It’s Time To Monetize This Relationship

by Matt Powers

While dating may engender feelings of self-worth, emotional stability and existential meaning, everyone has, at one time or another, looked at their relationship and asked: How do I make some money off of this? For the working man or woman, schedules often become too packed to separate business from pleasure. Luckily, you no longer need to make that distinction. Just follow these steps and you can make your love life and financial life the synergized singularity it was always meant to be.

1. Love Consulting
You know that “special thing” you have? Others want it too! Your friends usually roll their eyes when you try and give them free relationship advice, but if you start charging for your opinions and suggestions, your consulting will appear more valuable. And you have so much to offer. The cute “mock angry” thing that your girlfriend calls you after you’ve made a careless mistake? Many people need that kind of spark to rekindle their dead-end relationships. Keeping your commentary on the relationships of your friends and family to yourself hurts not only them, but also your bank account.

2. Corporate Sponsorship
Companies are constantly looking for the next platform to advertise their products, and they want to be branded with the warmth, stability, and emotion inherent in relationships. Making a quick mention of fun, exciting products when you and your sweetheart are around targeted demographics is a small price to pay for the ad revenue you’ll be hauling in while spending quality time together. Next time you two are invited over to a friend’s place for a potluck, spend ten to fifteen minutes extolling the virtues of Duncan Hines canned frosting by seductively feeding it to your lover. You may have to start out with smaller, stranger products before moving up to foods and lingerie, but there’s nothing sexier than setting up some candles in the bathroom and outlining the positives of planning a sexy date night cleaning with Scrubbing Bubbles grout remover.

3. A “Per Kiss” Donation
This method is very similar to raising money “per mile” for a charity 5K: Inundate your family, aunts, uncles, grandparents with requests for a couple bucks per mile, and — lo and behold — by the end you’ve raised a pretty penny for a nice charity. Well there’s no reason why the same concept can’t be used in your relationship. Set up a “per kiss” rate, or “per hug” or “per date” or something naughtier. All you have to do is be creative when registering your non-profit charity. Set up a high-yield annuity trust that is an investment to return bigger returns on the donations in 2020. By that time, you can give the principal investment to charity and keep the interest for your own nest egg or junior’s college fund. The best part is, this is totally legal and all of your favorite charities do it.

4. Bank Heist Date Night
You and your sweetie have been trying to tear away from your busy work schedules to have a night just for the two of you. But dinner at the fancy French bistro is not in the budget because the mortgage payments are due and the electric company has already threatened to cut your power twice. Well there’s no reason to blow money on a romantic night out when an intimate bank heist will bring you closer together and add a few zeroes to the ol’ balance sheet. Make it sexy! While you’re planning which is the best homemade explosive to get through the vault door, do a sexy strip quiz on which chemical agents will provide the most deadly blast radius. Or when you are asphyxiating a bank guard into submission, make sultry eye contact with your partner across the floor who is threatening the hostages with a large knife. Before you know it, you’ll be making love on a pile of money.

5. Optioning Your Bank Heist Story Into A Feature Film Starring Tea Leoni
Stolen bank money is hard to move around, and laundering it or funneling it through shell accounts is costly. If you’re going to be solvent, you will have to spend all of your time finding ways to use your money and have no time for romance. Luckily, if you whip a treatment for Bank Heist Date Night (don’t even change the name; it’s already perfect), major studios will be throwing money at you in no time. It’s already hokey, accessible, and allows for great taglines like “Put Your Hands Up And Get Down: It’s Bank Heist Date Night!” Abandon any creative control or artistic integrity at the outset and you’ll be swimming in development deals. Throw in a B-lister on the decline who will do anything like Tea Leoni or Brenden Fraser, and you and your love-muffin will be set up for life. This thing practically begs for a sequel.

Matt Powers is in his early twenties-ish. Photo Credit: Flickr/slightly everything

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