Money expert Martin Lewis is urging parents to consider cutting back on presents this Christmas if they have young kids and want to save cash.
Martin revealed on his The Martin Lewis Podcast on BBC Sounds and Spotify that a few years ago, he ran a little experiment where children were given empty boxes to play with as well as toys – and found that the kids actually played with the empty boxes for longer.
With Christmas now just three months away, Martin is urging parents to consider using the ’empty box’ technique if you’re worried about the cost of Christmas, or you’re facing having to borrow to make festive ends meet.
Martin said: “One of the mistakes people make with kids. I once did a show with kids and people were like ‘you can’t do that!’, but we did it ethically with six year olds, and I went into a school with six year olds and we gave them big huge boxes and they were filled with balloons.
“And we got the kids these boxes with balloons and they played with the balloons in the boxes for about 45 minutes (they were heavily supervised as you have to be very careful with balloons I should say) and then we told them in advance, we gave them even bigger boxes wrapped and the boxes were empty.
“I told them before they opened them because you don’t want to be cruel, just so you know there’s nothing, there’s no presents in there.
“The kids were so excited to open the boxes they opened the boxes up and then they started playing with the boxes, and the boxes without balloons had a longer entertainment value than the boxes with balloons.
“They played with them for 15 minutes longer climbing in and out of the boxes.
“So we have all these parents out there especially who are struggling on a budget, feeling that they’ve got younger children going ‘I need to buy them something’ and judging what they buy them by the monetary value.
“But experimentally, just giving them a box and giving them some attention and giving them time to play with it was good enough.
“Now when they’re teenagers that ain’t gonna work, they’re gonna want stuff and they’re gonna want brands.
“But when they’re younger children especially if money’s tight, don’t judge the present you buy by the amount of money it cost you because children do not think that way.
“And even empty boxes wrapped up worked in our experiment.”
