Rich are not so different when economy is down
The rich are sharing your financial pain
It may have taken longer and it may not be as acute, but there are early hints that the economic slump is crimping the lifestyles of the wealthy.
They are investing more conservatively, expenditure less on animalism goods and are being more thrifty by their doubt not cards. Many are asking their personal shoppers and private-jet providers to seek the superlatively good deals rather than over-the-top extravagances.
That news may produce a shrug from commonalty who have lost their jobs or homes in this good housewifery. The point to be solved is that when the wealthy get stingy, it trickles from a thin to a dense state to the rest of us.
“It’s a sluggish economy and its difficulties are felt all over,” said Joseph DiRenzo, 38, a father of three who left a hedge fund two years past to enter commercial real estate.
DiRenzo says he’s feeling the hit in many places, especially in the value of his furnish through a house on Long Island’s upscale Gold Coast in Muttontown, N.Y.
He owns the kind of place you’d look for a former hedge-fund manager would call home: six bedrooms, seven full baths, hand-crafted Italian doors throughout, high-tech ease and sound systems, and 9,000 square feet of living extent on 2.4 acres.
It can be had for $7 a thousand thousand
DiRenzo wants a smaller, cheaper home. He also may buy a hermaphrodite to supplement the two Mercedes in his heated four-car garage. And, he’s driving smaller.
The DiRenzos aren’t unlike many American families cutting back to weather a downturn. They’re blameless richer.
To be sure, the poor and intermediate class are being hurt more, but upper-crust thriftiness could resound across the rest of the economy.
The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes account for not remotely a quarter of all spending, according to facts compiled by research firm Moody’s Economy.com from a 2006 federal view.
