Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.Heaven's no! Working folks who must manage without huge salaries and bonuses DO NOT understand the stress of people with incomes of $350,000 or more, when each month they may be challenged to pay for the necessities of life such as food, housing, and health care and perhaps some months be forced to do without one or the other of the necessities.
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Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
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The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.
"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. "Could you imagine what it's like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?" (My emphasis)
What the stressed-out high earners may have to give up:
$7,500 a year for a golf club membershipMark Brunson, who blogs at Enough About Me, sent me the link and thought at first, as I did, that the article was satire, but indeed the article is serious.
$30,000 a year for a peer-learning group for investors
$32,000-a-year for a daughter's prep school tuition
