There is one group in America really taking it on the chin in these tough economic times.
Justin Sullivan, managing director of Regent Jet, which leases private airplanes, said most clients in real estate and on Wall Street are switching to chartered jets over private jets, and cutting their flight budgets by about 25 percent. One New York real estate developer cut his budget to less than $250,000 a year from $1.5 million a year.
"A year ago, he would have only flown Gulfstreams," Mr. Sullivan said. "Now it’s moving to the point where he’s flying Beech jets and Learjets."
Imagine the shame and humiliation of flying a Learjet instead of a Gulfstream and having to cut your travel budget a staggering 83 percent!
One divorce lawyer in New York literally had to advise her client "...to tell his wife that she had to stop spending...He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically."
Yes, his net worth dropped a hellish 60 percent - from twenty million dollars to just eight million dollars. He was terrified his wife would leave because he couldn't afford the basics anymore. Thats right, no more shopping trips to Paris, no more ice statues of Michelangelo's David urinating vodkaat simple birthday parties. No more $5,000 cashmere doggie sweaters. She's just going to have to cut back on the basics. Like hair highlights:
On a spring afternoon, a half-dozen hairstylists to the very wealthy talked about how customers are stretching their $350 highlights and $150 haircuts to every eight weeks instead of six weeks. Some women are cutting out highlights entirely, saying they would "rather be brunettes."
But, as always in tough economic times, its always the children that suffer, and suffer terribly in ways that adults cant even begin to comprehend:
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."
I can barely type these words as violent spasms of crying jags and voluminous tears dripping on my keyboard interfere with my ability to write this diary at the thought of little Gweneth and Harry not being able to get invited to the right birthday parties becuase their parents net worth has dropped from nine figures to eight figures. Kids without food, homes or vaccinations laboring in rice paddies in India should have it so terribly hard!
Pity the poor rich - no one suffers like them.