Should I try to negotiate a signing bonus?
You asked about a signing bonus and were told the conditions that would be required to get one. It does not appear that you will qualify, but you do have another option. Ask if you can start earlier. Some times they can't change the start date. They might have a contractual issue with the customer and the customer is setting the start date. Other times they are waiting for somebody else to retire or transfer. But ask. Tell them starting earlier speeds up the training process. For you it can make the transfer of insurance benefits sooner. Keep in mind it could be a few weeks before you get your first pay check. How were you planning on bridging the gap? I was able to request a modest advance on my salary when I started my first job out of college, for essentially the same reason. Alternatively, you might consider requesting a small personal loan from friends or family. If you have a credit card that can cover things like grocery expenses for that period, this may also be the appropriate time to use it. Buy cheap food, like lentils and beans. :P In the future, once you earn some money, you should keep around a few months' worth of essential expenses in a saving account to avoid this situation. :)
No, to follow up on your example First Direct won't care (and I suspect won't even know) how long you held the account you are switching to them so if you don't want to switch your main current account to them you can just open a new one and switch that. To get the bonus you just need to make sure you meet the requirements imposed which in First Direct's case seem to simply be: have not held a First Direct account before pay in at least £1000 within 3 months of opening the account Once the First Direct bonus is paid, which they say should be within 28 days of you meeting the criteria, it is yours to keep.  You are then free to close the First Direct account or transfer it on to another bank (and potentially claim another switching bonus). I still think it will be rather difficult. Best bet is to call around to the five or so closest dealers and express you are considering the car contingent on price (NOT PAYMENT). Ask for them to send you their best out-the-door price on a base model. Then when you get quotes from each of them, shop the lowest price around. Usually dealers will budge a few hundred bucks to beat other dealers.   But a 2018 STI will be difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate a few grand under MSRP. Understand that the people that buy this car are not doing so because it is a great bargain. So dealers can usually push this car at or near MSRP.   Lastly, do not set foot in a dealership until you have a firm out-the-door price. They will play sales tricks until you give up on negotiation and will pay anything just to get out of there. The only time you should go to the location is to sign papers and drive away with the car. Do not worry about being nice and congenial with the salesperson.   This advice got me my current vehicle at about 15% below the lowest True Car estimate. I don't claim this is the best advice out there but it works. "This is way too long for a comment, so I am posting this as an answer. My bet is that you're buying a new piano. It is the only instrument that makes sense. The rest of this answer are going to assume this, but this should apply well if you're going after a violin or marimba for example. For those readers that do not know, a piano is a very delicate and expensive music instrument. My piano is literally more expensive than my car. There are a lot of similarities in sales negotiation between buying a piano and buying a car. You may be surprised to know that the cost for the dealer to acquire a piano is only around half the listed price. Therefore, the salesperson has a lot of room to negotiate a sale price to you. This explains why he was able to make a good offer for the model you are not intending to buy. You are best by comparing the final sale price with other similar models in your region, or the exact model around your region, which you have already did. Those indicate the standard price in your negotiation. You described the dealer had the exact model you desire, only in different appearance. I assume you want a black color while they have a white or wood-pattern one in their showroom. Note, every piano is different. Even with the exact same model, there will be very slight differences in the tune and touch, since some processes are hand finished. (If you're buying a Steinway, treat each of them as an individual hand crafted art.) Play the exact instrument you will be buying before closing the deal. If they do not have your desired model in the showroom, ask for a visit to their inventory facility. Again, play the exact instrument, not a showroom model. Some dishonest dealers will have their showroom pianos regulated and tuned differently than the ""standard"" pianos from shipping. If you get an extremely good offer, proceed with caution. There may be defects in that particular instrument. Look for rust or oxidized layers on the strings. Look for groves in the hammers. Listen to clicking noises when playing the keys. These are signs that the instrument has been around for quite a while and they cannot sell it. You can also copy down the serial number and look up the manufacturing date online. Before you close the deal, ask for after-sale services. How many free tunings will they provide? Will they polish your piano after delivery? These are bargain chips you can use for final adjustment of the price." "Here's another rational reason: Discount. This typically works only in smaller stores, where you're talking directly to the owners, but it is sometimes possible to negotiate a few percent off the price when paying by check, since otherwise they'd have to give a few percent to the credit card company. (Occasionally the sales reps at larger stores have the authority to cut this deal, but it's far less common.) Not worth worrying about on small items, but if you're making a large purchase (a bedroom suite, for example) it can pay for lunch. And sometimes the store's willing to give you more discount than that, simply because with checks they don't have to worry about chargebacks or some of the other weirdnesses that can occur in credit card processing. Another reason: Nobody's very likely to steal you check number and try to write themselves a second check or otherwise use it without authorization. It's just too easy to steal credit card info these days to make printing checks worth the effort. But, in the end, the real answer is that there's no rational reason not to use checks. So it takes you a few seconds more to complete the transaction. What were you going to do with those seconds that makes them valuable? Especially if they're seconds that the store is spending bagging your purchase, so there's no lost time... and the effort really isn't all that different from signing the credit card authorization. Quoting Dean Inge: ""There are two kinds of fool. One says 'this is old, and therefore good.' The other says 'this is new, and therefore better.'""" DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO THAT!!!  What could happen if you lie is that they ask for pay stubs before you get an offer letter.  If you don't have paystubs to back up what you claim to of made you have likely just lost your job.  If they keep you anyway they will be watching you like a hawk because you have proven on the front end that you can't be trusted.  I just went through this very same thing a few months ago and here is how I handled it.  These numbers are made up so not to reveal my real salary, of course.  I was making $2/hr and underpaid at my then company and wanted to make $10 from the new guys.  I knew they wouldn't pay me $10 so I was hoping to make $6.  They also wouldn't pay me $6 put they offered me $5.  $5 was $3 more than I was making before so I gladly took it.    I have a salary I can live with for a few years and I'm in a position to grow with the new company.  Be honest and negotiate.  Be prepared to explain why you think you are worth the money you say you are.  Be reasonable about the situation and don't get greedy.  You are doing good by them showing interest in retaining you in the first place.  Play your cards correctly and professionally and you will do well.  Whatever you do don't lie about anything.  Good luck!!! "No.  The more legs you add onto your trade, the more commissions you will pay entering and exiting the trade and the more opportunity for slippage.  So lets head the other direction.   Can we make a simple, risk-free option trade, with as few legs as possible? The (not really) surprising answer is ""yes"", but there is no free lunch, as you will see.  According to financial theory any riskless position will earn the risk free rate, which right now is almost nothing, nada, 0%.   Let's test this out with a little example. In theory, a riskless position can be constructed from buying a stock, selling a call option, and buying a put option.  This combination should earn the risk free rate. Selling the call option means you get money now but agree to let someone else have the stock at an agreed contract price if the price goes up.  Buying the put option means you pay money now but can sell the stock to someone at a pre-agreed contract price if you want to do so, which would only be when the price declines below the contract price.  To start our risk free trade, buy Google stock, GOOG, at the Oct 3 Close:   495.52 x 100sh = $49,552 The example has 100 shares for compatibility with the options contracts which require 100 share blocks. we will sell a call and buy a put @ contract price of $500 for Jan 19,2013.   Therefore we will receive $50,000 for certain on Jan 19,2013, unless the options clearing system fails, because of say, global financial collapse, or war with Aztec spacecraft. According to google finance, if we had sold a call today at the close we would receive the bid, which is 89.00/share, or $8,900 total.  And if we had bought a put today at the close we would pay the ask, which is 91.90/share, or $9190 total. So, to receive $50,000 for certain on Jan 19,2013 we could pay $49,552 for the GOOG stock, minus $8,900 for the money we received selling the call option, plus a payment of $9190 for the put option we need to protect the value.  The total is $49,842.   If we pay $49,842 today, plus execute the option strategy shown, we would have $50,000 on Jan 19,2013.  This is a profit of $158, the options commissions are going to be around $20-$30, so in total the profit is around $120 after commissions.   On the other hand, ~$50,000 in a bank CD for 12 months at 1.1% will yield $550 in similarly risk-free interest.   Given that it is difficult to actually make these trades simultaneously, in practice, with the prices jumping all around, I would say if you really want a low risk option trade then a bank CD looks like the safer bet.  This isn't to say you can't find another combination of stock and contract price that does better than a bank CD -- but I doubt it will ever be better by very much and still difficult to monitor and align the trades in practice." I disagree. Compensation is linked to a lot of factors, many of them too intangible to quantify in a simple 8-step chart. Maybe this works fine in a (very) small company. It would be very difficult to maintain in any large organization, and I would imagine that it makes recruiting good talent much harder.  I can see certain benefits too, but look - as an employee, I want to work in an environment where I can advocate for myself and, occasionally, negotiate for better compensation. Some people aren't good at these things, and frankly, that sucks for them. I'll eat their lunch if they let me. Ideally you would negotiate a car price without ever mentioning: And other factors that affect the price. You and the dealer would then negotiate a true price for the car, followed by the application of rebates, followed by negotiating for the loan if there is to be one. In practice this rarely happens. The sales rep asks point blank what rebates you qualify for (by asking get-to-know-you questions like where you work or if you served in the armed forces - you may not realize that these are do-you-qualify-for-a-rebate questions) before you've even chosen a model. They take that into account right from the beginning, along with whether they'll make a profit lending you money, or have to spend something to subsidize your zero percent loan. However unlike your veteran's status, your loan intentions are changeable. So when you get to the end you can ask if the price could be improved by paying cash. Or you could try putting the negotiated price on a credit card, and when they don't like that, ask for a further discount to stop you from using the credit card and paying cash.