IN MY SHOES: What It's Like To Go From A Nine-Figure To An Eight-Figure Income
“[P]eople who provide services to the wealthy - lawyers, art advisers, personal trainers and hairstylists - say they are getting an earful about their clients’ financial anxieties,” reports The New York Times. Turmoil on Wall Street – layoffs, shrunken bonuses, evaporating portfolios – is causing the ultra wealthy to make discreet adjustments to their spending habits, such as stretching appointments for $350 highlights and $150 haircuts to every eight weeks instead of six; ditching $10,000-an-hour private jet rentals in favor of chartered jets; hocking seldom worn jewelry; and pruning their Patek Philippe watch collections. Some men fear that their wives will dump them “because their incomes have shrunk, say, to $2 million a year from $8 million”:
Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, has found that her days have become crammed seeing clients, all worried about how an economic downturn will affect their marriages.
They seem to have nothing to fret about: their net worths range from $5 million to $1 billion. A blip in the markets shouldn’t send their chateau-size Park Avenue co-ops to foreclosure or exile them to Payless Shoes. …
One of her clients recently confessed that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations.
“I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,” she said. “He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically.” …
The drop in wealth has also exposed other personal problems, like bad marriages. Money - which bought jewelry or extravagant vacations - helped smooth over many of these difficulties, said Kenneth Mueller, a psychotherapist in the East Village who works with many Wall Street bankers and real estate developers.
Editorial Note: The Stiletto doesn't expect to earn enough - or to inherit enough - to ever have to worry about her Significant Other being with her solely or partly because of her money.
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