On the Money

An easy way to create conflict is to put characters in a situation where they need a certain amount of money. They may need to pay a fine or a bribe, pay back taxes to prevent their home from being foreclosed, make repairs, purchase a plane ticket, or what have you. The point is, they need a certain amount of money to resolve the conflict, and it is more than they could earn in a reasonable amount time through ordinary means.

But they are in luck! A sudden windfall is available, often in the form of a prize for a contest or competition, but sometimes in the form of an inheritance, a hiring bonus for a new job, the price for selling off something the characters own, or some other such thing. And conveniently, this windfall is almost exactly as much as the characters need to resolve their conflict. While the windfall is usually cash, it can come as a MacGuffin or in some other form, as long as it just happens to be exactly what the characters need.

The inverse, in which the characters first come into a sudden windfall and then have it taken away by an equally sudden expense of nearly the same amount, such as a fine incurred in the process of gaining that windfall, is commonly used as a Reset Button, especially when the characters are kept in Perpetual Poverty. Status Quo Is God, after all.

A Sub-Trope of Contrived Coincidence. Often overlaps with Cash Gate. Compare and contrast A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted, when there's no specific expense in the plot, the character just loses their newfound fortune, and Taxman Takes the Winnings, where the expense that needs to be paid is the tax on the windfall itself.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Inverted in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In Part 7, Johnny and Gyro gain a lot of money through the Stand Sugar Mountain's Spring, but if they don't spend it all before the sun sets, they are turned into trees.
• In the Black Cat manga, Sven was just talking with Train about how they have a $15 million debt when one of Chronos' leaders, Karl, asks Train to talk with him. Karl proceeds to tell Train that he wants him to catch Gyanza, and informs him that the bounty he's offering for people to catch him is... guess what? $15 million.
• Inverted by Hayate the Combat Butler (at least in the manga), when Hayate is given 1,000,000 yen to go shopping with, then somehow manages to stumble into disaster after disaster, until he's left with just 12 yen: the same amount of money he had at the very start of the series, just before he met Nagi.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, the Magic World tournament prize is exactly how much the group need to buy back Ako, Akira and Natsumi from slavery. It's also the "more believable" variant as the prize is a very round 1 million.
• This happens a lot in Liar Game, as the whole point of the series is for the characters to get out of the millions of yen debt that the organization had put them in in the first place. All the characters are actually required to compete and win the challenges in order to break even or come out with more money.
• In Full Metal Panic!, there's the novel side story "Golden Days With Captain Amigo," where Kurz convinces Sousuke to go on a treasure hunt with him. They "borrow" without permission an M6 AS, and get into the cave. They actually end up having gold and jewels, which amount to being worth 10 million dollars. Both Kurz and Sousuke, seeing the possibility of a much nicer future (leaving Mithril and having an early retirement), get very excited, and take the treasure chests out of the cave. However, the cave ends up collapsing, causing the M6 AS to explode. Of course, it turns out that the M6 AS was worth 10 million dollars, and the treasure is taken from them to pay for it. (However, it is mentioned that the executives rounded the cost of the AS to be higher, so that they could take all the treasure from them.)
• Eyeshield 21, at least in the manga. Upon completing the Death March, the Devil Bats need to get enough money to fly back to Japan (don't ask how some 16~ year old kids are permitted to gamble, even if one of them has blackmail on damn near everyone). Monta and Sena get extremely lucky, but eventually lose it all. Cue Hiruma playing blackjack and counting cards, winning the money they need and then some.
• In D.Gray-Man, Allen had to pay off his master's debt as a child. He often spent the exact amount of money on food directly afterward.

Comic Books

• Dallas Barr: Justified in the story Immortalité à Vendre, where Stileman knows exactly how much Barr needs for his next Longevity Treatment, and makes a point of offering exactly that amount (one million pounds) for the mission. In the end, Stileman skips the middleman and directly takes the dying Barr to the longevity clinic.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man does this around the time of Secret Wars II; he takes a notebook from a building that the Beyonder had turned to gold and he exactly uses up the notebook's value for Aunt May.

Films — Animation

• Drives the plot of Disney's Home on the Range. Patch of Heaven is about to go under unless the cows can come up with $750 in three days, and what do you know? That cattle rustler who displaced Maggie has a bounty of $750 on him.

Films — Live-Action

• In the first Spider-Man movie, Peter needs a certain amount of money to buy a new car and impress MJ. Luckily, that's exactly how much he can win by lasting three minutes with Bonesaw in the steel cage. Since he knocks Bonesaw out in less than that, the promoter decides to give him a fraction of the promised reward.
• In German comedian Otto's first movie, he has to pay a loan shark exactly 9876.50 German marks. During the movie, there's not just one, but many opportunities presenting to him to get exactly that amount.
• Averted, though confusingly, in the Israeli movie Ushpizin. The protagonist, a Torah scholar with no income, would need 1,000 shekels to buy a particularly beautiful etrog (a fruit used on the Jewish festival of Sukkot). He finds himself the surprise recipient of 1,000 dollars. Many viewers were mystified at how someone with no money could blow the entire sum he received on an etrog, when in fact 1,000 dollars is worth three to four times as much as 1,000 shekels. Same number, different currency. The dollar is used extensively in Israel, so it's not unrealistic, but it's still confusing.
• Zig-Zagged in Nine Queens. The two heroes, Marcos and Juan, are setting up an elaborate con on a millionaire collector, that will end with him paying them $450,000 for a set of counterfeit postage stamps. After some plot twists, they lose the forgeries, but they suddenly get the possibility of buying the real stamps for only $250,000, thus making a large profit after selling them. It turns out that Marcos has exactly $200,000 saved, while Juan has exactly $50,000 saved. Juan finds it suspicious and accuses Marcos of trying to play a con on him, but Marcos denies it and convinces Juan, and they go on with the plan. It was Juan who was playing the con on Marcos.
• In A Civil Action the protagonist is told how much money his law firm needs to stay in business. Later, he's offered exactly that amount to settle a big case, suggesting that the rival law firm had inside information.
• Inverted in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. When Ryu tries to get a kidney for his sister on the black market, he's swindled out of $10,000 won. That happens to be the exact sum of money necessary for a transplant should an organ become available legally.
• In Duct Tape Forever, a movie based on The Red Green Show, Possum Lodge is fined 10,000 dollars. Luckily, there is a duct tape competition and the third prize is 10,000 dollars.
• In The Brady Bunch Movie, Mike and Carol owe $20,000 in back taxes that have to be paid by next week. And guess what the prize is at the big "Search for the Stars" contest? And guess whose kids turn out to be, um, a slightly talented pop group?
• The male protagonist of Best Player was a Basement-Dweller until his parents decided to sell their house and move to Florida. Since his parents would no longer support him, he'd have to either cough up $175,000 to buy their house or find another place to live. He then entered a videogame competition where the first prize is $175,500.00
• In DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, the plot kicks off when the heroes need $50,000 dollars to pay government fines, and there just so happens to be a Dodgeball tournament with a $50,000 cash prize.
  • Subverted in the end. Peter sold the gym the night before the championship match. Then double subverted, as he bet the entire sum on his team winning, and winds up a millionaire in the end, more than enough to buy back his gym and his nemesis' gym as well.
• In Happy Gilmore, the titular character needs $275,000 to prevent his grandmother's home being seized by the IRS. He incurs a $25,000 fine after getting into a fistfight with Bob Barker, but is awarded a $300,000 endorsement contrast with Subway, leaving him with exactly enough to pay off her back taxes. Subverted when he arrives too late to pay the taxes off outright and is outbid when the house is put up for auction.

Literature

• Lampshaded in The Night Angel Trilogy, when the protagonist takes the fact that a particular item intended to be comically overpriced to discourage buyers happens to be priced at exactly the amount he got by selling his magic sword as a sign he was meant to buy it.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: After finding out that Angelica, one of her guard knights, is one the verge of failing Wizarding School, the protagonist drags her three other guard knights into helping Angelica get better grades. She decides to give the three other knights a bonus for their trouble: one of her "creations" for each of the better off ones, a relatively large sum of money for the Impoverished Patrician among them. When the latter gets the money, it turns out to be just enough to cover a debt he incurred earlier in the story. Hearing this, the protagonist briefly considers giving him something else on top of the money because her poorest knight incurred that debt because he was involved in an incident that damaged a set of very expensive clothes needed for the protagonist's previous job and had to pay part of the cost of replacing them. However, after getting the new set of clothes, the protagonist ended up only keeping said previous job for half a year before her sudden adoption into nobility.

Live Action TV

• All in the Family: Season 3 saw the episode “Mike Comes Into Money,” where Mike receives an inheritance check for $200 after an uncle passed away. He announces plans to donate the entire sum to the George McGovern presidential campaign. Archie then declares that said amount is exactly what he’s demanding for rent.
• Happens a few times to cash-strapped Miss Brooks in Our Miss Brooks, i.e. "Easter Outfit", "Fischer's Pawn Shop", "The Festival", "School T.V. Set".
• Parodied in an episode of Scrubs that was in itself a parody of traditional sitcoms where the gang can win the exact amount they need to not have to fire anyone in a singing competition and lookit, wouldn't you know that Clay Aiken just happens to be the new cafeteria worker. Unfortunately, this is one of the rare times that one of JD's fantasies is used for drama.

• Averting this trope is a running theme of 2 Broke Girls. The title characters need a large sum of money to start a cupcake business but their regular jobs as waitresses barely cover their living expenses so they engage in various schemes to raise the money. However, at best they can raise $100-200 per episode and a lot of the time fail to get any extra money or have to use money they already saved to cover another expense. This is lampshaded at the end of each episode with a shot of a counter displaying the exact amount of money they have in their cupcake fund. A year after they begin, they are still thousands of dollars short of their goal.
  • In season 2, a friend loans them the money to start their cupcake store. However, after a few months the business is not doing well and they are running out of money. Fortunately this trope plays out more or less straight and a property development company buys the building where the store is located and offers to buy out their lease for just enough money to cover the loan and any outstanding bills the girls owe. The slight subversion is that rather than having them break even, the cupcake fund actually ends up with less money than they had before they got the loan.
• The Goodies: In "Culture for the Masses", Tim buys a painting for one million billion quintillion zillion pounds and two and a half new pence. Looking for a way to pay this off, they later learn that the art in the National gallery is insured for one million billion quintillion zillion pounds.
• When Jesse briefly gives up the meth trade in Breaking Bad, the $400,000 he has from his last caper is exactly enough to buy the house his parents recently stopped letting him use... after he has his lawyer Saul negotiate a healthy discount in exchange for not reporting the meth lab they fraudulently forgot to mention to prospective buyers. The end of the episode sees him living rent-free in the house, but with no money.
• In the Flight of the Conchords episode "The New Cup", Murray falls for a 419 Scam... that turns out to be surprisingly legit, giving him just enough money to bail Bret and Jemaine out of jail.
• In an episode of Growing Pains, Mike is in traffic court, facing a $500 fine for various violations. The presiding judge muses that his granddaughter is looking for a car and he'd be willing to buy Mike's - for $500.
  Mike: [starts to protest]
  Judge: Mr. Seaver: We checked the glove compartment
  Mike: SOLD!
• The inverse happens in one episode of Family Matters where Carl introduces the family to a pastry recipe, and ends up getting an order for 12,000 of them from a local restaurant chain. After the entire family works round the clock for the whole weekend, they find that between the cost of ingredients and upgrading the kitchen so that it could make 12,000 pastries over the course of the weekend, they made just enough in profit to be able to pay someone else to clean up the resultant mess in the kitchen for them.

Manhua

• In Bowling King, Shautieh Ley needs to get 3 million Taiwan dollars to pay off his love interest's debt... and it just so happens that the prize money for the big bowling tournament is 3 million Taiwan dollars. This is, however, ultimately subverted; the company sponsoring the God's Hand Cup goes bankrupt while the tournament is underway, and the competition is cancelled indefinitely just after the semifinals were finished. Meaning he didn't get the money.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto V: Retired Outlaw Michael has to come out of retirement, initially for a Onelast Job, after he impulsively destroys a house he thinks belongs to the tennish coach his wife Amanda was cheating on him, but turns out belongs to Cartel boss Martin Madrazo, who demands Michael pay for the damages.
• Sam & Max: The Telltale games have one of these in almost every episode for the first season.
• Pikmin 2: The president of the company Captain Olimar works for took out a huge loan (10,100 pokos, to be exact) and is at a loss as to how to repay it. Luckily, the planet Olimar had just been stranded on happens to harbour trinkets which are VERY valuable (with the bottle cap he brought home as a souvenir being worth precisely 100 Pokos, no less)...

Webcomics

• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, the title character Bob frequently acquires exactly the sum of money necessary to fix his roof, which was damaged earlier in the story arc.

Web Original

• Nightmare Time: In the episode "Yellow Jacket," Hannah cuts off her finger in shop class, leading to a $24,000 medical bill that she and her sister can't afford. The episode has her joining an underground fighting ring in order to make enough money to pay for her healthcare.
• Request Comics #26 has this here: a competition prize is exactly that needed to save the local library.
• One of the emails in this exchange from 27b/6 mentions one of the potential benefits of homosexuality being "the gift of dance", which "would come in extremely useful if I needed five hundred dollars and saw a poster advertising a dance competition with a first prize of five hundred dollars."

Western Animation

• Pinky and the Brain: The cost to fund Brain's latest scheme is precisely the yield of a perfect run on that episode's Jeopardy! parody. He loses - of course - when the Final "Gyp-parody" question was about the same phrase he'd been ignoring from Pinky for the entire episode.
  • In fact, a fair share of episodes was about Brain trying to gain enough money to fund a scheme.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Round Springfield": The radio station tells Lisa it would play the songs of the late Bleeding Gums Murphy if they actually had a copy of the music. The comic book shop has the album for $250, and when Lisa says that Murphy has just died and she needs the record for a tribute, Comic Book Guy raises the price to $500. Bart happens to have $500 from a lawsuit settlement, and when he sees how upset his sister is, he buys the record for her. He plans afterward to get more money through another lawsuit settlement through similar circumstances to the first one.
  • Parodied on another episode - Marge suggests they send an embarrassing celebrity photo to a tabloid offering "$$$" for them, because as luck would have it, they need to pay a bill which totals "$$$".
• The inverted version is found in the Futurama episode "A Fishful Of Dollars": Justified in that Fry bids his entire $4.3 billion fortune on a single can of anchovies.
• An inversion is found in the "Cartmanland" episode of South Park. Cartman inherits a million dollars, and buys a failing theme park with the intent to keep it all to himself. He lets other people in so that he can cover maintenance costs, and the park becomes a huge success. Cartman sells the park back to the original owner, angry that he can no longer have the park to himself. He ends up not only coughing up the million dollars for taxes he owes and a lawsuit settlement for Kenny's family (since Kenny's death this episode happened on one of Cartman's roller coasters), but he even ends up owing several thousand dollars.
  • A more straight example occurs in an earlier episode where Cartman needs $3,000 for the paternity tests to find his father. The other 3 kids just send a videotape showing Cartman having a girly teaparty with his toys to America's Funniest Home Videos, to win the $10,000 grand prize, but they end up with the second prize instead after already promising to pay for Cartman's test if they win. Guess what the second prize is.
• The "Spidey Goes Hollywood" episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends has Spidey agreeing to act in a movie for the exact amount Aunt May needs to pay the mortgage this month (as opposed to say, enough to pay off the whole mortgage).
  • Then again, unless Peter is willing to tell Aunt May he's Spidey, he'd probably have to come up with some excuse to justify suddenly having that much money.
• The Looney Tunes short "The Ducksters" has Daffy Duck playing a sadistic radio quiz show host and Porky Pig as his much-suffering contestant. Just as Porky has reached his breaking point, Daffy offers him a huge cash prize of "twenty-six million dollars and three cents" to mollify him. Porky promptly calls up the station owner and asks his price for the station. As it turns out, it's the exact amount of the prize money to the cent. Cue demonic grin and switching of roles.
  Daffy: (nervous) Hello... boss.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series: When J. Jonah Jameson offered a thousand-dollar-bonus for the first one to bring him a photograph of The Lizard, Peter was thinking about the stuff he could buy with the money until he learned Aunt May will need almost all of it to pay her bills.
• A non-money example: Back at the Barnyard features an episode where the cast needs an appendix. Cut to a shot of The Appendix Classic, a golf tournament with a prize of one appendix.
  Otis: Weird, but convenient!
• TaleSpin has this as a Running Gag. Every time Baloo tries to get the money needed to get rich or buy back the Sea Duck, he almost always loses it immediately to cover some sort of damages he caused. Makes a $500 delivery worth of pizzas? Racks up a $499 total from Health Department violations. Gets a reward for capturing a wanted criminal? The reward money goes towards paying his parking tickets. Gets a massive treasure for delivering a priceless artifact? Goes right towards paying off his tab at Louie's.
• There's an invoked example in Frisky Dingo when Xander, immediately after hearing Killface needs $12bn to finish the Annihilatrix, faxes him an invitation to an inventors' competition for $12bn. When Killface is reluctant because he'll still need $64,000 to pay off another debt, Xander sends him a follow-up adding that the prize for best presentation is $64,000.

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