Poor CEOs cannot live on $500,000 a year

[Regulus Tera]

Will someone think of the CEOs? They might have to do normal people things!

Originally Posted by New York Times

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Therefore, even if it is not for sympathy but for sport, consider the numbers.

The cold hard math can be cruel.

Like those taxes. If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are: federal taxes, $2,645; Social Security, $596; Medicare, $139; state taxes, $682; and city, $372, bringing the weekly take-home to $5,180, or about $269,000 a year, said Martin Cohen, a Manhattan accountant.

Now move to living expenses.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Not every bank executive has school-age children, but for those who do, offspring can be expensive. In addition to paying tuition, “You’re not going to get through private school without tutoring a kid,” said Sandy Bass, the editor of Private School Insider, a newsletter that covers private schools in the New York City area. One hour of tutoring once a week is $125. “That’s the low end,” she said. “The higher end is 150, 175.” SAT tutors are about $250 an hour. Total cost for 30 weeks of regular tutoring: $3,750.

Two children in private school: $64,000.

Nanny: $45,000.

Ms. Bass, whose husband is an accountant with many high-end clients, said she spends about $425 every 10 days on groceries for her family. Annual cost: about $15,000.

More? Restaurants. Dry cleaning. Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can’t look like a slob.

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

By the way, the frozen hot chocolate costs $8.50.

Their pain is our pain too.

[Lord Setheris]

The wealthy learned to hide from the waking reality that we all face day to day. Now they will be brought back into the fold. While I acknowledge the challenges they will be facing, here is the fact. If you took federal bailout money for your company, you have no right... NO RIGHT to continue to live like a king. You will take what we are willing to share, and be proud of it.

[stefan]

Boo Fucking Hoo. too expensive to keep living in your palace? then move the fuck out and go live somewhere where it isnt so expensive. everyone else in the fucking country does, the rich have no excuse. I hate to act like THIS, but if they were in almost any other country in the world when they pulled this shit they'd have already had them and their family lined up against a wall and shot for their stupidity, so they have no fucking right to complain about not being able to live like a king.

I mean, really? you complain that you'd be unable to save money when you walk around in 1,000 dollar suits and hire 45,000 dollar nannies? I hate to break it to you, but a 1,000 dollar suit doesn't look THAT much better than one you get at the department store, and as for nannies, everyone else makes do by hiring the teenage girl next door. and really, ski vacations? FUCK no. maybe if your kids start to complain about not being able to go skiing anymore, you can have the balls to admit that its because you fucked the whole country up and you practically had to have a gun against your head to realise it.

[viale]

but what I'm interested in knowing is. Where are their monthly membership fees to Iluminati, New World Order and Alien takeover showing?

It must be expensive to secretley finance global domination.

[G.I.R.]

How am I supposed to feel sorry for someone who received a yearly bonus that is in the six figures? Someone who tries to use bailout money to buy a fucking private jet with leather seats and a customizable entertainment center. Someone who hosts fucking Squash tournaments... that's right... SQUASH. Fuck them and their boo hoo crying. In a time where unemployment is at an all time low, they should be fucking thanking US for what they get.

If you ask me, I think these companies should be left to their own devices and allowed to collapse in on themselves. Let these CEOs and big whigs learn what its like to live like a real human being. Learn that when you squander money, you don't get to have more money.

Bunch of pissy, asshat crybabies.

[Raiden]

...

I am fairly certain I would kill people to get $500,000 a year. That's not even a joke. I'm working at least two part-time jobs at any given time just to scrape by tuition, bills, and taxes.

Living like kings is for those who have the skill to deserve it. They have proven that they do not have it. Screw 'em.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by stefan

Boo Fucking Hoo. too expensive to keep living in your palace? then move the fuck out and go live somewhere where it isnt so expensive. everyone else in the fucking country does, the rich have no excuse. I hate to act like THIS, but if they were in almost any other country in the world when they pulled this shit they'd have already had them and their family lined up against a wall and shot for their stupidity, so they have no fucking right to complain about not being able to live like a king.

...You can't really mean that right?

Are you honestly saying that you think that just because in some countries that's how the government responds to such things, that they should...

I don't even know.

Goddamn man. At the surface, yeah, they shouldn't really be complaining. But drawing that comparison is just flat out nonsensical. The standards of human rights in America are what they are, and just because some countries in the world are run by complete psychopaths, that doesn't mean everyone run by the sane and (for the most part) righteous should adhere to a lower standard than they feel they're entitled to.


I'm not saying that they DESERVE better, or that they even really deserve what they're getting, but they damn sure have the right to bitch about if they want.

[Mirai Gen]

Oh man, I feel so sorry that this guy might have to trade in his Rolls Royce for a car that's slightly less absurd to make us average guys not have to work two jobs.

And who will pay the personal trainers?! They might have to sign up for a gym!

This sort of selfishness by us normal people is just not fair!

[MasterOfMagic]

They might have to drive themselves now? OH NOES. I'M SO UPSET. Can't you tell how upset I am? I'm bawling.

Baw, Baw.

EDIT: It'd be different if they weren't taking billions of dollars from us to fix the companies they screwed up. But even then, 250k after taxes is still a lot. My dream salary isn't even that much (Before taxes). Jesus.

[stefan]

Originally Posted by grthwllms

...You can't really mean that right?

Are you honestly saying that you think that just because in some countries that's how the government responds to such things, that they should...

I don't even know.

Goddamn man. At the surface, yeah, they shouldn't really be complaining. But drawing that comparison is just flat out nonsensical. The standards of human rights in America are what they are, and just because some countries in the world are run by complete psychopaths, that doesn't mean everyone run by the sane and (for the most part) righteous should adhere to a lower standard than they feel they're entitled to.


I'm not saying that they DESERVE better, or that they even really deserve what they're getting, but they damn sure have the right to bitch about if they want.

my point was that I don't like making comparisons like that, but really. what they did was practically legal treason, and they're bitching about not being able to have a chauffeur?