Now you, too, can have a great first quarter.

So you run a bank. And it's not been the smoothest sailing lately. Sure, record-low interest rates let you make money writing mortgages and refis, which helps your bottom line. And maybe your active-trading division has provided a bump, especially in fixed-income products. But that still doesn't get your numbers where you want them to be. There are a few little tricks that can get you there, from accounting wizardry to liberties with the Gregorian calendar.

Here's an up-to-date guide on how banks are goosing their numbers, in decreasing order of popularity.

Cut your dividend: Good thing we're not talking about jumping off a bridge here because nearly everyone is doing this. Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Wells Fargo (WFC), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) all slashed their dividends, some drastically. Citi and BofA, for instance, both dropped their payouts to a measly penny a share.

Scrap mark-to-market accounting: After locking horns with the banking industry for several months, the Financial Accounting Standards Board yielded and relaxed mark-to-market accounting, giving banks much more leeway when it comes to valuing their assets and lengthening the timeline by which banks are required to write down losses. Both Wells Fargo, which claimed a $3 billion profit in the first quarter, and Citigroup, which only lost 18 cents per share as opposed to the 34 cents per share analysts projected (which is practically cause for celebration in today's marketplace), put these changes to work for them.

Although critics decry the loosening of these standards, analysts have a kind of tough time calling banks out on this one since nobody really knows how much those mortgage-related assets are worth. Chances are, it's somewhere between the rosiest appraisal banks tend to favor and the unload-it-at-any-price rock bottom, but that's a pretty significant disparity in some cases-make it work for you!

Lowball your debt: A bit over half of Bank of America's $4.2 billion first-quarter profit is attributable to "credit-value adjustments." What this accounting maneuver means in English is this: If an institution sells debt, the price is dictated by the likelihood of default. The higher the risk, the lower price that debt commands.