Quote of the Day

"I can't imagine what I'm going to do. I'm crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don't have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand."—Andrew Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., who got a lower bonus this year and says "the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental, and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square-foot Brooklyn duplex."

Schiff was quoted in an article about how rough the recession has been on the 1percenters. And if you, like me, are thinking, "Of course it is rough on any human to have to adjust their expectations downward, for any reason, but perhaps we could all try to maintain a modicum of perspective when millions of USians are losing their homes and putting their kids to bed hungry," then you just DON'T UNDERSTAND.

"People who don't have money don't understand the stress," said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. "Could you imagine what it's like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?"

Well, actually, I can imagine that. I imagine it's not easy to have to disappoint your children, but I also imagine it is a necessary life lesson, one which I certainly learned as a child, that we can't always have everything we want.

The truth is, people who have money don't understand the stress experienced by people who don't have money. They don't understand the oppressive anxiety of constant financial worry. I've been in a position where I'm worrying about cutting luxuries, or scaling back plans, and I've been in a position where I'm worrying about how to get food in my face the next day, and they are not the same kind of worry.

To not understand that is privilege of the highest order.

[H/T to Brian.]