“My son is selling cookie dough to help pay for his high school band to play at a concert in Washington D.C. Would you like to buy some?”
“We are going to order out today and try out that new Chinese restaurant. What would you like?”
“Can you spare $10? We want to get Larry a nice retirement present.”
Yes, these are all things that you might hear at your office or workplace (Bonus points if you get the $100,000 pyramid reference) . Unfortunately, for someone on a tight budget, the questions above can quickly derail your budget. Luckily, there have been pioneers amongst us that have managed to solve these modern day predicaments. Here are three famous success stories:
1. It was a spring day in 2004 at Vandelay Industries, when latex importer Kenny Bania discovered an ingenious way to get out of his company’s lottery club. Each week, he was expected to put in $10 in a desperate attempt to win millions. Frustrated by throwing away this money each and ever week and fueled by his desire to save money to take some comedy classes, Kenny decided it was time to take a drastic action. The next day at work, Kenny announced that he was becoming a Morman to impress his fictional girlfriend and could not participate in any kind of gambling activity.
2. In late 2007, Wally Pixar solved one of man’s greatest office dilemmas at the Modesto, California location of Buy N Large. Wally liked to enjoy a cold Diet Coke during his lunch break so he visited the vending machine every day and donated $1.35 of his hard earned money. However, Wally wanted to save enough money to buy his girlfriend Eve a big engagement ring. Consequently, Wally had to choose between his love of Eve and his love of cold Diet Cokes. So he made the obvious choice and decided on both. Wally simply rescued the mini fridge that he had used in college from his parents’ basement and hid it under his desk. Using this strategy he was able to bring in Diet Cokes bought at a supermarket at a fraction of the cost of the vending machine. Therefore, Wally was able to saved his money and purchase a ring for Eve in only a couple of months.
3. The Year was 1999 at Nakatomi Corporation, when a young Holly Gennaro successfully pulled off one of the great frugal office maneuvers of all time. Trying to save some extra money to make a down payment on a new house, Holly grew increasingly sick of shelling out money every time on of her co-workers’ children were involved in some kind of charity sale for school or a club. Yes, she liked Girl Scout Cookies and she did believe it was admirable that a child was trying to help raise extra funds for their soccer team. However, Holly wanted to move into her dream house with her fiancee John as soon as possible.
As a result, Holly decided to frame a thank you letter that she received from the United Way for donating $5 two years ago in her cubicle. In addition, she changed her email signature to include “Please Donate to the United Way.” Finally, the next time she was asked to donate any money, she stated that she concentrates all her donations (which was technically true) to the United Way since they are so great. Holly would then proceed to endlessly talk about the United Way and how it helped people. In fact she did this so convincingly, she was soon known as the United Way lady at the office. Quickly, people stopped asking her for money.
Okay, maybe these examples are a little extreme. Still, I am sure that there is not a person in this country that has not fallen victim to one of these work related wallet shrinkers.
What are some workplace quandaries that you have experienced that threatened to deplete the funds in your banking account? How do you deal with these type of situations at work?
Leave a comment to let me know.
This post was featured as an Editor’s PIck at the 262nd Carnival of Personal Finance at Personal Finance Journey.
I don’t want to even add up how much money I’ve spent on co-workers’ going-away presents over the years! I just hope to get a nice big gift card one day soon when I quit
There is one way around the sale of food items and group meals. Similar to the United Way advocacy, you are simply “on a diet” which you can follow with some tiresome details about your particular dietary food fetish. My go to food neurosis is “natural foods” I simply tell them I don’t eat anything processed where I do not recognize the entire ingredient list as real food items. The best part of “natural foods” is that I can guitlessly eat kettle chips, Lays and Ruffles (only ingreedients potatos, oil, salt) while refusing all the crap that is being sold. No one likes listening to other peoples food issues, and mine works especially well because the few people who do like to obsess about diets ignore anything that does not adhere to their own cannon – usually caloric restriction or atkins/south beach carb fears.
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