History Main / PennyShaving

* David Xanatos tries this in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/Gargoyles'', using a broadcast to steal a few minutes of life from everybody who watches it - nobody will notice that Grandma died a few minutes sooner than expected, but all those minutes times the 20 million or so viewers in the NYC metropolitan area really adds up!

* Done literally in the old days when coins were made of actual valuable metals, mostly the gold coins. People would put the coins in a sack and rattle them, knocking off bits of the metal, so the coin has less bullion than it is officially worth while the person doing it is left with some amount of gold dust. This is why some trades use weights of coins rather than trusting their face value. A less subtle method was "clipping", or cutting small amounts of metal off the edge of the coin, but this could get you hanged if anybody noticed. Many modern coins still include "milling" (a pattern around the edge which makes it obvious if any metal's been removed)[[note]]Sidenote: UsefulNotes/IsaacNewton was better known in his lifetime for introducing it to English coinage than his work as a scientist.[[/note]] as part of their design even though they're made from less valuable metals and alloys, partly because it looks nice and partly because it actually helps people grip the coins better, making them less annoying to use as money.

* The protagonists of ''Film/OfficeSpace'' put a virus that steals pennies from the company they work from as revenge for two of them being fired, [[ShoutOut explicitly referencing]] ''Superman III'', and even noting how Gus got caught. They do it anyway, and end up inadvertently taking a lot more than they expected due to a bug in the software. [[spoiler: They never get caught because Milton burned down the office, destroying the evidence in the process.]]

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation Shrinkflation]] (so named because it usually happens in response to high inflation) is when companies reduce the size or quantity of items they sell in a particular package while keeping the price for the consumer the same. For example, Procter & Gamble's 18-count toilet paper bundle went from 264 sheets per roll to 244 per roll in 2022 after more than a year of highest-in-decades inflation.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation Shrinkflation]] (so named because it usually happens in response to inflation) is when companies reduce the size or quantity of items they sell in a particular package while keeping the price for the consumer the same. For example, Procter & Gamble's 18-count toilet paper bundle went from 264 sheets per roll to 244 per roll in 2022.

* Done literally in the old days when coins were made of actual valuable metals, mostly the gold coins. People would put the coins in a sack and rattle them, knocking off bits of the metal, so the coin has less bullion than it is officially worth while the person doing it is left with some amount of gold dust. This is why some trades use weights of coins rather than trusting their face value. A less subtle method was "clipping", or cutting small amounts of metal off the edge of the coin, but this could get you hanged if anybody noticed. Many modern coins still include "milling" (a pattern around the edge which makes it obvious if any metal's been removed) as part of their design even though they're made from less valuable metals and alloys (in particular UsefulNotes/IsaacNewton was better known in his lifetime for introducing it than his work as a scientist).

* One bank ad had a man going around his office proudly stating that he'd just saved the company a month. At the end he explains it more fully to an executive: by switching to a certain bank, they save a nickel on every transaction they do, and the exec notes that the company makes over twenty million bankable transactions a month, meaning that saving a nickel each means millions of dollars saved over the course of a year.

* In the crossover between ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'' and ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', ''FanFic/TheManyWorldsInterpretation'', by Creator/AAPessimal, this is how the hyperintelligent thinking engine HEX finances the stay in California by two Discworld academics. HEX reasons that the money has effectively been written off by the American banking system, he is not unbalancing the accounts, and he is in fact boosting the economy of the USA by enabling the otherwise lost cash to circulate. HEX therefore comes to an agreement with the computer systems at American banks to release those lost fractions of cents - garnered from ''millions'' of accounts.

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* After his boss mentions that the computer is tracking amounts of money too small to be displayed, Gus begins his criminal career in ''Film/SupermanIII'' by instructing a computer he works with to put any amount of money less than a cent into his bank account.

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