said I had to wear a costume, too so I wore a dark green trash bag with a red tie at the end - I pretended to be the grim reaper.  I know that some people have been making some great looking costumes from trash bags recently, but back then, this wasn’t in vogue and having only a couple of hours prep and no other materials to work with, our costumes were very lame.  While my son was able to pull his off because he was 5 and very cute, I didn’t fare so well.  A little girl wearing a very elaborate dinosaur costume who happened to be trick or treating on the same street kept looking at me and said, “What are you?”

I really wished I had more  cash at the time to buy or even make some better costumes but my son didn’t seem to mind the trash bag clothing.  When I asked him if had fun, he said, “Yeah!  I got lots of candy!”

Do you have young kids?  How much do you spend on Halloween for them?  Would they really mind if you spent a little less?  If so, here is a link for money-saving costumes:

http://www.robinsfyi.com/holidays/halloween/costumes.htm