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Schiff for Brains
I've seen a lot of chatter lately about the interview with Andrew Schiff in which he complained about how hard it was to get by on just $350,000 a year. The "smaller bonuses" environment on Wall Street is hitting the well-off in ways that the middle class finds, shall we say, unsympathetic. There are, last time I checked, 1228 comments on this one story, pretty much all of which tell Mr. Schiff to get stuffed.
Schiff, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Judd Hirsch in Ordinary People, was not the only suffering 1% to be interviewed. Regarding another individual, the article states: "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 in upstate New York. 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."
I actually sort of understand what the people interviewed are trying to say: once you get used to paying for a certain lifestyle (private school tuitions, nice cars, a vacation home, a gardener, etc.) it all adds up to a pretty big figure that needs to be covered each year. I have a good income that most of the U.S. would think of as pretty healthy, but believe me, I'm always worried about money. If I were a single man living on his own, I'd be living like a king (or, more accurately, I'd be able to save about 80% of my income, since it really doesn't cost that much for me to survive on my own). But these days, tuition to elementary school is literally four times what I paid going to a private college each year. And that's just one of many expenses.
For those of you out there who are pulling down big salaries but have seen their massive bonuses trimmed down to simply very big bonuses, here's my tip: don't go near a microphone. It's really not going to do you any good.
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Tim: "But these days, tuition to elementary school is literally four times what I paid going to a private college each year. And that's just one of many expenses."
Are you fucking kidding? I'll save you lots and lots of money...Go read: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto...$25 bucks will start saving you the $32,000 grand a year you spend to have your kid(s) brainwashed and damaged.
Forwarded to me: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/that_stuck_feeling.php
I have no use for the HuffPo, but I have noticed the dearth of MSM coverage of this.
All relative eh + plus total self-interest, cognitive dissonance and complete lack of empathy.
Tim Knight is hoist on his own petard for complaining about his own avoidable expenditure, though the ensuing fight with his wife would quickly inform him living on his own would be more costly.
All he is doing is implying that his level of financial existence is somehow more 'moral' than those who both get and spend more than he does.
I have met people like him before and one example is this:
Some 35 years ago I knew a woman who was a High School Principal on about $90,000 pa (1980s) who considered herself 'poor', though her husband pulled in about another $45,000 pa, 1980s dollars.
Anyhow it was their custom to invite (yes I am Australian) myself and other plebs to BBQs, at one of which she told us all about how broke she was, considering payments on two new cars, losses on time-share apartments and superannuation (401k) payments.
It did not cross her mind that I was recently unemployed, nor that others present were in strife too and far more seriously than she could possibly imagine.
The irony was emphasized by her being a 'leading light' in the Labor Party, which was supposed to stand up for the 99% (a recent invocation of centuries-old protest against exploitation by a minority).
But of course she had been bought, like Tim Knight has been, i.e. by imagining that they and their ilk are entitled to a life-style which ONLY the very rich have had for centuries.
Tim, since you said that you ALWAYS worry about money, maybe you should do what I've done these past few years and that's fade you. I want to thank you. Fading the absurd trades you lay out day in and day out has been an absolute gold mine for me. So you might just want to try that - fade your own trades. Please keep it up.
Yawn.
Vanities, Bonfire of the, by Wolfe, Tom. Read the first chapter, now over 25 years old, and see if Schiff's whine isn't just recycled fiction.
Did anyone else consider what the starving Africans would have thought (had they heard) when the US economy went into recession, and blue collar Americans complained about struggling? "Struggling, really?"
Just here to propose another perspective.
There are people in poorer countries worrying about where to find their next meal than what to feed their dogs or how to pay for their club's annual fee. Some people are even living off on personal loan to get by or hoping on freebies from coupons and banks. Now I don't consider HIM struggling enough compared to these people.
I'm pretty sure there are bigger fish to fry.
How to manage on $350,000?
I wouldn't know.
It's at least 10 years since I had to struggle that problem.
Good luck everybody!
Cheese, Gromit! It's all cheese!
The idea that you can't live in NYC on less than $350Gs is just patently absurd. Anyone who makes such a claim in a public space is a moron.
However, I am going to try and make a different observation.
Obviously the financial services sector has to be radically downsized. This is a problem we all talk about constantly. Now the market is doing what Frankenbarney failed miserably to accomplish. It is punishing a giant misallocation of human resource and capital.
There are thousands of FSI types crying the blues now and they constantly claim that this will hurt people of lower economic strata in the service sector etc.
Perhaps, but the city, the country and the world will be better off as a result of the rebalancing.
If this re-balancing could be achieved; the results would be astonishing. And they can be calculated. But they cannot be achieved. Because, human greed, and entrenched position says, NO. Too bad.
This is an Austrain slanted blog and we are reading some hit piece on the Schiffs ?
What the fuck is wrong with you people ? Nazis ?
Andrew Shiffs point is that he wants to live a decent lifestyle WHILE being able to save some money. Who wouldn't ? He was just trying to enfesize the effects of inflation.
I'll tell you what's offensive comrade. Its the putrid stench of rotting flesh wafting through the air comingling with seville row and custom shoes burning in tandem along with the seered flesh they once covered. Decapitation, eviscerations, disembowelments, and castrations will all be commonplace as soon as the proletariat repatriates all important capital.
Now ask yourself this you lowlife piece of shit.....What does this guy do to EARN 350K? Let's restore the notion of merit in the abominable wasteland. Just because you stole some fucking (aka fundraising + leverage + 2/20) doesn't mean you fucking EARNED IT. Schiff and all the financiers deserve to be publicly violated (the accuracy of his prognostications are immaterial). Too many megalomaniac assholes in finance. They are all the same. Finance is a scam.
enfesize? I hate it when morons try to enfesize things. Idiot.
Would be very interested to see what the Hampton summer share bookings are like so far. That should be very telling.
As for Wall Street, this guy Schiff is supposed to tell people how to manage their money for a living (as cleverly stated above) but I bet if he was making 500K a year - at one point, he was:
Spending 650K
Taking home 240K after NYC / NYS / FED taxes, FICA, etc.
Certainly Leveraged (which of course he lived a lifestyle beyond his means)
Is now wishing he put that money into PMs, a mattress and actually saved now rather than being extravagent and flashy impressing his friends.
It's the poor kids that will feel this brunt the hardest after he loses his job for this egregiously stupid article he did. They will no doubt that night have a 'family meeting' and they will have to go to public schools and be mocked. At that age, that is irreparable harm.
Then his wife will divorce him and he will be forced to pay alimony based off his 350K as the judge will side with her attorney that she sold her engagement ring to hire and retain him who argued that he can 'reasonably be expected to make that money again'. So before he is canned, she's already retained him. This article will not help him and she is probably embarrassed beyond comphrension and that will be especially acute this Saturday at Temple, if they even go - of this article. Who would hire this douche again?
His main goal in life now is to keep his daughters off the pole (if he has any) because the will undoubtedly hate him for this. For sure he was too busy making money to raise his kids with a religious foundation.
And there you have the next plot to Desperate Housewives this week.
Sounds harsh, but when I worked at the Squid, I saw this all the time. When the going is good, PMDs and other high level, paid guys got gumads and the wives may knew or chose to look the other way simply because they know they had at that time a high standard of living.
Hell, even Bear guys margined their restricted stock to buy summer homes in East Hampton. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Its all cyclical.
As in the words of the notorius NY Knick Patrick Ewing: "NBA player's make alot of money, but you gotta remember we spend alot of money too..."
He's a fool; and utterly irrelevant; he'll be dealt with by reality.
Yea but Judd Hirsch has integrity. Check out all the roles he played. None of them were dickhead where Schiff is the leading man, A-list.
Schiff doesn't know what it's like to be broke your whole life. At least he had a moment in the sun before he had to sell his sixth Mercedes and fire his gardener.
It is hard to make it in NYC on only $350k ... But Homeboy just doesn't feel a pressing need to shop around, which is often the case when you are one of the chosen few.
Hell, I paid only $350 a month for parking in lower Manhattan ... had to walk a couple blocks to the office, but that helps make ends meet. And what is the point of having a dog or two if you aren't going to use it as an excuse to slip around the corner and have that fling with your artist girlfriend a la Sherman McCoy? Come on, what's a little dogshit between you and what is probably the only friend or two you have and a little on the side?
There is only one way to respond to an article like that:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Some of you people crack me up! Try living on $1500/month SSI and a part time job @$15/hr. Being single again helps but it's no picnic.
I'm not whining. I got to this point all on my own...although my ex wife "wants" weren't exactly helpful :)
I'll survive though because my "needs" are few and my "wants" simple living out here in Montana-- God's country :)
be careful there buddy, not sure you can be working if getting a nice $1500 SSI check
Nah, it's fine, plenty of us of are working full-time gigs to pay folks to be old.
$15/hr would be a decent bump for me, although at least I've got a full-time gig with benefits.
Wait until the wife has to use the Solar Clothes Dryer.....oh, the embarassment of lugging the laundry basket outside and using clothespins to hang their clothes.
How will they be able to face the neighbors?
Can't do that it's in the home owners asociation rules; no clothes lines!!!
and he is in charge of marketing and communications, he's not just some entitled money manager, he is in charge of marketing and communications for Peter Schiff's firm, and his Dad is in prison for fighting the IRS, his comments are inexplicable
What's wrong with fighting the IRS?
Schiff is an idiiot but a lot of the people on here are pitiful haters. You're the ones in real trouble. He'll get by somehow but there's absolutely no future for people who resent someone with money......even if they are an idiot. How can you get ahead if you are wasting time hoping the other guy fails?
"Poverty arises and persists where corruption is endemic and enterprise is stifled, where basic fairness provided by the rule of law is absent. In such circumstances, poverty is an assault against human dignity, and in that assault lies the natural seed of human anger” — Colin Powell
'John Locke and Adam Smith, sometimes called the father of capitalism, considered morality a requirement for a successful economic system. Locke believed that supply and demand would generally take care of setting values on property, but also thought government should regulate excesses of accumulation of property that were destructive to the economy. As we see from the earliest laws recorded which prohibited stealing, the economy has always been under threat from those who find a way to obtain property in ways other than working for it." I think Locke would view Schiff (and most of wall street) as a individual(s) who have obtained property and wealth without working for it.I get your point. Being "covetous" and "cruel" to others are very unattractive traits that will not help one's soul (or for that matter, any other part of our being). Then again, selling oneself to "get ahead" in the fiat money game does not nourish one's soul either. It marks one as a slave to only one specific master.
STFU!
"But these days, tuition to elementary school is literally four times what I paid going to a private college each year. And that's just one of many expenses."
FUCK YOU - ENJOY YOUR FUTURE BANKRUPTCY
I read the linked article to this. the world is a much different place as percieved by this group. really they are only the metaphorical house niggers of the super rich. educated and allowed to steal a little to give tham an sense of entitlement and wealth while looking down upon the field niggers.
The bottom feeders of the upper class. In Illinois' north shore, they would be the "poor" people that live primarily on the west side of Sheridan Road. It was inevitable that they would be the next sacrifice. Trickle down economics and all that. Why can't we just have an honest gov't that doesn't interfere in the market place of life? I have a feeling that the residents on the east side of the street have reaped some benefits from the People via the gov't. Perhaps if the bottom feeders would wise up and live in a more affordable community and bank their excess they wouldn't find themselves now strapped to the wall of excessively high real estate taxes and over valued homes. I live in a low income community to the north and we would welcome any upper income wage earners with open arms. It would probably raise the test scores in our school district, as well.
the 'west of Sheridans' are not the next sacrifice. They're an example of how the previously sacrificed are currently living. An honest government, in the absence of recent revolution, is unlikely because government is a practical mechanism by which a few people can steal from many people. The amount of the theft, and its consequences, will impact different people in different ways. The bottom feeders will 'wise up' and develop a societal culture where any rat ass bastard who speaks to the government thieves will regret it. That's how it is in many neighborhoods west of Sheridan. That's how it is in many government agencies. Schiff's getting a first hand lesson in how the bottom feeders in government evolve to choke out anyone grasping for air, and even still, he's got a long way down to go.
you are insane. :) "free" market manipulation is the only solution to this crisis
I don't care if they want to manipulate the markets with their own money. We can boycott the markets. The problem is they are gambling with taxpayers money
Douche nozzle working for a douche bag...
Shiff NOSE what he is talking about
I guess we will be seeing Schiff in the front lines of OWS soon.
sad that envy and hate is so common.
http://expose2.wordpress.com
What this country needs is a good, honest...pogrom.
I'll gladly kick his ass for $10,000. One kick, center placed from four feet away. Could be worth something.
Wow that sounds mature<snickers>
The schiff **n*s are cheap con men
Dime a dozen in the USA
These fucking faggots of fraud should try being a prudent saver, or retired! Government Inc. robs the poor for welfare to the rich!
These fucks live high on life because of one thing -- failure rewarded!
I HOPE THEIR FAMILIES ARE TORN APART AND LIVES RUINED FOR THEIR GREED AND HUBRIS!
Money doesn't make the man, Schiff. Blaming your family only makes you underserving of one.
Did you really mean ScHIT for BRAINS? This guy obvious dont know what being frugal is.
I thought Peter Schiff had some sense for a jew but after seeing that he is related to this spoiled pathetic freeloading a-hole, this really set him back in my eyes now.
It is not just the moderate income NY residents who are having problems with expenses. Once you cross some income threshold in middle America there are no longer any discount coupons. Full tuitions costs at any higher ed program, writeoffs getting whacked, airfare is the same for everyone. It is pretty nutty when the guy is living in a 1200 sf apt. For what he is paying most of the country would have 4,000 sf, all brick, with pool and marble on a half acre lot. Park the cars in the garage and the dog plays in the backyard. But he is another one of the nutters who have convinced themselves that NYC is not a real rat infested grease trap.