1. “We carefully picked your neighborhood.”
The average $21 or so the National Retail Federation estimates most Americans will spend on Halloween candy this year might only buy Susan Stroga enough to last through an hour of trick-or-treaters. Parents for miles around like the closed subdivision in Barrington, Ill. where Stroga lives for its safety and walkability, while kids know it for having the best goodies. “We’ve developed a reputation for having a lot of candy,” she admits. Stroga plans for a whopping 1,000-plus visitors and spends $100 on value bags of candy at Costco to save cash — and only once in her 10 years in the neighborhood has she had any left over. The first year, and in most years thereafter, she’s had to send her husband out to the store for more. “I was shocked,” she recalls. “I was thinking, where did all these kids come from?” Now she routinely alerts new neighbors to stock up.
Where you live plays a big role in the number of trick-or-treaters you get and how much you may have to spend.