CHAPTER 3

Jobs and Money

She works hard for the money, but that certainly doesn’t mean you have to. Successfully faking it at work can significantly increase your quality of life; nothing’s more satisfying than taking a nap under your desk while everyone else fiddles with spreadsheets or completes the organ-transplant surgery you were supposed to do. The stakes can be considerably higher at work than in other spheres of your life, though. If a girl finds out you’re faking it on a date, she’ll just decline your offer of a second date, but if your boss realizes you didn’t actually go to dental school, you’ll probably get fired or go to jail. Seriously, did you think just watching those old Timmy the Tooth videos would be enough preparation to perform oral surgery?

Don’t let these potentially devastating consequences deter you, though. The trick to faking it at work is to be as consistent as possible and stick to your bit no matter what. If you said you went to Yale, punch a Harvard grad in the face every once in a while. If you haven’t been doing any work because a fictitious palsy has turned your limbs against you, throw an occasional cup of coffee on your boss. He won’t mind; you’re a hero just for showing up every day in the face of such adversity. Plus, he probably went to Harvard. Stupid Harvardite, walking around like he owns the place.

Unless you’re a drug dealer or video-store clerk, you’ll have to do something responsible with all the money you’ve been undeservedly earning, so you’re going to have to learn to fake your way through the financial world, too. While stuffing all of your cash in a stocking and putting it under your mattress worked with your middle-school allowance, your biweekly paycheck is a bit too large to fit into a single three-stripe tube sock. Also, you should wash the hosiery every once in a while; most businesses won’t accept dollar bills that smell like foot sweat. Instead, you’ll have to figure out what kind of account to get at a bank, and probably hire an investment advisor to help make sure you get the most out of your hardly earned cash. Sure, you could do it yourself, but nobody is going to believe that that handful of Chuck E. Cheese prize tickets is an investment or that dropping a quarter on Skee-Ball is technically “playing the markets.”

The stakes are high in financial faking it, too. If your lack of knowledge enables your broker to sell you crummy stocks or trick you into going double or nothing on that game of three-card monte, you can end up broke or, worse, in a Dickensian workhouse until you pay off your debts. (Yes, we’re assuming whoever you owe money has a time machine and can send you to a Victorian debtors prison. The lesson here, as always, is to never shoot dice with a brilliant, eccentric physicist.) However, if you can effectively fake your way through your professional and financial lives, you will look rich, industrious, and successful, all while secretly taking naps in the bathroom during the workday. If anybody asks, you snore when you go.

Interview Skills

If your job doesn’t involve mowing lawns or playing the lotto, odds are you’ll have to pass through an interview phase to get hired. If you’ve already landed an interview, then your potential future employers are already impressed by your résumé. Congratulations. Now they’re just checking to see if you are a good person.

Do your research and learn as much as you can about the company. If it’s a very professional place to work, then they’re going to want a professional to work there, so wear a suit. If it’s an off-beat, fun kind of place that would be put off by a suit, then dress more casually. There’s no rule on what type of clothes to wear, you just have to dress appropriately to the company culture. Although you should never wear a Hard Rock Cafe–Kansas City T-shirt to any interview, even if you’re interviewing to be the manager of the Hard Rock Cafe in Kansas City.

You will often hear that the best approach in interviews is to just be yourself, but unless you are a genuinely charismatic guy, that’s a horrible idea. You will probably need to be somebody else. This character that you are going to play is a guy who lands jobs. He is courteous, intelligent, and very coherent.

But you don’t have to take yourself too seriously. This is basically a personality test. They’re probably interviewing dozens of people and every one will try to act as rigidly professional as possible. If you’re the one with a sense of humor, then that will stand out. Here are some lines to score points:

 

“My biggest weakness? Probably that I’m too motivated. Also, I tend to steal staplers. So I apologize for that in advance. Say, is that a Swingline?”

“No, no. Thank you. I’m sort of an interview fanatic. This is my twelfth today.”

“I’ll tell you what I led: a whole fucking platoon in ’Nam. Don’t tell me there’s no way I was old enough to serve in the Vietnam War. I was old enough to die for my country.”

“I don’t have a weakness. Seriously, take this gun and try to shoot me in the face. It will bounce right off. At least for your sake, I hope it will; it’s just a theory I’ve been toying with.”

 

Remember, you have to stand out and make an impression. Otherwise later that week they’ll gloss over your résumé and ask one another, “Who was this guy? I think his name was Garbage Head.” Then they’ll crumple your résumé into a little ball and throw it into a wastepaper basket, while laughing maniacally. And if they miss the shot, somebody will walk over, pick up your crumpled résumé and slam it into that same wastepaper basket. You don’t think they became such a powerful company without knowing how to make an offensive rebound, did you?

Padding Your Résumé

Your résumé is the first thing a potential employer reads about you. If you want to make sure it’s not the last, you’re going to need to embellish a little. Nobody wants to hire a liar—unless they’re running a law firm—so when bending the truth, make sure it doesn’t break.

What You Can Lie About

There are certain résumé items that are relatively unverifiable; you can feel free to lie about these. If you’re still using your GPA, go ahead and bump it up a point or two or five. As long as it stays relatively believable, in the 3.5 range, no employer is going to call your school to check anything. And if they do, then tell them that you quit. “I didn’t know I applied for a job working for Big Brother!” Also feel free to lie about your address, but it’s going to be hard to get your paycheck that way.

What You Can Embellish

It’s okay to enhance any responsibilities you had in prior jobs. Were you an intern at Sony Records over the summer, or were you an executive assistant? Did you sit at a corner computer and chat all day long, or were you in charge of technical operations and intracommunication? Did you get fired because you were caught masturbating in the break room or did you quit in solidarity with the unjust firing of a minority? Job titles and descriptions are inherently arbitrary, so all “embellishing” can be considered as simply “being optimistic.”

What You Can’t Lie About

It’s going to be uncomfortable when your potential future employer mentions that his daughter also works for the Yale newspaper and has never heard of you. Or that the nonprofit organization you started was actually founded in 1881. By Clara Barton. While it’s okay to lie about what you did at university or in your previous job, it’s not a good idea to completely make up these universities and jobs, though you are very courageous for saying that you founded the Red Cross during your junior year at Cambridge.

Handshake Rules

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, at least until your mind-erasure ray is finally complete. So if your faking is going to work in a business setting, you need to make sure that your first impression is one of authority and confidence. It all starts with a good firm handshake. Yes, it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Nothing is as disgusting as a limp handshaker, and bosses will notice this shortcoming. So put some muscle into it.

Professional E-mailing

Most people of our generation grew up using e-mail as a social tool, not a professional one. For this reason, they often have a hard time finding their footing when using e-mail on the job. Just as calling your boss “Dude” on the phone is inappropriate, you should make sure that your professional e-mails have an appropriate tone.

 

“Sup muthafuckaaaaa. Nah, jaykay. I’ll get to that memo later. Lata Sk8a:)”

 

This would be a fine e-mail to send to a personal friend who also happens to be a memo and skateboarding enthusiast. On the other hand, it will make a poor impression on the president of your company. How can you make sure the e-mails you’re sending are suitably professional?

Takeaway point: Use common sense when sending out e-mails. If you find yourself questioning whether you should send something or not, you probably shouldn’t. And resist the urge to “reply all” at all costs. Only Mailer-Daemon can save you now, and he doesn’t give a crap about your career.

Milking Your Expense Account

If you work at a company with more than two employees (“Sorry, Dad, I’m not going to be your CEO. Besides nobody wants to buy your Garbage Pail Kids anymore. I don’t care how many mint condition Louise Squeezes you have!”), odds are there will be a company expense account. Companies allot a portion of their budget to pay for certain business-related expenses. The challenge for you is to get some meals and other personal expenses considered “business-related.” But this is harder than just throwing a McDonald’s receipt at the accountant and yelling, “McSpense it. With cheese.”

If you’re looking to get a free meal, you’re going to have to make it look like a business lunch. Tell your bosses that you need to ask an expert for his opinion on a project you’re working on and that you’ve set up a lunch meeting. Then go out and meet a friend of yours for steaks. Make sure to keep the receipt. When you come back, tell your bosses that your meeting mate was mighty helpful, but he ate like a pig. “He had two steaks, so I just had mashed potatoes. Thanks again!”

If you want to use your expense account to score something free for your house, you’re going to have to convince the bosses that you need it for your office. “You know, it’s mighty hard to concentrate in here without a couch.” Then when you go to purchase it, ask the boys down at the couch depot if you can get a buy-one-get-one-free deal if you promise to pay three times the ticket price. They’ll be confused but will obviously agree, and you’ll have spent $3,000 on two $1,000 couches—one for the office, the other for your home. When you give your boss the receipt, tell him, “They had one cheaper, but…I think we’re better than that.” He’ll agree and you’ll recline. Everybody wins. Except for your boss. He loses.

 

QUICK TIP: Expense that dinner with the prostitute. Technically, it’s a business meeting for at least one of you.


When your company is paying for meals, standard gluttonous acts such as eating two steaks at once become common practice.

Giving Presentations

Public speaking is always intimidating, in almost every situation. But when you have to give a presentation in front of your coworkers and bosses then it becomes practically impossible. Don’t feel bad, very few people are confident enough to stand in front of a group of coworkers and comfortably give a presentation. It’s difficult to sound calm and intelligent at the same time, especially when you’re nervous and stupid. If only you knew of a way to relax and become less inhibited. Fortunately, you do.

Before a big presentation, regardless of time of day, go to the bathroom and take a shot or two or three of any hard alcohol you have. Then wash it down with some orange juice or coffee, so nobody smells it on your breath. Suddenly you’ll feel more at ease and calm, yet still sober enough to give your presentation. Does this make you an alcoholic? Probably, but an alcoholic with a raise! Now you can afford better booze!


Getting tipsy before giving a presentation will alleviate any performance anxiety you may have. Though drinking during the presentation (shown above) is not recommended.

Office Romances

Nothing says “technically, it’s only frowned upon” quite like an office romance. The rules regarding office romances vary from workplace to workplace, but generally it’s difficult to prevent employees from dating each other. This vaguely defined taboo should end up being advantageous to you because it thins out the rest of the competition for the heart of the special beauty in the cubicle next door.

The key to starting an office romance is to be so subtle in your flirting that your possibly unwanted attempts will never hold up in court as sexual harassment. Also, make sure your small talk leads to more conversations in the future. Here are some examples:

Whatever you do, never display any signs of physical affection. Thumb wrestling, though playful, will look desperate and weird. The ultimate office romance faux pas is the massage; you might as well tape a sign to your shirt that says, “I plan on masturbating to this human contact later because I’m just that creepy.”

While the dead-end nature of your job can create a crushing existential void in your soul, it actually works to your advantage when sowing the seeds of romance. You don’t have to be aggressive because you’re going to keep seeing the person at work indefinitely. Take it slow, and things will blossom into a beautiful flower of fucking on a copy machine.

Once the relationship turns romantic, it’s even more important to be discreet. If office workers love one thing more than chocolate cake, it’s gossip. In fact, if they had a chocolate cake with icing that read, “Michael and Sarah are dating!” they’d die happy. Rumors will start about any pair of opposite-sex coworkers who are talking, so try not to arrive at the office at the same time or speak to each other civilly.

In fact, open hostility toward your partner may be the best way to handle things to throw your nosy coworkers off the trail. If one of you is the boss, fire the other one. If not, openly lobby to have him or her fired, perhaps by forwarding the contents of personal e-mails making fun of the boss’s toupee/wig to the entire office.

There are very few situations in which it’s acceptable to hit a woman, but this is one of them. Should the rumor mill start to get out of hand, walk up to her desk and smack her with an open palm while yelling, “You stupid cunt. I can’t BELIEVE you lost that account.” Don’t worry; she’ll understand. Nobody else in the office will, though, and you can secretly meet in the break room to kiss each other’s booboos and drink that crummy hot chocolate from the vending machine.

Talking Like You’ve Got an MBA

In the business world, everyone aspires to attending a top-flight university to get his MBA (Master of Business Administration), a degree that will enable earning thousands of extra dollars a year. However, it’s a pretty well-known fact that students don’t really learn anything useful while working toward their MBAs. Instead, they have their common sense reinforced, attend numerous happy hours sponsored by large corporations, pay for expensive haircuts, and, most important, memorize meaningless jargon. You can always pick out an MBA in a meeting; she’s the one talking about synergizing the value chain. At first, you’ll be intimidated by these big words. Then you’ll realize they’re absolutely inane and utterly meaningless. Instead of spending over a hundred grand on a Kellogg MBA, just learn these stupid buzzwords and ride the jargon rocket to the top of the corporate ladder.

 

Best practices—Because “the best way of doing something” doesn’t sound technical enough.

Core competencies—What a company is good at doing. “Strengths” really doesn’t sound like something you’d pay some idiot $130,000 a year to know about.

Deliverable—Something tangible you can turn in at the end of an assignment or project. Remember college? You didn’t turn in homework; you created deliverables.

Incentivize—To offer someone a tangible reason to do something. And you thought “incentive” couldn’t be turned into a verb!

Low-Hanging Fruit—An easy opportunity that will likely be gobbled up by competitors quickly. Think of a dwarf trying to get a peach off of a tree.

Mission-Critical—MBAs like to sound like astronauts from the 1970s. Bascially, this means that something is crucial to the success of a project.

Online—In the MBA sense, this means that a venture or project has been functionally integrated into the rest of the organization.

Paradigm—Possibly the worst MBA word of them all. Basically, an analytic framework through which a problem is viewed. When paradigms “shift,” it means the prevailing thinking on a subject has changed.

Rollout—Process of introducing a new product to the market. Like a “launch,” but more jargony.

Supply Chain—Links through which the individual parts of a product are delivered to its final manufacturer and then into the hands of consumers.

SWOT—Analysis of a business or venture on the basis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This basically codifies the way any rational person would look at any decision.

Synergy—Another MBA favorite, this one describes the phenomenon of two things coming together and being better than the sum of their parts. Sex is the best, although not the only, example.

Value Added—This a great useless term for anything that makes an existing product or service better. Make better-er was deemed too much of “not really a word” to be used in its stead.

 

QUICK TIP: Make sure you specify that you want to be paid in cash for your commodities trading; there’s no way you’re fitting a thousand pork bellies in a studio apartment.

Explaining to Your Boss That You Haven’t Done Any Work

The key to doing nothing at your job is to always preface it with one hour of hard work. In one hour you can probably get an entire day’s worth of work done. If your boss notices you haven’t done anything in seven hours, just show him what you worked on and tell him that he doesn’t want a rush job on something this important. As long as you have something tangible to show for your previous efforts, he won’t think you’re lazy, just slow. He’ll understand, and you can go back to playing online poker. Don’t let anyone tell you that trying to draw to an inside straight on the river isn’t work, baby. They don’t understand the highs and lows!

If doing an hour’s worth of work is even too much for you, you can always tell the boss that he caught you in a moment of contemplation. “Sorry, I’m just thinking exactly how I need to attack this. I need to organize my thoughts before I put them on paper.” If he tells you that doesn’t make sense because you’re working at a Baskin-Robbins and there are no papers involved in scooping ice cream, he’s got a good point. Feel free to let him fire you; you need a better job anyway. Take some Jamoca Almond Fudge for the road, and start sending out your cover letter again.

 

QUICK TIP: If you are feeling under the weather and can’t afford another sick day at work, Miss Manners says the polite thing to do is call in a bomb threat.

Getting Fired with Class

So you lost that big account by showing up visibly drunk for an 11:00 A.M. meeting. Or you spent every morning for the past month perfecting your homemade napalm recipe. There are a million little insignificant things you can do to lose your job, and eventually you’re going to do one of them. You’ll get called into an empty conference room, and your boss or someone from human resources will explain the situation to you. Security will probably show up shortly, so you’re faced with a quick decision. You could try to make a huge dramatic scene here, but it probably won’t work. Here’s how these episodes usually play out:

Your Boss: “You’re fired, You.”

You: “You can’t fire me! I quit!”

Your Boss: “Um, you can’t quit. I already fired you.”

You: “I see…”

Instead, you should be as contrite as possible. Apologize to your boss for letting him down, explain that you’ve enjoyed working there, and that you understand it’s your own fault. You are not here to burn any bridges…yet.

Later that night, however, when your boss takes his expensive sports car over the bridge to go home, set it ablaze with that homemade napalm you’ve been tinkering with. As his car sinks to the river bottom you better hope to death he knows the rule about lowering his windows and swimming out through them. “I just wanted to scare him a little” isn’t a legal excuse. Now you have no job and you’re in jail. On the plus side, you look fabulous in orange.


Most people with jobs cannot afford jail time. However, if you plan on getting fired, feel free to be a little creative.

Charitable Donations—Look Generous!

You know how PBS gives you a totebag when you make a donation to your local station? It’s not because they think you’re going to tote things all over the place in a poor-quality canvas carrying sack, and it’s not because they just wanted to give you a gift. That tote bag is a conspicuous sign that, hey, you gave money to PBS. Look everyone, this magnanimous bastard peeled a twenty-five-dollar check off during that telethon like it meant nothing to him!

The point is, if you’re going to give to charity, you might as well flaunt it. Everyone who’s used a tote bag or sipped from an NPR coffee mug has figured out a subtle way to show off the fact that he’s got enough money that he can piss some of it away by donating to some crummy charity run by those weird kids from college. You think that guy flaunting his United Negro College Fund umbrella is actually trying to stay dry? It’s a sunny day in August for crying out loud!

It’s easier than it sounds. Just find a charity that’s taking donations, and make a small one, probably something like twenty-five bucks. (It’s a tax deduction, so it won’t even end up costing that much.) Make sure you’re going to get some sort of tangible item in return. Try not to seem so transparent when donating, though. “Got anything with one of them starving Africans right on the T-shirt?” “In a large?” “No, the shirt, not the starving African.” Then, when you get it, leave it somewhere obvious in your apartment and don’t mention it. When guests come over, they’ll think, “Wow, this guy’s really generous.” In economics, this is known as conspicuous consumption; in Sunday school, it’s called doing the right thing for the wrong reason.


Collecting charity giveaways is a great way to seem altruistic regardless of how many orphans you mistreat on a daily basis.

Faking Sleeper Companies

The only portfolio you own is an old Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper, but somehow you’ve been pulled into a conversation about stock picks. Words like market cap, price-to-earnings ratio, and broker are probably being bandied about, and you have no idea what’s going on. Don’t get in over your head here. Instead of trying to hang with the conversation, start talking about sleeper stocks.

Don’t worry that you don’t know any actual sleeper companies. Between the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, there are over six thousand companies. No one knows them all. String together words that sound like reasonable names for a tech company. “I think Unified Synergies is trading a little low right now and could really come on strong next quarter.” There’s no company called Unified Synergies, but no one there will know it. Same with Compucyberdyne, Advanced Network Systems Solutions Dot Net, and, to a lesser extent, Paul’s Fish ’n’ Sorbet, Inc.

“Oh, I haven’t heard of them, what do they do?” Good question. It’s time to get more vague. Your fictional company can specialize in anything from “supply-chain consulting” to “information systems” to even “human capital management.” These are all dead-end, boring answers that require no further elaboration.

Without reading a single issue of The Wall Street Journal, you will hold everyone in awe of your mastery of the little nuances of the markets, the hard-to-find diamonds in the rough, whether or not they exist. Now, hope they don’t immediately call their brokers and find out there’s no company on the NASDAQ called Robotics for Tomorrows.

Seeming Affluent

While very few people have the financial security to purchase many expensive items, most people have the money to purchase at least one. If you want to seem richer than you actually are, you need to sacrifice the quality of many possessions in order to obtain a few very noticeably luxurious ones.

For example, if you only have $1,000 to spend on your living room, instead of buying an average couch, an average coffee table, an average lamp, and an average TV, you can buy a $1,000 plasma TV and get the rest of your furniture for nearly nothing on Craigslist or on the street. The large fancy TV, coupled with the “rustic-looking” furniture, makes you out to be some eccentric millionaire who prefers humble furniture over being the first owner of his sofa. Just make sure you formulate some lie about how this was a conscious artistic decision rather than one mandated by your budget. “You know, I just wanted to try to recapture part of the decorative arts sensibility of my childhood; it’s a nostalgia thing, I guess.”


Spending most of your disposable income on one noticeable item can make any hobo seem like a millionaire.

The same can go for your clothes. Spend the most money on clothing you’ll have to wear the most, and for the other stuff, you can get it for dirt cheap. A $1,000 suit can go a long way, but if you never wear a suit, spend your money on something else—perhaps a winter coat. If most of the time that coat will cover up the rest of your clothes, splurge on that and skimp on the rest. The only difference between seeming rich and being rich is that rich people have a closet full of expensive clothing at home and you may not even have a home—but nobody is going to be seeing those clothes anyway.

 

Takeaway point: You don’t have the funds to improve every facet of your life. Instead, choose one conspicuous item that would mean the most to you, and splurge on that. The rest of your less expensive items can be brushed underneath the metaphorical bed that is your life, never to see the light of day.

Robbing a Bank

Are you broke the night before a big expensive dinner date? Yeah, we’ve been known to bet on the outcomes of shows on the History Channel, too. Don’t you think you would have heard about it if the Germans had won World War II, though? Nevertheless, you need money—and lots of it. There’s no honest way to get this cash, so you’re going to have to rob a bank. Now, we know what you’re thinking: “I can’t rob a bank; that’s a crime.” Quit being a pussy. Do you want to have money or not? Well, banks are like money factories. You basically just have to walk in and take all of the sweet cabbage, son.

The most important part of bank robbery is to talk like a character from a heist movie from the 1930s. This vocal tic will help you seem more authentic. Say that you’re “knocking the bank over,” and whenever you say anything, add “See?” to the end of the sentence. This sounds supertough. Trust us. After you’ve learned to talk in this voice for a few minutes at a time, purchase a bandana and sunglasses. These will constitute your disguise when you knock over the joint, see? Next, pick a firearm (we suggest a Tommy gun), run into the bank, yelling something intimidating. “Give me the money and nobody gets hurt!!!!” is an oldie but a goodie. Some warning shots into the air will ensure nobody tries to be a hero. Take the money and run. The best thing is that technically it’s not stealing if you force somebody to give you the money at gunpoint.*


Robbing a bank may seem like easy money, but only if you don’t get caught. Make sure to escape police and don’t get cocky. Your next heist may be your last.

Getting Your Cable Bill Reduced

Your cable company is evil, and it is the enemy of your bank account. There’s no two ways about it. They make you wait for hours every time you want to get a home repair, they overcharge you, and the on-demand softcore rarely has ribald titles like Good Will Cunting. However, you can turn the tables on them with a quick bill reduction.

Remember when you signed up for cable they put you on some sort of special rate for six months? Then after the six months, your bill doubled. Well, at most cable companies, you can get the special rate back with a phone call. Here’s what you do:

  1. Call the customer service number on your bill. Explain that your service has simply gotten too expensive for you, and you think you might have to cut it off. Now, to the cable company, this sounds catastrophic. The marginal cost of having another subscriber is so low that they’re effectively losing nothing but profit when you stop sending them a check every month. Tell them you think you can survive without their stupid Lifetime original movies. Little do they know you actually can’t. Shannen Doherty–made-for-TV movies are like insulin to you.
  2. They’ll probably refer you to their retention line, which is usually staffed by cheery people whose job it is to retain customers. Simply explain again, being very polite and remembering your “ma’am,” “sir,” and “thank yous.” Make it sound like you are breaking up with them. “Listen, it’s not you, it’s E!”
  3. At some point, they’ll offer you some sort of retention special. This is effectively the same rate you were paying as your sign-up special, and you’ll save thirty or forty bucks a month. Thank them effusively. “I promise I won’t let you down. I’ll be the best subscriber you’ll ever have. Just wait and see!” and when this special runs out in six months, simply call back.
  4. Invest the savings in roulette: Purchase your own cable company with your winnings. We recommend Time Warner.

Handling Your Change

Every time you make a purchase with cash, you get a handful of change back. It seems frivolous to throw that ninety-seven cents away, but the constant jangling in your pocket gets annoying. You could dump it all in a drawer, or you could really make it work for you. Here’s how:

QUICK TIP: If you’re trying to impress a religious lady, tell her you donate 10 percent of your salary to the church. When she asks which one, tell her you only have one salary and that you don’t understand her question. Then change the subject.

The Quick $100

There will come a time where you will need a quick $100. Basketball tickets, fancy dinner, birthday present, yes, literally anything can cost you $100. Unfortunately that’s $100 more than what is currently in your bank account. Here are some quick ways to earn that Benjamin Franklin rookie card:

eBay

Pros: Not only are you making money, but you are opening up spaces in your garage that were otherwise occupied by Atari games collecting dust since 1981.

 

Cons: It may take a while before the auction finally closes and you get paid. This one requires some planning ahead.

 

Tips: Make sure to start the auction during a workday, as last-minute bidding may up the final sales price. If an auction ends at 4:00 A.M., nobody is going to bid it up at the last minute.

Donating Plasma

Pros: Plasma donations don’t remove red blood cells and platelets from your circulatory system, meaning you can safely donate twice a week.

 

Cons: Needles. If you hate getting blood drawn, then it may not be worth the money.

 

Tips: Donating plasma is more lucrative than donating blood, so do a simple Google search for plasma donation centers in your city, or just call up a hospital and ask them. And try not to be rude; they’re less likely to refer you if you yell at them, “Where the plasma money at!? Give it here!”

Craigslist Odd Jobs

Pros: If you have nothing better to do, helping somebody move or transcribing audio to text pays better than you think.

 

Cons: You may have something better to do.

 

Tips: Search the community section of your city’s Craigslist page, and see what people are desperate for. Some people will pay for a cat sitter, other people just need a van for the day. For most people this is a last resort, so you can use that as leverage when negotiating.

Mugging

Pros: Most people are too young to die. They’ll do anything to stay alive.

 

Cons: You may go to jail and posting bail will probably cost you more than $100.

 

Tips: Legally, we can’t give you proper mugging tips. However, a Butterfinger bar in your pocket looks just like a gun.


Most of your important organs come in pairs, whereas only one is necessary to live. You do the math.

 

QUICK TIP: No amount of accessorizing is going to make the canvas vest you have to wear for work look dignified. Also, clean up on aisle three.

Jobs That Pay Well While Requiring No Education

So you can scrap together a couple hundred bucks every now and then, but odds are you’re more concerned about getting a real job. However, you dropped out of college or, even worse, spent four years in there getting an English degree. Now, instead of being broke, you’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. (Did you steal this book or get it as a gift?)

Not all hope is lost, though, because you don’t need a college degree to land a high-paying job. Some lines of profession don’t even trust colleges and spend a couple months or years training you to do their job. Sounds annoying right? Well, it is. That’s why they pay the people who actually do complete the training a good amount of money. Here are some great examples, and just think, by this time tomorrow you could be reading this book in new boxers.

 

Air Traffic Controller—Do you like wearing noise-cancelling headphones? Well, then this is the profession for you! After a rigorous training program that can last as little as six months, you can become an air traffic controller. This is one of the highest paying jobs in America because the work shifts are considered extremely stressful. But for a salary of over $100,000 a year, you can budget at least $100 for really powerful stress balls.

 

Bartender—You know when you go to a bar you leave a dollar on the counter after every drink you get? Well, other people do that, too. Sometimes even two or three dollars. Multiply that by the amount of people you see in the bar and you’ve got yourself a lot of money. Bartenders don’t get paid much hourly, but if you’re at a relatively popular place, you can make a great deal of money in tips. (We believe the scientific term is “a shit load.”) Bartending schools aren’t so difficult to get into and not very expensive. Besides, free booze means you’re also cutting your most costly expense. Now, if you could also just get that job at the cereal factory, you’d be set.

 

Real Estate Broker—You know what separates you from people who can sell houses? Just a real estate license. You haven’t studied for a test in years, so hopefully you have lots of brain cells in reserve. Take some time and try to pass a real estate license exam. Agents work on commission, but luckily for you houses are expensive. That’s probably why your landlord is so pissed you haven’t paid rent in three months.

 

Professional Roulette Player—You don’t need a degree to be lucky. The great thing about roulette is that over time, you simply cannot lose. Especially when you know the extra lucky numbers: 1, 9, 23, 25, 34, 36! Now the only question is, what are you going to do with your first million bucks? Our suggestion: Let it ride on third twelve, it’s due for a hit!