NEW YORK — Days of finding a quarter under your pillow are
long gone. The Tooth Fairy no longer leaves loose change.
Kids this year are getting an average of $3.70 per lost
tooth, a 23 percent jump over last year's rate of $3 a tooth, according to a
new survey by payment processor Visa Inc., released Friday. That's a 42 percent
spike from the $2.60 per tooth that the Tooth Fairy gave in 2011.
Part of the reason for the sharp rise: Parents don't want
their kids to be the ones at the playground who received the lowest amount.
"A kid who got a quarter would wonder why their tooth
was worth less than the kid who got $5," says Kit Yarrow, a consumer
psychologist and professor at Golden Gate University.
To avoid that, Brian and Brittany Klems asked friends and
co-workers what they were giving their kids. The Klems, who have three
daughters and live in Cincinnati, settled on giving their six-year-old daughter
Ella $5 for the first tooth that fell out, and $1 for any others. They say that
$5 was enough without going overboard. They didn't want other families to think
they were giving too much.
Then Ella found out that one of her friends received $20 for
a tooth.
"I told her that the Tooth Fairy has only so much money
for every night, and that's how she decides to split up the money," says
Brian Klems, 34, a parenting blogger and author of "Oh Boy, You're Having
a Girl: A Dad's Survival Guide to Raising Daughters."
Confused about what to give?
Ask other parents what they're giving, says Jason Alderman,
a senior director of financial education at Visa. That can at least get you in
the ballpark of what your kids' friends are getting, he says. Alderman gave his
two kids $1 a tooth.
"I think we we're on the cheap side," he says.
Other families gave about $5 a tooth. One family gave their kid an antique
typewriter. "I have no idea how they got that to fit under the
pillow," he laughs.
Visa also has a downloadable Tooth Fairy Calculator app that
will give you an idea of how much parents in your age group, income bracket and
education level are giving their kids, says Alderman. The calculator is also
available on the Facebook apps page.
How much kids are getting from the Tooth Fairy depends on
where they live. Kids in the Northeast are getting the most, according to the
Visa study, at $4.10 per tooth. In the west and south, kids received $3.70 and
$3.60 per tooth, respectively. Midwestern kids received the least, at $3.30 a
tooth.
Then there are the heavy hitters.
After losing her first tooth, 5-year-old Caroline Ries found
a $100 bill under her pillow, along with a brand new My Little Pony toothbrush
and a tube of toothpaste.
But there was a catch.
Her mother, Nina Ries, also left a note saying that the $100
had to go straight to Caroline's college fund. The Tooth Fairy would give her
another $20 to spend anyway she likes if she brushes her teeth every day after
lunch for a month. She did, and 30 days later Caroline found $20 under her
pillow.
Ries, a 39-year-old lawyer and owner of Ries Law Group in
Santa Monica, Calif., says that $120 is a lot to give, but she believes that
she is teaching her daughter that education and taking care of your teeth is
important. Ries says her friends give their kids about $20 a tooth.
That's way more than the $1 Ries used to get for losing her
teeth as a child.
"It's incredible inflation," she says.
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