Not so much overheard, but just the general mood in my office as we approach bonus time. These are non-contractually guaranteed, discretionary bonuses, and the number of people counting on them and/or having already spent them in anticipation is mind-boggling. Max expected payout is 5%, twice a year. (Company made the very popular decision last December to get that cycle's bonus into checks before Christmas instead of the first paycheck of the next year because of complaints about needing that money for Christmas.)
One of my coworker's asked me what I was going to spend my bonus on. I said I'd probably just toss it into savings, it amounts to about 1 extra paycheck so nbd. He said "most people can't afford to just save it - a lot of people count on it." Later we were talking about how one of the first steps when you begin improving your financial situation is the idea of living off last month's income (getting to a point where you're budgeting ahead, rather than in arrears). He said, "that requires saving like a whole month's pay - it would take a lot of people 8 or 9 months just to get to that point." I suppose that's true if they can't even afford to save their discretionary bonus.
I mean, I get that I probably look fortunate and privileged to not have to worry about day to day or even month to month cash-flow, or emergencies. But I'm there because I've been budgeting carefully since I started out, living on $8.50/hour 15 years ago, when an emergency was a $200 car repair and I couldn't even get a credit card because of terrible decisions in college. These are all tech professionals who are 5, 10, 20 years into their careers.