Buy Flowers

lady stealing flowers
Image by Melinda Taber via Flickr

Buying flowers… seems simple enough. Flowers grow in the dirt and sun with a little bit of water. How expensive can seeds, dirt and sunlight be? Then when you go to buy flowers, you find the price for flowers isn’t dirt cheap. Knowing you have to renew your monthly online gaming membership fee, you realize you can’t spend a whole lot of money on flowers. What are you to do?

Here are few ways to save money when buying flowers, whether online or, gasp, in the real world. I will start with the cheapest flower buying methods and work up from there.

Ooops Method: Don’t buy flowers, better known as, “Ooops, I forgot.” This one works at least once, sometimes more. Depending on how sincerely you can fake it.  If you girlfriend/wife is really desperate, this can work for years…

Virtual Flowers Method: OK, your online calendar just popped up and tells you that today is the anniversary of meeting girlfriend #3 (How did Tiger juggle all those girls? ?Having just three girlfriends is hard.) Since you failed to give yourself enough lead time to go out and get real flowers you do the next best thing. Reach over and take a swill of lukewarm coffee, quickly check your fantasy sports team standings and find a virtual flowers site and send #3 the biggest flower bouquet you can find. As a bonus, and just to confirm that you really care, take a few more seconds and add a virtual card to go with that picture of the roses you should have bought.

Elderly Neighbor Method: Face it. You work hard. Plus, when you add in all those great sitcom rerun shows, who has time to grow your own flowers. That is, like, a lot of work. Thankfully, you have elderly neighbors don’t have a life so they spend all their time gardening. And, as a flower acquisition bonus, since they are old, they go to be bed early. What a deal, just wait until 8pm then go into their yard, take your time and get the best flowers you can while they sleep.

Neighbor Method:  Now this is an advance technique on the “Elderly Neighbor Method.” Here is what you do — go to your yard with something that can get away from you, say a Frisbee. You throw a couple times into the air to test the wind and look like you are playing. Then you skillfully toss the Frisbee into the neighbors yard, right next to the best flowers you can. Then stroll over and kick your Frisbee so it goes near the roots of the flowers, and when you yank (hard) on your Frisbee, well, as a bonus, you get a handful of flowers. Hurry back before the neighbors’ snotty little kid sees you.

On The Way Method: Sometimes you are so busy with everything you forget about flowers for that special someone, that you somehow (thank Gawd) remember just at the last second, maybe right before you walk into her condo complex. The good news is that since she is employed, she understands that how tough it is when you aren’t. And since she is employed, she lives in a nicer complex, and nicer complexes have flowers out front. Well, just scurry over next to the flowers and pretend to read the paper or look for some change, and when the coast is clear, grab those flowers. As a bonus, many banks have flowers near their ATM machines so when you are about ready to withdraw cash to buy flowers, look around first, you may see free flowers.

Environmentally Friendly Method #1: We hear about recycling everyday. You do your bit by taking in your 300+ beer cans every week to the local recycler (just enough to buy another case of beer, you know). So you then you remember that boss of yours bought flowers for his secretary a few days ago and there must be a bit of life left in those flowers, and the secretary is probably done looking at the flowers, since your boss is such a jerk, so, finally, you come to the conclusion that the secretary won’t miss the flowers. Just go to work early (ha! ha!) or stay late and when the secretary leaves, grab the flowers off her desk. A special bonus here is that you get a free vase as well (You rationalize that the secretary was probably going to throw out the glass vase and it is your job to protect landfills). Gawd, it is good to be green.

Environmentally Friendly Method #2: A lot of your hard earned money goes to the government to maintain, among other things, parks. You paid for the park, so any flowers there are technically yours. Find a nice park, pick up your flowers and give them knowing you had a major role in these flowers.

Hmm, if you are reading this far down the page I think we are going to have to resort to buying flowers using, umm, cash. I know, I know. I hate it too. But, we are not left with too many options.

Buy Flowers Online: You are handy with a computer (I know this because you are here) and always looking for a bargain (I know this because you are here) so combine those skills of yours and do a bit of online comparison shopping for flowers. There are web sites that compare many online florists, but if you are too lazy to search for those, you can do this: Open up multiple browser windows and put in the major flower companies such as 1800Flowers, ProFlowers, FTD.com, and GrowerFlowers.com

Flower Buying – Last Resort: If you are down to this last option. well, I don’t have much hope for you. First, are you sure the, “Ooops. I forgot method,” isn’t going to work. OK, just checking to make sure.

Flowers for your little niece

Flowers for your little niece

Find the nearest florist shop, go in and tell them you need flowers, but don’t tell them you need it for your girlfriend or wife. If they know that they will shame you into all type of worthless (and costly) accessories like ribbons, vases and delivery. Tell them you are, “Just buying a little something for your 10 year old niece – to brighten her day.”

Be sure to use the word “little” as it is a subliminal implant and lets the florist know you are a good guy, but you don’t need to spend a lot of money on flowers.

Special Cost Coach relationship saving tip: If you use the “10 year old niece” method, always pay cash and destroy the receipt. You don’t want your girlfriend/wife to see how cheap you really are.

As a bonus, regardless of how crummy the flowers are, your girlfriend/wife will feel like a real Miss America.

Miss America Roses

Miss America Roses

Finally, deliver those flowers and watch girlfriend #3 eyes light up. Just be sure to call her the right name.

If all else fails, copy the image below and send flowers to the “lucky” lady.

Buy Flowers

Buy Flowers