Believe it or Not Money Superstitions

We all become superstitious on Halloween. Following are some money superstitions for you to believe or not!

• If the palm of your right hand is itchy, this foretells that money is coming to you, but don't scratch it as that will stop the money from coming. However, If it’s your left palm that is itchy, then by all means scratch away since it means that you'll soon be paying out money for something.
• Giving a wallet to someone as a gift without some token money in it will bring that person bad luck.
• A bee landing on your hand means that money will come to you.
• Money attracts money, so never leave your pockets, purses or wallets completely empty and never completely empty your bank account. Always have at least a coin or two.
• Placing a piece of snake skin into your wallet will help you become rich or find money. Snakes are a symbol of money and wealth in Japan. If you kill a snake, you will lose your money.
• If you put your handbag on the floor/ground you will never have money.
• Do not pick up money you find in the road - it could have evil spirits or worries on it.
• If you see a brown spider in your house, you will get money.
• If you see a brown grasshopper in your house you will get money, but if you see a green grasshopper in your house, you will lose money.
• Placing corn and bread near money will bring you prosperity.
• If bird doo falls on the head, you will be lucky and earn money.
• If you always pick up burnt matches instead of leaving them laying you will find money.
• When you peel onions, burn them and you will never by empty handed.
• At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, while holding money in one hand, kneel and pray and you will have money the remaining of the year.
• If you see a shooting star, say money, money, money and you will soon receive money.
• If you see bubbles in the rain, you will receive a lot of money.
• Wrap a penny in paper and carry it with you this will make sure you never go broke.
• If you make money on Monday, keep it and the amount will increase during the remainder of the week.

Try This Pumpkin Saving Tip

It’s not a good year for pumpkins. The hardy squashes can usually take a good weather beating, but this year has been especially rough. When I took my family to the pumpkin patch two weekends ago (which is early for us, can’t believe I got my act together) more than half of the pumpkins were rotting. It’s sad and must be even sadder for the farmers.

It’s not unusual for Colorado to get an early snow. If the pumpkins get blanketed by snow they can withstand the cold. But this year we had quite an early and long period of freezing temperatures without snow. Then it got warm and then it snowed and then it got warm again.

So I have a bunch of pumpkins that I’m too afraid to carve. Well, actually I could probably just use my fingers to poke a face in them. The birds, meanwhile, are having fun. I’m not sure if they eat them, but they’ve been busy.

I found this suggestion on Lifehacker to save the pumpkins. It’s kinda gross, but might be worth a try.

Coat all cut surfaces of the pumpkin with petroleum jelly immediately after they have been carved. This includes a light coating of the entire inside of the pumpkin. If you can't do the whole inside, at least try to coat the design that you've cut into the pumpkin. The petroleum jelly acts as a barrier to seal in the pumpkins internal moisture to help slow down the dehydration process of the pumpkin.

If this doesn’t help look on the bright side, conditions this year are ideal for a pumpkin smashing. Plus, I live at the top of hill, so this will be loads of fun.

Try This Trick on Your Kids

Want your kids to be better with money? Does it pain you to see how much candy they get on Halloween? Try this trick. Buy their candy from them.

What you do is tell your kids you'll give them $.25 for each piece of candy they get for Halloween. Then they can buy the candy back from you as they want it. Any money they don't spend on buying back their candy, they get to keep.

Kids will usually buy back the candy they like most, first. So, once the good stuff is gone you can put the rest of the candy on sale. For example, the price on leftover stuff might drop to 2 for $.25 or 3 for $.25.

You may want to put rules into place ahead of time, such as: only $1.00 can be spent daily.

The purpose of the trick is to help kids exercise some restraint, learn a little economics and understand the value of money.

Unique and Topical Halloween Ideas for 2009

This year the Huffington Post has some great ideas for Halloween costumes. I searched around the web and was a bit disappointed to find that no other sites really compared. So check this out if you want some fun ideas that go beyond the cliche vampires and stuff.

Here are a few samples:

The Octomom

Swine Flu

Green Man (or Environmentally Aware Guy)

Other ideas are:

Kate Gosseline--there's bound to be plenty of wigs available for this one.

Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger the pilot safely landed in the Hudson River after flying into a flock of geese. You'll need a dark suit coat, a set of pilot wings, a pilot's hat, and feathers.

That's all I've got for now, but as always I'm looking forward to seeing what creative creatures come out for Halloween.