Top of the list: bankers. Did you know this?
Both bankers and their once free-spending wives are suddenly becoming familiar with the art of thriftiness.
That’s part of some money-saving tips for bankers, which is full of rage-inducing suggestions. They aren’t applicable to you or me, for instance, because among them are such jewels as “sell the second home” (I haven’t paid off the first yet! Also, yes I know I’m privileged to be able to afford just the one), fly coach class (yeah, I almost always do), have the wife do the ironing (really, the sexism in this article alone is grounds to start the revolt), take cheaper skiing trips, and here, my very favorite:
The more money you have in your pocket, the more you will want to spend it. “Stop carrying a wedge of cash around with you,” said the ex-Goldman banker. “It reduces the temptation to tip people so much.”
Screw the people poorer than you are!
That is… wow. I am reminded of the apocryphal (and most likely untrue) advice that Marie Antoinette gave to the starving rioters in Paris.
Sorely tempted to go to some restaurant, order a glass of water and tip 20 bucks. Sheesh.
Jeeze, tips, really? Because 15% of some of your service industry expenditures is a huge deal? Not to mention, people typically spend more when using plastic than cash anyway.
I’d dearly like a definition of “so much.” My general experience has been that most people who carry wedges of cash around all the time are fairly stingy with their money, unless that money is being spent on themselves.
I like the use of the word wedge here… It is so visual, so descriptive. When I hear wedge it brings to mind a wedge of cheese, a wedge of cake, all lovely things. Now I’ve said it so many times it just sounds like gibberish. Oops.
I like the use of the word wedge here… It is so visual, so descriptive. When I hear wedge it brings to mind a wedge of cheese, a wedge of cake, all lovely things. Now I’ve said it so many times it just sounds like gibberish. Oops.
Oops again for the doublepost.
Right now I’m listening to the Acid Fascists singing “Up Against the Wall Motherfucker”.
Yazikus:
It reminded me of a wedge salad – ever see those? A huge wedge of iceberg lettuce on a plate with dressing.
Gee, tip less?
Thats great. As if tipped employees in the US do not have it bad enough (and the women in that group have it worse).
(I hope we can go some time before hearing “I will never leave a tip as a way to protest” or my new favorite “I do not buy servers being dehumanized”).
Try living off the wage your business pays its lowest paid employee, and put the rest into savings.
You can’t live off of it?
Do you now see the problem?
He really wanted to leave no doubt that he is an asshole.
*inserts monocle*
Yes, I now put only half as much cavier on my bilinis to make it last longer, and now I simply reshoe my polo ponies instead of shooting them and getting new ones. I’ve also rid myself of my valet, and now make my butler dress me, to cut down on the servant pay.
Actually, I’m pretty sure cash-in-pocket does equal more-spending. You auto-budget to what’s in your pocket. And you’re willing to hand it out to whoever says boo.
So no, I don’t carry more than a select amount of change – because I’ll spend it, I’ll donate it, I’ll give it to the guy on the corner.
It doesn’t really change my tipping habits, but it does mean I’m less likely to eat a burger or a candy bar or tip the bellhop. (Actually, I’m more likely to skip the bellhop).
When my mother used to give me a hard time about not tithing, I would tell her that I considered tipping to be the equivalent, if not better than tithing, since you knew it was going where it was needed. She was not amused.
Surely I’m not the first to call it; this HAS to be a joke… Sounds like a pretty honest piss take to me; no one is so dense to miss the general opinion that bankers have in Britain today; this article is just playing up that feeling…
Caine
Yes, usually at very expensive restaurants for some reason. Hmm. I did have a delightful salad for lunch today – not a wedge however. With that in mind, imagine said wedge of lettuce, in your pocket. That is a lot of cash. And quite bulky.
Yazikus:
I was around when those stupid wedge salads started – “Wow, this is great, so easy to make this salad!” Yeah…that’s because it’s not a salad. It’s iceberg lettuce. Onna plate. A fool and their money are soon parted.
That’s exactly why it came to mind.
Oh, yeah, “put your teenagers to work” and “make them pay their own college tuition”. Brilliant advice, especially considering the jobs they’ll get (or not get, given the economy), especially combined with the advice to not tip. Ugh.
As tempting as it may be to eat the rich – do keep in mind the high cholesterol content.
Charlie, better we should lock the gates of their gated communities and let them eat each other when they get hungry enough. Their kids should be able to climb the fences and escape.
This is so rancid it almost reads like a Poe.
Samantha @ #11:
Nailed it.
I kinda think this might be satire, although possibly in a “haha, we’re rich, isn’t that funny?” sort of way…
Yeah, it’s gotta be satire. I’m pretty sure of it…
Money is the most powerful hallucinogen ever invented. It will make you see things that aren’t there. It will make you believe things that couldn’t possibly be true. It will give you the power to explain things that make absolutely no sense.
One of the comments is marvellous:
Emphasis mine.
Mostly Harmless @#16:
It’s tongue-in-cheek; but it’s also EFC clickbait for efinancialnews (which is paid-for).
—
Best of the comments:
Quantum post-tanglement!! Again!
I’m not sure about the “having more cash encourages you to spend it” philosophy. I don’t keep much cash on me. I got $40 before a work convention for incidentals and hardly used it. When it was over and I went out to dinner with friends for Pi day, I used the leftover cash to pay the bill AND TIP. I would have tipped just as much as do when I pay with a credit card ($1 tip / $5 or fraction thereof of the bill then round up to the nearest dollar). I used the cash just to use it up and so the restaurant didn’t have to pay the credit card fee (which is less than a dollar, but it would be a dollar in their pockets and no the CC company).
NOW do you see what happens when you tax the rich, liberals? It leads to real pain and suffering. Why must you punish success!1!1!
/wingnut/libertarian
I just hope our quantum tomatoes won’t get too entagled!
Just make sure you get the right “bankers”. The wage slaves working as tellers aren’t really responsible for anything worthy of that. Even the loan officers and managers will generally be decent enough people doing a necessary job. You want the “investment bankers”, directors and CEOs. i.e. Those would would least likely find themselves up against the wall in such a revolution. Instead, it would likely be the tellers, loans officers, and branch managers that take the heat.
kquote>Mostly Harmless
21 March 2013 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Surely I’m not the first to call it; this HAS to be a joke… Sounds like a pretty honest piss take to me; no one is so dense to miss the general opinion that bankers have in Britain today; this article is just playing up that feeling…
There speaks one who obviously has never met a banker. They’re arrogant, greedy bastards, but at least they’re honest about it.
Years ago on a flight I found a copy of “Medical Economics” in the pocket of the seat in front of me. It had articles for doctors on how to manage their money that were just as rage-inducing. One was what sort of automobile to buy for your son who just got his license (their suggestion: A Plymouth Duster).
is from A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick by Jonathan Swift, published in 1729.
Another opportunity to plug one of my favorite song writers and singers, Judy Small, singing Ordinary People
The wedge salad reminds me of the old joke: honeymoon salad is “lettuce alone.”
Do people really still iron clothes?
For those who think it absolutely can’t be real, that no one could be serious about such absurdities and so very clueless, need I remind you of that article in the New York Times (or was it the Post?) featured on this very blog, I believe this very year, in which people making from $180,000 to $300,000 a year were portrayed as “the poor” (with a single mother with two kids making a meager $260,000 a year and a retired couple barely subsisting on that $180,000), complete with drawings of the haggard, overtaxed, struggling so-called hoi polloi included, staring out at us with hungry, weary eyes, silently asking us how they are supposed to be able to survive on such paltry sums with the Demon Obama’s taxes cutting into them? (And the taxes themselves in many cases were as much as–and sometimes exceeding–what most people are actually earning and struggling to live on in the real world).
This could be a joke, but it’s not even close to impossible that it’s serious. Not when that wonderful article raised the bar for how clueless and completely detached from reality the rich (and rich sympathizers/libertarians/dupes) can be. After that, it is completely reasonable, IMO, to believe someone writing this kind of thing could be doing it for real.
“But if they’re serious then we have to DO something. Therefore they MUST be joking! LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
Over here they do o_O; what are people doing with their clothes over there?
I work with deposit banking folks of all levels on a daily basis and not a one of them seem the type… but investment bankers (as in the ones who make money through investments as opposed to the type who take direct deposits of your paycheck and give you a debit card), I could see that.
Erm… not my casual clothes (jeans, t-shirts, cold-weather jackets), but I iron my formal clothing (dress shirts, slacks, neckties, tux shirts… so on) before I use it. Why wouldn’t you iron?
I liked number ten. Instead of putting your hard earned cash back into the economy, leech off your friends. It’s hard to believe this article was written with a straight face.
My dress shirts, which I wear only for formal events, are permanent press and don’t really need ironing. Dress slacks are dry-cleaned every few years, whether they need it or not. It was my understanding that linen is cool because it’s wrinkly; would The Gap lie to me? (Don’t answer that.)
I live in a Southern California beach town, where I buck tradition by not wearing Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. I’m probably considered prissy because I wear socks and tuck my shirt into my jeans.
One of my colleagues once said he’d told his wife that he didn’t need to iron his clothes because he was an engineer. This was a midwestern mechanical engineer who favored slacks. As a software guy, I got credit just for showing up before noon.
Because life’s too short.
I guess everyone knows the collective noun for bankers, but no-one’s posted it yet: a wunch.
@demonhype:
Wall Street Journal, and excellent point.
Re: Poe’s Law:
No. Stop. Don’t call anything a Poe. You’re misapplying Poe’s Law.
Poe’s Law does not state that something is so inconceivably out-of-touch or wrong in some way that it simply must be a satire. It’s the complete opposite. Poe’s Law states that some satire are indistinguishable from some already stated ideas.
As demonhype mentioned, whether or not this post is a satire doesn’t matter, because there are people out there who think these things and who live this way. There are people so completely out of touch with society that these ‘tips for struggling bankers’ are actually things they tell their friends.
It extends so much further, to the completely vile statements made by some people in reference to assault, racism, homophobia, or further. I’ve seen people call Poe on rape jokes – and it’s not funny cause there are people who think that way.
So stop. We don’t care if you personally think it’s a Poe or a satire or a joke, there is someone out there who takes it at its word because it’s exactly the way they themselves think and act and speak.
@#38 – the version I remember is “lettuce alone without dressing”
The more money you have in your pocket, the more you will want to spend it. “Stop carrying a wedge of cash around with you,” said the ex-Goldman banker. “It reduces the temptation to tip people so much.”
My waiter is getting a 50% tip today. S/he may be puzzled, but I feel the strong need to counter this idiot, if only symbolically. If you can’t afford to/are unwilling to tip people, stay out of sit down restaurants.
Weird list. There are bits of advice like, “Put your teenagers (starting at age 13) to work” and “Go to less expensive places to ski”. Myself, I’d be ending the ski vacations LONG before I even vaguely considered having my 13 year old get a job. The whole list seems to be about putting as much of the sacrifice as possible on other people.
I remember going to Versailles and thinking, “You know, that whole Reign of Terror thing is starting to make sense…”
I had similar feelings at the Hermitage, at least the parts that were the old Winter Palace.
Remember, when you think of putting a teenager to work, chances are you’re think of McDonalds or the local supermarket. When these people think about first jobs for their spoiled adolescent spawn, they’re thinking commodity trader or Vice-President of Sales.
Katherine Lorraine @ 48
Invoking “Poe’s Law” has become a convient way for many to dismiss reality. If we admit that fundamentalist Christians want a theocracy or that the “captains of indusrty” want to starve out those inconvenient poor people, then we’re going to have to actually DO something about them.
It’s so much easier to write off willful ignorance and cut-throat greed as “satire” than face them.
I used to think it should be lawyers, but I’m changing my mind on that in a big way. Corporate interests and rich-man’s greed are behind a lot more than interpretation of the law.