**Partial answer**

The nonsense characters are

>! initial letters of the following sayings: "Money doesn't grow on trees", "You have to spend money to save money", "A penny saved is a penny earned", "You get what you pay for", and "You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day; you teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime".

(Note: I didn't look at AHKieran's answer.)

The connection to Halloween or hiking isn't obvious to me, though.

>! Something to do with not giving sweets to trick-or-treating children? Some connection with "money is the root of all _evil_"? The "_spectre_ haunting Europe" at the start of the Communist Manifesto?! These all seem very unsatisfactory indeed.