Monday, March 5, 2012

It's A Hard Luck Life Having To Live In A 1,200 Square Foot Brownstone Apt. Without A Dishwasher

More from the sob story piece in Bloomberg Businessweek about tough times on Wall Street:

Sonnenfeldt describes a widespread feeling of “malaise” and a “paralysis that doesn’t allow one to believe that generally things are going to get better” among his members, who pay $30,000 a year to be part of the group. That malaise is shared by Andrew Schiff, marketing director for Euro Pacific Capital, where his brother is CEO. With a lower bonus, he earned $350,000 last year. While that’s enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, and he “wouldn’t want to whine,” he says it doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, Kent (Conn.) summer rental, and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square-foot Brooklyn apartment. “I feel stuck,” Schiff says. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

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 7-year-old son will apply in a few years. “I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff says. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher.” What he wants: “The stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had.”


How horrible - can't afford bigger than 1200 square feet, doesn't even have a dishwasher.

Yet even with a lower bonus, he took home $350,000 last year.

Yeah, that sounds just like that "malaise" Jimmy Carter talked about back in the 70's.

But it gets even better:

Hans Kullberg, 27, a trader at Wyckoff (N.J.) hedge fund Falcon Management who says he earns about $150,000 a year, also is adjusting his expectations. After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, he spent a $10,000 signing bonus from Citigroup (C) on a six-week trip to South America. Last May he vacationed in India for 10 days. In August he went to a bachelor party in Ibiza, spending $3,000 on the three-day trip. In January he was in Las Vegas for another bachelor party. Lately, however, he’s been cutting back. Last month a friend invited him on a trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The friend was going to be a judge in a wet T-shirt contest, Kullberg says. He turned down the offer. It was “the most financially prudent thing to do,” he says. “I’m not totally sure now about what I’m going to get paid this year.”


So sad - he couldn't go watch his friend judge a wet t-shirt contest at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Just what is this world coming too!

I mean, here is a hard working Master of the Universe who puts in a hard day's work stealing millions for his bosses and they don't even piece him off enough to be able to afford a few days in The Big Easy pouring water over silicon implants.

What a sense of entitlement these Wall Street criminals have.

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