With smaller Wall Street bonuses, one-percenters say they feel the pinch
I know I'm a man and real men don't cry, but I admit I teared up several times while reading this. Everytime I struggled to support my family financially, I lamented about how a better job for me was stolen by a woman, a minority, or an illegal. I never realized how lucky I was to support a family of 9 on $35,000 a year. I can't imagine how much harder making $350,000 a year would be.
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, Conn., summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.
"I feel stuck," Schiff said. "The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach."
"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron 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?'"
I'm so glad my wife and me avoid that kind of stress by homeschooling all of our kids.
Wall Street headhunter Daniel Arbeeny said his "income has gone down tremendously." Executive-search veterans who work with hedge funds and banks make $500,000 in good years, said Arbeeny, declining to discuss his income. He said he no longer takes annual ski trips to Whistler, Tahoe or Aspen.
My family never takes vacations like that, so we don't have to feel the pain of giving them up.
Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club. A Labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.
My family really has it lucky. We just park our 1993 Aerostar in front of the house, we go down to Putt-Putt Golf when we have a few extra pennies, it only costs bullets to shoot at birds and small animals, and our dogs are tied to a stake with rope in the back yard and are fed table scraps. When it's cold or rainy, they hang out in the kitchen.
The malaise is shared by Schiff, the New York-based marketing director for Euro Pacific Capital, where his brother is chief executive. His family rents the lower duplex of a brownstone in Cobble Hill, where his two children share a room. His 10-year-old daughter is a student at $32,000-a-year Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn. His son, 7, will apply in a few years. "I can't imagine what I'm going to do," Schiff said. "I'm crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don't have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand."
The family rents a three-bedroom summer house in Connecticut and will go there again this year for one month instead of four. Schiff said he brings home less than $200,000 after taxes, health insurance and 401(k) contributions. The closing costs, renovation and down payment on one of the $1.5 million, 17-foot-wide rowhouses nearby, what he called "the low rung on the brownstone ladder," would consume "every dime" of the family's savings, he said.
I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. My children have all been homeschooled and we only need 3 bedrooms, one for my wife and me, one for the boys, and one for the girls. The kids like it that way up until they get married. Washing dishes is really hard. I mean, I assume it is hard because I've never washed dishes, that's a woman's job.
I never realized until now how fortunate my family is to not have a lot of money. I mean, hey, if you're already at rock bottom, there's nowhere to fall. It is so cruel of Hussein Obama to kick those people when they're already down by trying to make them pay more taxes. What a bully. These are the people who need help, not welfare queens. I'd like to start a collection for these people, using the money I'm saving to get a new vehicle. I'm willing to wait a bit longer to buy my
dream truck.
