Much as I love the Times …
Those articles are written about the average person - assuming the average person is a VP at least and has several professional degrees. Exceptions are made if you are a published writer.
It is not just lifestyle - their recipes usually requiring several weeks to prepare and ingredients only found in the basement of an obscure food market somewhere on 23rd street. I live in the Bay Area and have access to some good Asian groceries but even they are right out of yak tongues.
Not to mention the Travel section. Their 36 hours in X feature is an excellent list of places to avoid. Yesterday’s, about Austin, listed plenty of bars, and then a restaurant 30 miles away. I’m surprised it didn’t wind up 36 hours in the Austin slammer.
Didn’t you read the article?!? Obviously, a writer for the New York Times is an urbane professional and as such, has to have a driver. Scratch that, a chauffeur.
As a New Yorker, this aspect of the NY Times makes me absolutely ballistic. But I try to have fun with it at the same time.
On the frozen hot chocolate though, I think it does have a slightly different quality than a milkshake … I find it to be more like a chocolate slushee – more icy, less creamy.
I can’t get over the little girl who says “mommy, you’re the only one without red soles on your shoes.” There is such an easy answer for this one. “Honey, mommy is also the only one who doesn’t waste money to get shoes that cost ten times as much simply because they have red soles. And that is why your jeans don’t cost $400 either because we buy them at the Gap. Now go tell all your little friends that mommy’s shoes protect her feet just as well as their mommies’ shoes and that her handbag carries the same stuff without costing over a thousand dollars and that is why mommy and daddy are so happy-because we don’t waste time and money worrying about having exactly the same things as anybody else, or wasting time and energy on things we don’t want or need. Maybe after dinner we’ll make some frozen hot chocolate then all play monopoly together.”
To be fair, we have friends who are constantly complaining about how broke they are yet smoke American Spirits and go drinking three nights a week and are always somehow managing to fly to Mexico on holiday once a year, brand new Macbook Air in tow.
To be fair, though, the rich do have a lengthy history of stratifying who is better than whom based on how much money, how old that money is, schools graduated, clubs belonged to, etc. They probably do feel like the kid who had to wear his older siblings’ hand-me-down clothes to school when they aren’t living a lifestyle appropriate to the next layer of wealth above them. Hence, no matter how much they make, they will overspend.
Some comedian or another characterized it as a professional athlete is rich, the guy who owns the team is wealthy. The rich it seems worry because they can’t live like they are wealthy. The wealthy worry that they aren’t becoming wealthier each day. Their problems are so alien to me that I can neither empathize nor sympathize.
As fun as it is to mock the idiots in these articles, for a fascinating (IMHO) look into the average American millionaire’s spending habits check out The Millionaire Next Door. Essentially, most millionaires drive used cars, wear Walmart watches, and have had the same suit from Men’s Wearhouse for 10 years. Here’s the wiki.
Cracked had a pretty insightful article on this just a few days ago. The point made there was that of course you can be short of cash on $500,000, after you’ve spent it all.
I have a friend who lives in California and complains, constantly, about money. I don’t know how much they’re pulling in but it can’t be a penny less than $300K a year; on the few occasions I’ve said “er, you seem to be doing okay” he whines that expenses are so high there.
Well, sure, I can believe he spends most of his money. It’s pretty fucking obvious, in fact. They lives in a 4,000-square-foot 3-car-garage mansion on 1.5 acres of land on top of a damned mountain. It has 53 windows, skylights, four patios, and a view you could sell postcards of. I should point out that they bought this at the nadir of the real estate bubble and saved an ass-ton of money as a result. They drive expensive cars, have taken more vacations in the last five years than I will take in 15, and their attitude towards small consumer items is “buy immediately” because they can do that; their account at Amazon is Super Duper Ultra Awesome Status or whatever their higher level is. They have every conceivable electronic device a consumer can have. The guy buys Blu-Rays he doesn’t get around to watching just because he liked the movie when he saw it before. So sure, they have to worry about how to put an extra $20,000 away this year in retirement savings instead of settling for $15,000; they’ve converted all their wealth into a beautiful home and expensive toys. I find it amazing that he can’t perceive this, but he can’t. He, too has whined about tax cuts over $250K being cancelled, despite the fact that he could cover it by just buying, say, 100 DVDs and video games a year instead of 170.
And if I sound jealous, shit, why should I be? I’m not that rich, but I’m sure not worried about where my food and rent money’s coming from. I’m typing this on a nice new computer, a snazzy gaming rig, that I bought without a second though. Who am I to bitch? I’m doing just fine. And yet I DO bitch about money. So am I better than my friend? No.
One thing I can’t figure out… They seem to be assuming a single salary of 500k:
“If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are…”
And then they go on to list an expense of $45,000/year for a nanny. If only one person is working, what they hell do they need a full time nanny for? Does mommy just go to the club all day and play?
A huge number of their “expenses” could be lowered with no noticeable affect on their lifestyle; Many of them are simply so that others will see that they are rich. 35K a year for designer gowns?
And another thing - is an apartment for $8,000/month “modest” in NYC? And for such an apartment, would another $8,000/month for condo fees be normal?
Wait - if the kids are going to these high-priced private schools, why do they need nannies?
I will admit, I’ve made similar comments on a much much *much *smaller scale. My husband and I have always owned sailboats, never brand new but mostly in the 30+ foot range that we could vacation on. They were never fancy, expensive vessels, but it still costs to keep a boat in a marina and have it hauled out for painting and maintenance. I was talking to one of my sisters and complaining about our boat expenses, and she made some comment like “At least you have a boat.” And it did make me think before bringing such things up again. On the other hand, she and her husband chose to go into debt in order to send both of their kids to private schools and out-of-state private colleges, which I thought was a bit extreme. Anyway, I now try to keep my gripes about the boat confined to conversations with other boat owners.
