even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

think he said it was 3 dinners that they can regularly extend to 5 meals

it is going into his overly cautious bank account, which he pairs with his overly risky investments

it could go to you if you have a health based iphone app idea

@man alive yeah he says that she makes 3 things that they consume over 5 dinners a week. it seemed like he has two kids but tbh im not going to bother reading it to double check. but $15 a person per meal while high isnt outrageous esp considering how much it would cost him to eat out even two nights a week instead. honestly with the exception of his mortgage none of his consumption patterns seem unreasonable mostly he just seems mentally ill.

Maybe he's blowing it all on expensive pity parties

Renting an entire orchestra of tiny violinists playing very sad songs for him isn't cheap

he learned that technique from reading Your Butcher is Actually Super Fucking Rich

he says in the article that hes hoarding money in a low-interest chequing account instead of paying down debts or investing in stable, low-risk assets. and that hes ok with it because of his larger fears about macroeconomic uncertainty. idk it feels like his relationship w/ money and security is disordered in a way that isnt that illuminating or indicative of larger social issues. he even says people he knows with much lower incomes feel secure, comfortable, affluent &c

Like I said it seems like a reasonable price for a personal chef probably, but if 'personal chef' even appears as a line item in your budget or even hypothetical possible budget, you are well off, and talking to anybody about supposedly recent 'paycheck to paycheck' living is NAGL to an extent that it just conveys an incredible and hilarious lack of self awareness

like sorry if you have enough in savings to support your family for two years, stfu

One of the reasons I have a lot of liquid reserve is so that I can make investments. I’m doing my homework right now as another opportunity to make a private equity investment has presented itself.

i've got a bad feeling about this

what's fascinating about this guy is that he's clearly smart and clearly a fool at the same time. one rarely sees the two so vividly played off against each other.

idk i see it all the time.

new board description

if 'personal chef' even appears as a line item in your budget or even hypothetical possible budget, you are well off

relieved we got here

idk it feels like his relationship w/ money and security is disordered in a way that isnt that illuminating or indicative of larger social issues.

This is a good point actually. Usually the very rich people you hear about complaining about not being rich don't have that much money saved and do live in a ridiculous house that eats up all their money. This guy isn't really saying "I make $570K but I can't afford to send my kids to college," it's more like "I make $570K and I can afford to send my kids to college but somehow I stay up all night worrying that I can't."

Also, why do they have three cars? That minivan is like two years of personal chef!

isn't it like a cliche that doctors (and lawyers) are terrible investors?

If it's not I'm sure it easily could be. I mean lots of lawyers are effectively heavily invested in their own law firms, right?

well that's a separate thing, but I was thinking more of there being a wall street belief that lawyers and doctors make good "dumb money"

I have a couple of friends that aren't in personal chef territory, but he graduated college late (40s) and immediately got hired as a senior accountant with some kind of energy firm - with her teacher salary, they're now in the 140-150k range which is a very healthy living down here. They've got a weekly housekeeping service, yard guy and then the absolute weirdest thing is that they just hired another friend to be their laundry lady. She's a stay at home mom and they pay her to wash everything/press shirts/etc. because laundry was sooooo time-consuming. I take a handful of shirts to the cleaner because I can't iron to save my life, but it's really that tough to wash your damn underwear? You throw it in, then go do something else for 45 minutes, toss it in the dryer, do something else for 30 minutes, then toss that shit in your drawer. As it is they still have to drop it off, pick it up and put it away.

isn't it like a cliche that doctors (and lawyers) are terrible investors?

im not sure its a cliche but they say it in 'wolf of wall street'

fwiw i thought the interview wasnt that risible, its not like hes some venture cap billionaire comparing raising tax rates on capital gains to the holocaust or w/e. if anything i think that sense of economic vulnerability in members of the professional class is interesting, how aware some people are of the gap btw people are v well off and the truly rich

fwiw, our two person household's income is within a gnat's eyelash of the USA median income and I feel like we are rich by any of the measures that I find meaningful. We've got enough income to ace Maslow's hierarchy of needs with flying colors and how much more do you need once you've risen that far?

an ipad cover encrusted with rubies and pearls

milo man I've had a load of wet laundry in the washer for three days because I haven't had time to fold the clothes in the dryer so I would probably hire somebody to do our laundry if we could afford it. Before we had an apartment with a washer/dryer we'd use the drop off service at the laundromat with some frequency which is kind of the same. Plus maybe your friends are doing the other woman a favor, too.

tldr: your friends = people who know how to live

I can totally understand laundry service if yr a professional and you need presentable work wear

THe guy int he article sounds like he's two steps away from buying gold on eBay

He als osounds like he's gonna lose all his money in that new investment he's thinking about

Anyway I used to wash and press my own shirts and it takes me like 10-15 minutes per shirt because I'm bad at it, also prep work like pre-soak with oxiclean to get rid of collar/ring stain, if you have a friend who's willing to do that why not let them do your underwear too

carl :( your laundry is going to smell like mildew :(

isn't it like a cliche that doctors (and lawyers) are terrible investors?

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Tuesday, February 10, 2015 8:28 PM (Yesterday)

my stepfather, a doctor who lost a small fortune investing unwisely, once rather ruefully informed me that doctors & lawyers are notoriously bad investors. his theory was that they go through life receiving constant affirmation of their wisdom & intelligence, so assume that they can follow their instincts and come out okay.

carl :( your laundry is going to smell like mildew :(

― 龜, Wednesday, February 11, 2015 1:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yeah, I have to rewash that no question.

xp I always figured it was people with large salaries who don't need to understand business or finance in order to earn them, but your explanation makes sense too, probably both. Lawyers are also notoriously bad at math, and yes, they tend to follow their "intuitions" even where data might improve their success.

I had anxiety dreams over the safety of this man's money last night

xp You can almost forgive them. After all, data isn't what convinces juries.

i get my laundry picked up and delivered and for me it is the best money i spend

Update: I managed to get the laundry folded. There is no longer a load of towels cold-molding in our washer.

He rattled off a hectic schedule of steampunk picnics, dinners on vintage trains and burlesque shows. The group also had a taste for sideshow oddities in the style of Coney Island entertainments. Morgana had a video on her iPhone, for example, of a scaled-down Ferris wheel being ridden by taxidermied squirrels. “Isn’t that something?” she mused.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/travel/regilding-the-gilded-age-in-new-york.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

It was the perfect night for a séance.

This is awesome and I had a similar idea to do this last year. I totally want to go to a seance.

I don't know how I ended up on this article but this guy starts his travelogue humblebragging about not caring about losing expensive stuff (credit cards, cash, laptops, etc.) and how it is really just evidence that he is some kind of absent-minded genuis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

I saw there were like 3 or 4 articles on this guy, turns out he is a novelist. The NY Times says "He cries all over the place in the first three volumes of his six-part autobiographical novel". The book sounds like a monument to pointless self-indulgence and naval gazing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/books/knausgaards-my-struggle-book-three-explores-fearful-past.html

um, well it's driven by him coming to terms with his abusive upbringing

“Whether he hit me or not made no difference,” Mr. Knausgaard writes. “It wasn’t the pain I was afraid of, it was him, his voice, his face, his body, the fury it emitted, that was what I was afraid of, and the terror never let up, it was there for every single day of my entire childhood.”

he's sort of a big deal

Lol I've never heard of him but after first glance at the URL thought it said Karl Rove

he's apparently the new Proust

that reviewer got malaria from him :((((

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/why-im-a-public-school-teacher-but-a-private-school-parent/386797/?utm_source=SFFB

featuring one of the best taglines I've ever seen

It’s not selling out; it’s buying in.

Only the NYT could set the beginning of their triumph-over-adversity story at Exeter.

And it ends at Scripps ($47K / year)

Somehow she managed to make something of herself