the abundance of the rich

With the recession, I’ve been reading quite a bit of the rich becoming less rich. Many have suffered as a result of the downturn in the market due to real estate losses. Many of these rich struggle with maintaining their lifestyles: Some have refused to cut back on their $10,000/month mortgage because they don’t want to sell their dream home despite having lost a job. Or others who lament the fact that their bonuses are not going to be particularly big and must cut back on private jet plane rides.

I have had very little sympathy for their situations, as I know that the plight of the poor is much harder. The poor generally suffer more. For them, it is not a question of less hair extensions or less restaurant meals, but trying to decide whether to buy food or pay for gas, resorting to eating junk food because it’s cheaper than real food or losing their houses altogether.

Yet, reading this recent article in the New York Times has stirred pity and sadness in me, not for the fact that the wealthy now have less, but for the way that they are so controlled by their wealth. We think that wealth gives us power, but from these examples, it seems much more likely that wealth has power over us:

One of (a divorce lawyer)’s 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.”

~

“Even if they’re not in danger of not paying their mortgage, there’s still a psychological change,” said Chris Del Gatto, chief executive of Circa, which has watched its business jump by 50 percent in the last year as wealthy clients sell their spare diamonds and Rolexes. “The economy is an issue even for people who don’t need the money.”

Their spouses could leave them when they discover that their net worth has collapsed to eight figures from nine. Friends and business associates could avoid them as they pass their lunchtime tables at Barney’s or the Four Seasons. And these snubs could trickle down to their children
“They fear their kids won’t get invited to the right birthday parties,” said Michele Kleier, an Upper East Side-based real estate broker. “If they have to give up things that are invisible, they’re O.K. as long as they don’t have give up things visible to the outside world.”

So New York’s very wealthy are addressing their distress in discreet and often awkward ways. They try to move their $165 sessions with personal trainers to a time slot that they know is already taken. They agree to tour multimillion-dollar apartments and then say the spaces don’t match their specifications. They apply for a line of credit before art auctions, supposedly to buy a painting or a sculpture, but use that borrowed money to pay other debts.

~

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. Now, he said, his clients “catastrophize” smaller bonuses or shriveling stock portfolios. “You have to remind them that there’s something that has always been there,” he said. “All the money helped mask the anxiety.”

~

The very wealthy can’t hide anything from their nutritionists and personal trainers, because they see the weight gain. Heather Bauer, a dietitian who works with many Wall Street executives who pay $600 to $800 a month for her services, says her clients have been eating and drinking more in the last six months. She sees results of this indulging each time they step on a scale, and in their journals that record what they’ve eaten.

One Wall Street executive, Ms. Bauer said, snacks on nuts in her office all day to manage the stress of potentially losing her position, while another confesses to inhaling four bowls of cereal at 10 p.m. Even their sex lives are suffering, Ms. Bauer said, because of the stress or because the weight gain makes them feel unattractive.

~

No wonder it says in Ecclesiastes 5:12 that “the sleep of a laborer is sweet whether he eats little or much but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep”.

I admit that when I see the wardrobes and manicures of Sex and the City, or the sophisticated ladies shopping at the Burberry and Coach stores on the street where I work, a small part of me wishes and envies for that so-called “freedom” (to buy) and image of wealth. But an even deep part of me knows that if I had all that, I would not be satisfied nor content. “Whoever loves money never has money enough” (Ecclesiastes 5:11).*

*And I am thankful that I can say right now, I am very happy with what I have. And in fact, I have a lot (much much more than most people in the world have).