[douche]

The other side of this is that departments with leftover budget will cast around wildly for anything plausible to spend it on, lest they have their budget slashed next year, "use it or lose it" style.

The company I work for has made more than a couple big sales in December from this phenomenon. Sometimes they never even deploy the software.

[ErrantX]

Trouble with salary raises are; you do effectively lose it because you can't take that raise back next year ;)

[justinlardinois]

I think he's referring more to one time expenditures.