{"id":370,"date":"2015-12-15T14:05:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T14:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/?p=370"},"modified":"2016-05-09T16:13:35","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T16:13:35","slug":"the-coupon-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/the-coupon-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coupon Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was around seven years old and it was almost Christmas. Where was I? Bawling my eyes out. Wait, I have a good reason!\u00a0\ud83d\ude42 As we all know, usually seven year olds are not very rich. I wasn\u2019t either. After crying for a little bit, I went to find my mother. \u201cI don\u2019t have enough money to buy everyone a Christmas gift!\u201d I sobbed.<\/p>\n<p>After calming me down, my mom set to explaining that it was fine if I didn\u2019t give everyone a store-bought gift. I could instead make them a card. \u201cBut I don\u2019t really like cards,\u201d I protested, because I didn\u2019t when I was that age. Honestly, what is the fun of a colored, decorated piece of paper? After my prodding to come up with something better, my mom gave me another idea. This is when the coupon giving began.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_376\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-376\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gowallace-002-site1.dtempurl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-376\" src=\"http:\/\/gowallace-002-site1.dtempurl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"The Gift of a Coupon\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon-768x592.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon-1024x789.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Depositphotos_59294609_christmasCoupon-1200x925.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-376\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gift of a Coupon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Yes! My little mind wrapped around the idea with happiness immediately! Why had I never thought of this before? My younger siblings also latched on and for several years after that, the coupon giving got a little out of hand. All everyone gave each other were coupons.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the gifts varied ranging from \u201cHelp with a chore\u201d to \u201cI will play a game with you,\u201d but still, we all had one too many coupons. In fact, me and my brother would even cancel them out because we had so many. For instance, if I had given him a \u201chelp with a chore\u201d coupon for his birthday two years ago and he had given me a \u201chelp with a chore\u201d coupon for Christmas three years before, we would just hand them to each other and pretend we never even had them. We didn\u2019t mind, we both got out of helping one another. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n<p>I would still like to share the coupon idea with you because it provided a way for us younger kids to give each other gifts without spending money. Instead we were spending time and effort. In fact, I still sometimes give out coupons to this day. My younger brother got one for an ice cream on his birthday.<\/p>\n<p>The coupon way will work as long as you monitor it. If you have 7 kids and they all give everyone else 3 coupons, you now have 126 coupons floating around. A little way too much. You can easily put a limit on it by telling everyone only one coupon per person or only allowing them to give out so many coupons total. You can also add expiration dates to them. Usually, in our family, the coupon is good for only a year starting at the time it was given. This limits the giant stashes of coupons.\u00a0If that doesn\u2019t work, encourage them to make a card. After all, what seven-year-old doesn\u2019t like those colored, decorated pieces of paper? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was around seven years old and it was almost Christmas. Where was I? Bawling my eyes out. Wait, I have a good reason!\u00a0\ud83d\ude42 As we all know, usually seven <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/the-coupon-gift\/\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"If cards are not working, try this tip.","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,19,31],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7urq8-5Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myschoolyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}