I saw a packet of Giant Chocolate Buttons in the shop yesterday for 50p. They looked really yummy but I denied myself the pleasure, thus saving myself 50p.
Yesterday I also noticed that some bastard has bought a TVR Tuscan and parked it across the road. Now I want one - they just ooze style, not to mention the fact that they go like a rrrrocket.
Today I didn't buy another packet of Giant Chocolate Buttons. I then proceeded not to buy 219 other packets of Giant Chocolate Buttons, saving myself a total of £110 and avoiding the extreme nausea that follows the consumption of 220 packets of Giant Chocolate Buttons.
Tomorrow I shall also fail to buy 220 packets of Giant Chocolate Buttons, saving another £110, and the day after that, and the day after that...
After a year has passed, I shall have saved the grand total of £40,150, which will enable me to buy a brand new TVR Tuscan. In purple, with purple leather seats.
I shall also have averted a major personal health crisis.-- wagster, Feb 23 2007 Giant Chocolate Buttons, purple http://www.jakehowl...n/giant-buttons.jpgMmm... [wagster, Feb 23 2007] TVR Tuscan, purple http://www.diseno-a...m/images/tuscan.jpgMmmmmm... [wagster, Feb 23 2007] Chocolate Car http://www.chobel.b.../cho_burieauto.html..or buy all that chocolate, don't eat it and make yourself a TVR Tuscan. [skinflaps, Feb 23 2007] Chocolate Money http://www.chocolatevault.com/money.htmChocolate money is the root of all root canals [xenzag, Feb 23 2007] Second Life http://secondlife.com/(Perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick) [Dub, Feb 28 2007] http://www.buylesscrap.org/ A reaction to the "(red)" campaign that donates parts of a product's price to fighting the effects of AIDS in Africa. [jutta, Mar 01 2007] The no-foie-gras diet is faster, but much harder to adhere to.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 [skinflaps] - I can't believe that they went to all that bother and chocolate just to make a Vauxhall Corsa.-- wagster, Feb 23 2007 So, then, just, what? Diet through self-discipline and savings through the same? In order for someone to get rich with this you'll have to create a "program" and print a book.
"Today on Oprah: How you can gain wealth and lose pounds to become the best you you can be! Wagster will be here to show us how you too can become both too rich and too thin at the same time."-- Noexit, Feb 23 2007 There is a way to spend your money and save it at the same time.
If you bought chocolate money instead of buttons, and saved all the coins in a giant piggy bank, you would be able to keep a track of how much you had spent, AND still have your money converted into a chocolate asset. You wouldn't be allowed to eat into your savngs though.-- xenzag, Feb 23 2007 There is a fatal flaw in your plan, sadly. Not only did you not buy that packet of chocolate buttons, but I also did not buy it. Therefore, we each saved half the cost of the packet*, or 25p.
When more people hear about this diet, they will _all_ be not buying that packet of chocolate buttons, and hence the money saved by any one person will become a negligible amount.
For this to work, we would all have to not buy different things.
*I think you made up the 50p - 49p or 99p sounds more likely.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 Correct. I made a close guess. If they cost 49p I would only make £39,347, which is just short of a Tuscan. Assuming no one else tried it.-- wagster, Feb 23 2007 I'll tell you what, wags. I will agree not to not eat chocolate buttons, if you will cut me in for 10% of the money you make. In this way, you can at least make 90% of £39,347 (rather than the 50% which you'd make, if I did not agree not to not eat chocolate buttons). Deal?
Incidentally, if anyone is thinking of not eating foie-gras, please stop it at once. Find your own foods to not eat.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 No deal. I'll pay you £109.50 for every day you don't eat 440 Giant Chocolate Buttons, then we both make a profit.-- wagster, Feb 23 2007 Yeah, but I can not eat WAYYY more than that.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 Following your lead, I will *not* give you a bun for this idea.-- nuclear hobo, Feb 23 2007 Hey! I didn't give him one first!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 23 2007 Sorry Max, but over here' we've been government mandated to not eat foie gras.
But now that you've shown me the truth to the situation, I'm going to see about listing it as a tax deduction.-- ye_river_xiv, Feb 23 2007 Today I didn't buy a TVR Tuscan. If I do the same tomorrow, then next week I shall be able to go out and not buy a house.-- egbert, Feb 24 2007 //over here' we've been government mandated to not eat foie gras// The bastards! I could send you some, as long as you promise not to pay for it and to ship it right back to me so that I can not eat it myself.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 24 2007 Actually. if I don't buy a house, that'll be two Tuscans and a house I'll have not bought, thus doubling my savings overnight. I could then go on to not buy two houses, doubling my savings again. Before too long I'll be swanning around in, say, Texas, boasting that I Don't Own Everything I Can See.
Oh, the power of compound disinterest.-- egbert, Feb 24 2007 If this is a diet, then how come there's so much inflation?
I'm not buying France this evening.-- zen_tom, Feb 24 2007 I have a allergy to chocolate and I've just purchased a TVR Tuscan from my savings.-- skinflaps, Feb 24 2007 This also works as an anti-diet. The non-money I didn't not get by not buying a car, I used to buy a lifetime's supply of chocolate.-- imaginality, Feb 24 2007 I'm goin to set up a company where you can un-order online. The product range will include a range of expensive high calorie foods for people to not purchase and hence save money and lose weight. By declaring your un-order, the company will ensure that this particular product cannot be not bought by anyone else.
I will then decide to not produce the products saving my company millions and declare myself a corporate guru, citing the savings I have made.-- marklar, Feb 25 2007 You know, I was going to bitch about this idea being a one-joke posting that has gone on to long, but there's actually a business plan in here.
It's a form of bank account for people of little imagination under high social stress. Teenagers, maybe.
Let users "buy" virtual goods by paying real money into the account. Once they've bought something, it is a bitmap or 3d model that's displayed on the user's page. Other users can see the cars, houses, designer handbags, jewelry that a person "owns". (It's the backdrop for an online chat system.)
That way, people can play out the social competition aspect of ownership without having to *actually* throw their money away for crap they don't really need.
The really money is placed in a savings account. There's some way of triggering the money's release in the real world for a college fund / retirement fund / emergency medical care.-- jutta, Feb 25 2007 .....you could call it "Virtually Mine"-- xenzag, Feb 25 2007 That's quite different from my idea, and cleverer too. Sadly, the banks would prefer that the teenagers borrowed the money to buy real show-off crap, which then costs them even more when they finally learn about debt and interest.-- wagster, Feb 25 2007 Or Virtual Realty.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 25 2007 People buy things they can’t afford all the time, but on this diet, you don’t buy things you can afford, right? I mean, if you don’t buy things you can’t afford, there’s no limit to what you might not buy. No self-discipline in that.-- ldischler, Feb 25 2007 //You know, I was going to bitch about this idea being a one-joke posting//
Some postings have TWO jokes???-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 25 2007 [jutta]'s savings account, combined with [marklar]'s e-commerce site has the potential for a whole alternative anti-consumerist reality of profligate non-spending on things you don't (or perhaps do) really need. As you don't acquire more and more stuff, you'll be not spending way more than you have and will have to not buy a loan to cover your lack of spending. Back in the real world, you can watch the gap between the interest you earn on your savings account and costs of depreciation, spare parts, repairs and insurance premiums on the things you haven't bought get wider and wider. The downside would be when you don't buy a lottery ticket and it wins the jackpot, I suppose.-- hippo, Feb 26 2007 Is there not a profitable way not to have read all this?-- james_what, Feb 27 2007 Genius idea. I've been doing something like that with the National Lottery - I've won thousands by failing to buy a single ticket!
BTW - If I add the Giant Chocolate Buttons I failed to buy for the past 3 years, on to yours, will you buy a TVR for me too?
(P.S. You ought to start not buying containers of Imperial Beluga caviar and crates of 1959 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild for the insurance, while you're at it)-- Dub, Feb 27 2007 Damn I wish this idea had been mine.
"Not Owning Everything I Can See." Cripes, that was funny. Made me spit out the Danish I wasn't eating.
Or, um, suck back in the one I was.
Damn!
Don't have a bun!-- elhigh, Feb 27 2007 The subtitle for this idea should be "Ce n'est pas une idée"-- hippo, Feb 28 2007 Great spin [jutta] I can see such an idea really taking off - people are already playing that virtual world game (the name escapes me at the moment) if you could tweak the model such that the costs of running such an enterprise were funded by interest earnt from deposited funds, people would still be able to buy virtual real-estate - but would also be able to withdraw their cash at some date in the future (which I suppose, they can now, assuming virtual real-estate prices don't start going south)-- zen_tom, Feb 28 2007 [Jutta/Zen] Erm, is that a sort of Virtual Second Life? - Third Life, if you will.-- Dub, Feb 28 2007 Yes [Dub] that's exactly what I was thinking - only where the price of the objects 'purchased' is guaranteed at the point at which you want to withdraw your cash.-- zen_tom, Feb 28 2007 Like stock options?-- wagster, Feb 28 2007 //Let users "buy" virtual goods by paying real money into the account// Sounds good to me but you would have to build up a good library of non-items to buy and a few 'exclusives' or 'limited edition' non-items. Also, you should give away a free, virtual set of steak knives to everyone who opens an account. As for wagster's original idea, it would never work for me. I like chocolate buttons far too much to not buy them. A life of grinding poverty beckons.-- DrBob, Mar 01 2007 random, halfbakery