Rich cutting back on payments to mistresses

[NewJeffCT]

It is Wednesday, so you probably think this is from The Onion. Nope, it is the Wall Street Journal. Obviously, this is a sure sign of recession.


November 18, 2008, 11:20 am
Rich Cut Back on Payments to Mistresses

You know times are tough when the rich start cutting costs on their mistresses.

According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons.

Rich people are getting hit, and they’re all expressing the need to curtail unnecessary spending,” said Russ Alan Prince, president of Prince & Assoc., a wealth-research firm based in Connecticut. “Lovers are part of the same calculation.”

Of course, any study of millionaires and their mistresses should be taken with a large grain of salt. The survey–a subset of a larger wealth study–polled 191 individuals with a minimum net worth of $20 million who said they had lovers of at least a year or more (this to screen out the one-night stands, etc.). About two thirds of the respondents were men and one third women. All were married and all had personal control over their finances, meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth holders in their homes.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/11/18/rich-cut-back-on-payments-to-mistresses/

[Sanity Claws]

1. Watch Victoria's Secret profits plummet!

Oh noes!

[JVS]

2. Economists predict a stimulus program entailing increased shaking of their Money Makers...

but remain uncertain of how well it will work.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Time to buy stock...

In stripper poles. The increased wear and tear is gonna be horrendous on them.

[liberal N proud]

3. I am surprised this area is effected. Afterall...

the CEO's are still getting their bonus

[NewJeffCT]

5. Not all of them

and, since it's a limited field, even a small amount not getting bonuses is significant.

[cobalt1999]

6. Well, there goes my backup plan of being some rich woman's plaything.

Damn!

[NewJeffCT]

8. actually

the article goes on to say that while men are cutting back on female mistresses, women have actually been increasing what they spend on the male equivalent of a mistress.

(What is the male equivalent, by the way?)

[Sanity Claws]

12. gigolo?

I don't think there are any career days for gigolos. You'll have to find out about the job some other way.

[cobalt1999]

15. Cool. Back to doing the situps then.

Who knew recessions were goldentimes for male mistresses? You're right, what are they called?

[DireStrike]

7. Wait.... "...meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth holders in their homes."

"All were married and all had personal control over their finances, meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth holders in their homes."


Am I reading this wrong? Because a spouse has personal control over their finances, they are therefore the primary wealth holder in their homes?

That seems like a traditionalist assumption that is inappropriate to the interpretation of the survey.

I also find it interesting that he led that part of the sentence with "WOMEN and men", as if the women were more pertinent to the case at hand, even though they are 1/3 of the respondents.

Oh, WSJ morons... why are you all so conservative?

[NewJeffCT]

9. Why is it inappropriate?

That was the grounds for the survey - people that owned private jets and were the primary wealth holders in the family? I think it is more common among the wealthy to have things like prenuptial agreements and/or separate finances.

One of the results of the survey was that men with lovers/mistreses are cutting back on spending, but women with male lovers were increasing spending.

[DireStrike]

10. That's not what he's saying with that sentence

"All were married and all had personal control over their finances, meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth holders in their homes."

The implication is that the only way someone in a marriage could have personal control over their finances is to be the primary wealth holder in the household. It's a completely unfounded assumption that was unnecessary and has nothing to do with the story.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. I can see it now: Tiffany's declaring Chapter 7.

[Coexist]

13. anyone ever read Memoirs of a Geisha?!

this has an eerily strange feel to it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. "Sorry, baby, it's you or the Rolls."