Even the Tooth Fairy isn’t immune to inflation. When one New Yorker’s daughter lost her first tooth, the "Tooth Fairy" left $20 under her pillow. It wasn’t because the Upper West Side dad has money to burn, but because in today’s increasingly cash-free society, finding small bills lying around the house is like…….well……pulling teeth. “I didn’t have anything else and I panicked,” said the unidentified real estate agent. Now his second daughter is chomping at the bit for her first loose tooth, with visions of Andrew Jacksons dancing in her head. While the well-intentioned dad may not have set out to give his daughters the impression that the Tooth Fairy is made of money, $20 for a first tooth has actually become the norm in many households, as the treasured childhood tradition is impacted by sky-high inflation. While $20 seems the going rate for the first tooth, the latest data found the average cash gift for all subsequent teeth is $5.36 per tooth — a record high. There’s a downside to rewarding kids with large sums of cash when they didn’t really earn it. It actually gives them a false sense of accomplishment, giving them the impression that you just get money for no real reason.
