Miser Advisor

Chuck: You're taking money from blind children?
Emerson: I suppose I could pay my bills with blind kids' smiles, but their money is a lot easier.

— Pushing Daisies

The Miser Advisor is a subtrope of Mr. Vice Guy, in that their main motivation for being part of some circle of friends is to wring a little money out of them now and then. They will often lament their target's lack of wealth, or berate them for spending even a little bit. After all, "a penny saved is a penny earned," and the Miser needs every little bit of cash they can scrounge up.

Neither the Miser Advisor nor their mark has to be particularly rich to fall under this trope, and it's a lot better if they aren't. Otherwise, they just come off as petty and mean.

Contrast Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, where the Miser Advisor already has the one thing they're looking for, and uses it against others. Compare Only in It for the Money.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Sakurako from Ai Kora is a mild example. She's an average high-school girl who's smart with money, but she gets a little carried away with cost-cutting tips sometimes... She's also shown to be a sucker for sales and giveaways.
• Revy from Black Lagoon. When it comes to her priorities, making money is a close third, being barely beaten out by her love of gratuitous violence and her desire to protect Rock.
  • Her friend Eda, on the other hand, has money as her first priority.
• Miyuki Kobayashi from City Hunter is easily the greediest person in the series — for starters, upon hiring Ryo as her bodyguard, she subtracts payment that she would be paying Ryo every time he touches her (given Ryo is a Handsome Lech at times who can't keep his hands off a beautiful woman like Miyuki, Kaori is forced to keep a close eye on him to make sure Miyuki doesn't end up hiring Ryo for free). Her motivation for greed becomes more justifiable, however, when it's revealed that she intends to use the money she accrues to open a drug rehab clinic for those who wish to kick the habit as well as their families, and Ryo spots her making a large-sum donation for such a purpose during her story arc.
• Becky the Nose from Gunsmith Cats. Rally constantly owes her a lot of money, and Becky sometimes refuses to part with the information Rally needs unless our heroine buys her a pizza and a bottle of her favourite champagne.
• Not really a member of the main character's party per se, but in Naruto, Kakuzu from the Akatsuki is this way. Being the treasurer for the organization, he is extremely thrift and constantly tries to find ways to make money. The main reason he initially thought to partner with Hidan was that he thought that Hidan's religion would make them money.
• Mana Tatsumiya, the unreasonably frugal mercenary from Negima! Magister Negi Magi, who gets sketchy over 200 yen (very roughly $2.00). Her main victim is Setsuna, who she bills for her services in Demon Slaying, though she's willing to charge anyone on the team for any amount of time spent fighting.
  • Jack Rakan is much much worse; he routinely attempts to charge people millions for his services, as well as for his training for Negi. They usually get away without paying because Jack decides he's going to "send the bill" to somebody who isn't present; usually Konoka's father.
    • To be fair, in actuality, he simply didn't plan on telling Negi anything until he decided that Negi was a man. But admitting that means admitting he's not as dumb as he looks. Quite. Kinda hard to tell at times.
• Nami from One Piece exhibits shades of this trope - while she has other motivations for being in the main cast, she still takes every opportunity she has to make the other members of the crew her debtors, Zoro and Usopp in particular.
• Particularly in fanfiction, Nabiki Tendo of Ranma ½ has some elements of this character type, but it's fairly rare she has actual advice to sell and she actively sells to everyone — in fact, the main characters, her sister and her sister's fiance, are actually the two she least offers advice to. Mostly, they pay her money to get something they desperately need at that moment in time, or to make sure she does not tell something to somebody (she usually takes their money and goes and blabs for even more money anyway).
• James from From Eroica With Love is an extreme example of this. He once haggled down the price of a pair of underwear.
• Francine from Samurai Pizza Cats is a bit money-crazy at times, but someone's got to keep the pizza parlor running while the rest of her team is off fighting robot monsters.

Comic Books

• Played with in the case of Scrooge McDuck — although he's a notorious tightwad and lectures others frequently, the only reason he ever takes money away from his nephews is to teach them a lesson about unwise spending and business practices, rather than any genuinely malicious intent. Donald, however, is never paid a fair wage... because, well, he's Donald Duck.

Literature

• The An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride character Barbaros is introduced when he comes by to mooch drinking money off the protagonist. Later he joins him in a more official capacity.
• Aahz from Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series is a tightwad of the first order, even once the M.Y.T.H. Inc. crew has become successful and obscenely rich. Supposedly, this is because his mother squandered the family's money on bad investments.
  • During a discussion in Myth-ing Persons, he says "Money isn't the object." Every person in the room, including a guy who's known him maybe a couple of hours, choruses a shocked "It isn't?"
  • In the same series we have Grimble, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the nation of Possiltum. For the first couple of books Skeeve thinks he's just a tight-fisted jerk, but in Hit or Myth, after spending some time sitting in for King Roderick he gains some respect for Grimble, who does a very difficult and delicate job, working ungodly hours and all while living like a monk.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire Robert characterizes his advisers as being too fond of what he calls "counting coppers" and what they consider "not bankrupting the kingdom". Turns out they're right, and when Eddard arrives and reviews the financial situation he's shocked to discover that they owe massive debts to the church, the Lannisters, and the Iron Bank.
• Yu Lian of ½ Prince serves as money person for the party, and later becomes finance minister for the city they receive as a tournament prize.

Music

• Tommy has Uncle Ernie. The movie also makes his adoptive dad one.

Politics

• The political version of this character is often called a Budget Hawk or Deficit Hawk due to a seeming unwillingness to allocate money to government programs that may cost a lot. On the left side of the aisle, this person is in favor of cutting military spending, defunding space exploration programs and in recent years, even defunding law enforcement. On the right, this person is typically in favor of slashing welfare programs, publicly funded healthcare and such. Needless to say, both types are often situational and hypocritical about what programs to fund and what to slash.

Religion

• Of course, there's always Judas. Remember that time a woman started washing Jesus's feet with expensive oils and rubbing them with her hair? Apparently this trope was behind Judas's insistence that they could sell the oil and give the money to the poor - because, as the Good Book points out, Judas was the one who kept the money box.
  • In the book of Mark, the woman goes a bit further - she anoints Jesus with an entire bottle of the incredibly valuable ointment of nard, worth hundreds of denarii. Plenty of people scold her for this, and Jesus tells them not to because she is showing her love for him, who is only on the Earth for a short time, while there are always poor people to help (which they did frequently).
  • Due to Mark's version of the story, and that Judas shows no sign of this trope during the event, this is only one interpretation of events. It could even be that it was this incident that turned Judas against Jesus in the first place, if he felt it was simple greed on Jesus' part.
    • Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe runs with this latter interpretation.

Video Games

• Lemina, the Black Magician Girl from Lunar: Eternal Blue. That she also has golden hair is likely a coincidence.
• Phantasy Star IV
  • Alys Brangwin starts out like this, trying (and succeeding several times!) to get a little extra cash from her clients during seemingly mundane missions.
  • Hahn is the most frequent Butt-Monkey of this: when he asks to accompany Alys and Chaz into the basement of the university (the first dungeon), where he actually proves useful, it costs him 100 meseta. When he asks to accompany the two to Birth Valley, it costs him 250 meseta. And on, and on...
• The financial adviser in SimCity (3000 and 4) constantly complains about your taxes, spending, and budget. S/he'll usually encourage you to cut funding to minor programs like junior sports or stairwell lighting.

• Mail...Popful Mail...a bounty hunter who has yet to catch a single criminal, so she'll try to get extra money any way she can (especially from Namo of Treesun, whom she rescues early on).

• The Time Goddess from Half-Minute Hero. Need her to put some extra seconds on your Death Clock? She's willing to help... for a price. If you're playing Evil Lord 30, this price is "everything in your pocket".
• To an extent, Anise from Tales of the Abyss. Most of the reason she's interested in Luke is that she's scheming to marry into money. And it turns out that, true to type, the whole reason she's involved with the story and designated The Mole in the first place is due to her family's poverty.
• In Fable III, after your character becomes ruler of Albion, you gain an aide named Hobson. Hobson tries to encourage you to fill the treasury (in order to fund the defense of Albion from the Night Crawler's forces) by any means necessary, such as raising taxes, cutting the budget for the royal guard, or accepting a bribe to enact prohibition of alcohol, though it quickly becomes obvious that he's just obsessed with gold. Reaver takes this role as well, doing this like encouraging you to reinstate child labor or convert an orphanage/homeless shelter into a state-funded brothel.
• Tear, the fairy accountant in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, berates Recette for throwing a coin in a fountain and all her other generally unsound financial practices.

Webcomics

• Thief from 8-Bit Theater is an extreme example of this, forcing his comrades into signing usurious contracts that grant him all of their income as well as stealing every GP that isn't nailed to their bodies for good measure. Even then, if they nailed the GP to themselves, the blood wouldn't have stopped flowing before he ripped the nails out again.
  Black Mage: Didn't the pirates take everything already?
  Thief: They left everything that was nailed down. I did not.
• Haley from The Order of the Stick is like this too, though it's later revealed that this is justified by her having to save up to pay a huge ransom for her father. However, it's acknowledged that she'd still have behaved somewhat similarly even if she didn't desperately need the money — she IS a rogue, after all.

Web Original

• Noob: Besides the fact that the MMORPG in which the story is set is extremely difficult to get through while playing solo, Gaea's main motivation for being part of the titular guild seems to be mooching off the guild's common funds and swindling even more game currency out of her guildmates.
• Omin Dran of Acquisitions Incorporated is another master of the usurious contract, with numerous Running Gags about him not so much employing the team as owning them outright and leasing their own bodies and possessions back to them "at a very reasonable rate."

Western Animation

• Gravity Falls has Dipper and Mabel's "Grunkle" Stan Pines, cheapskate proprietor of the Mystery Shack ("We put the 'fun' in 'no refunds'!") His obsession with making money got himself and the kids implicated in a basement counterfeiting ring one time.
  Mabel: The county jail was so cold...
• DuckTales (2017) has the Buzzards, who are the only people greedier than Scrooge. Their reason for being so greedy? They're criminal masterminds.
• Wakfu: Ruel Stroud is a surprisingly subversion, considering his Greed makes other Enutrofs look normal. Sure, he'll use any advantage he can to save a pretty kama, but his original reason for joining Yugo's group was because he promised his old friend Alibert that he would watch over Yugo, and he kept to that promise.

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