stephenandrew
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- May 5, 2007
- Messages
- 148
It's more common than you'd ever believe. I've heard a rumor that Goldman Sachs is making low cost loans available to employees to bridge them over last year's cut in bonuses.
Naturally a lot of this is driven by overconfident, self-important, blow hards who think they are worth the money they make and always will be. The good times will never end. And besides, everyone in their circle spends the way they do, so it all seems normal . . . and to a certain extent, necessary.
But at the same time, "Wall Street" employees typically work in areas where the cost of living is so high as to be unimaginable to ordinary Americans. To say that "I would be set for life on $x00,000 per year" is not at all certain. Especially when you're required to work 80+ hours per week to pull down that paycheck. The idea of adding a 2-4hr round-trip commute to the lower cost x-urbs on top of your normal 12 hour day is simply unworkable. So you get a place in the city (NY), where the MEDIAN price for a condo is $1MM ($500K for a studio!!!!). But then you have kids, and the public schools here all blow. So you send them to private school for ~$30K per year a piece. Etc, etc, etc. The money goes fast.
Understand--but this gentleman and his family reside in Tampa, FL. My guess is that $500K in Tampa gets you a pretty decent house, in a pretty decent neighborhood. I also would not be surprised if Tampa has a few good local, public (read "free") school Districts. Also, I am not certain how your total number of hours work have anything to do with this---if I worked 1 hour a year and made $750,000 or 4000 hours per year and made the same thing, its still a boatload of money. So, I am pretty certain that on $750K per year in Tampa, with two kids, I would be ok (atleast based on how I live my life now).