Why rich New Yorkers are hiding their wealth and privilege

The struggles of the impoverished are well documented. But how about the unique pain and struggle associated with being wealthy in New York City?

In her research for “Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence” (Princeton University Press, out Sept. 5), Rachel Sherman interviewed 50 New York-area parents of young children, whose household incomes ranged from $250,000 to $10 million and with assets totaling up to $50 million. These locals live pampered lives — with multiple high-end properties, teams of household employees and frequent, lavish vacations — but still, they do impressive mental gymnastics to avoid identifying themselves as truly rich.

For instance: Helen, a stay-at-home mom with an annual family income of $2 million, describes herself as “in the middle, in the sense that there are so many people with so much money. They have private planes. They have drivers. They have all these things.” This kind of creative (and self-serving) logic is prevalent among Sherman’s subjects as a way to reconcile their outrageous spending habits with the need to see themselves as normal and down-to-earth.

Sherman calls this a question of “how to be both wealthy and morally worthy,” and explains that it’s an issue that the vast majority of her subjects — all of whom are in the city’s top 5 percent of earners — grapple with. Over and over, her subjects make an effort to distinguish themselves from the stereotypes of the American rich as “status-seeking and lazy but also morally deficient . . . snobby, greedy, rude, braggy and self-absorbed,” in Sherman’s words.

To that end, many of these well-heeled New Yorkers are careful to avoid superficial markers of their economic status. Olivia, a 39-year-old mother of three living in a $4.5 million Upper West Side apartment, petitioned her local post office to remove the letters “PH” from her official mailing address, because she found the abbreviation for penthouse “elite and snobby.” After renovating a Brooklyn brownstone in a good public-school zone, Gary — a father with over $10 million in assets — rejected his contractor’s suggestion to install a top-of-the-line porcelain stove, explaining the sacrifice as “very much about not ending up with a kitchen that looked like the luxury kitchen.”

And when they can’t effectively distance themselves from their wealth, the reluctant rich are eager to find ways to defend it. Most often, this means underscoring the hard work they’ve put in to earn it — even, paradoxically, in cases where the bulk of their assets are inherited.

“Work is how they make themselves worthy of their privilege,” Sherman writes. Yet the definitions of “work” range from the conventional — a banker or a corporate lawyer who puts in long hours for a seven-figure salary — to the outlandish.

Nicole, who used some of her multimillion-dollar inheritance to buy an upscale Manhattan apartment, argues that she’s entitled to her home because she helped decorate it: “I did paint all the walls. I mean, now they’ve been repainted by professionals . . . I didn’t do the best job in the world. But I worked — you know, I put a lot of elbow grease into this. This was not, like, handed to me on a platter. I feel like we worked for it. Through, like, physical labor.”

Woe is paint-splattered Nicole.

Among Sherman’s subjects, evidence of any kind of work is held up as a badge of honor, as a way for subjects to distinguish themselves from the looming boogeymen of their demographic: the undeserving, idle rich. Betsy, who admits she grew up with money, nevertheless draws a sharp line between her family and other clans whose children attend the private school where she sends her kids. “I kind of have an inside joke with some of the moms that I know, that we’re, like, the ‘working class.’ You know? Because we actually really work. Not that these people haven’t worked . . . [but] we can’t stop working and continue to lead a lifestyle that we’re living.” It should be noted that Betsy is a stay-at-home mom whose husband earns $1 million a year.

‘Part of my humility is to think that I could give away all my money, and it wouldn’t make a dent in the world.’

 - Gary

The lifestyles that Betsy and the book’s other wealthy subjects describe are undeniably outrageous, with tuitions, salaries, mortgages and other bills that add up to tens of thousands of dollars a month. But as Sherman points out, her subjects are quick to blame the city, rather than themselves, for their expenditure, attributing it to high cost of living in New York.

These men and women often point out the many different ways they perceive themselves as frugal, whether it’s because they do their own hair and nails, or shop at discount stores like Target and Costco. But when it comes to their most expensive choices — like taking on costly renovations, buying multiple properties or sending their children to elite private schools — most participants find ways to rationalize them. Alice, a stay-at-home mom with $8 million in real estate, claims that compared to the holdings of the indulgent super-rich, her family’s assets are actually modest: “When I think about our homes — I mean, when you add it all up, it’s a lot of value and real estate. But the people who go out and buy, like, $20 million homes in the Hamptons or whatever. I just have a hard time with that. Or the humongous houses. I don’t know that that would ever be something that I could see as part of our lifestyle.”

As Sherman acknowledges, some of the respondents have a better sense of perspective. Beatrice, a nonprofit executive with a $3 million inheritance, admits that she’s fallen prey to something she calls “luxury creep,” where her sense of what’s normal to spend has slowly changed over time. “It’s a very insidious thing, you know, because it’s much less conscious than, like, ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ kind of conspicuous consumption.” For Beatrice, it’s about developing a habit of spending more money, even though she doesn’t necessarily think of herself as the kind of person who regularly buys $6 loaves of bread and $25 bottles of wine. (She is.)

Like Beatrice, many of the subjects admit that their actions don’t always match up with their ideals, particularly when it comes to their political views.

Kevin, who estimates that his assets place him among the top 1 to 3 percent of New Yorkers, nonetheless identifies with the Occupy Wall Street movement: “I’m Occupy. That’s me. That’s the weird paradox.”

In fact, many of the participants give back, in the form of sizeable donations to charity or to other institutions, like their children’s schools. But very few are willing to significantly alter their lifestyles in order to do so, and even the most left-leaning men and women cite their high tax burden as an explanation for why they don’t give away more. In an extreme example, Gary says that holding onto his fortune is a sign of his personal growth: “I’ve learned about humility in the last 10 years. And part of my humility is to think that I could give away all my money, and it wouldn’t make a dent in the world.”

For these privileged city dwellers, the possibility of giving their children the best possible lives is often the only incentive they need to stop wringing their hands and start making peace with their wealth. Eliana, who inherited a nest egg of about $9 million, admits that although she believes in the public school system, she ultimately decided to send her daughter to private school because she wasn’t being challenged enough where she was. The decision wasn’t easy, Eliana says, in part because it made her confront certain uncomfortable truths about herself: “I’m going to be in self-hatred all the time,” she explains, “because I’m going to go pick her up at school. I’m going to line up with the other white mothers on the street, and I’m going to hate that I am indistinguishable from them. It’s, like, an affront to my pretensions of uniqueness.” But for Eliana, like many of the parents Sherman interviewed, her ability to provide the ideal experience for her child trumps her misgivings about leading a life of excess.

‘I would say it’s harder to grow up with money, in a way … Nobody’s going to, like, pat you on the head and say “Good job,” when you’re like, “I grew up as a child of inherited wealth.”‘

 - Olivia

Nearly all of Sherman’s subjects expressed real concerns about raising kids with a level of privilege that might eventually be taken for granted, yet they were unwilling to drastically change their lifestyles in order to make sure it wouldn’t happen. Rather, these parents compensate by making an effort to teach good manners and working to instill a level of gratitude and perspective in their kids by exposing them to people who have less. As Sherman puts it, “Ultimately, the parents are not challenging their children’s advantage but, instead, teaching them how to occupy their advantaged position appropriately” — which means doing all they can do to insure the next generation won’t grow up to embody the ugly, negative stereotypes.

Robert, a participant who sells real estate, admits that for this reason, some couples prefer to be gentrifiers, even when they can easily afford the more expensive neighborhoods. “My niche would rather buy [a home] in a bad neighborhood, because they want to show their kids a good example,” he says. “And they want their kids to have everyday good examples of people and people’s lifestyles and [to know] that not everybody has as much as we do. But their kids will go to private schools.”

And so the next generation of the reluctant rich is born, uncomfortable with their wealth but assured that a good sense of perspective will help balance out the reality of their exorbitant lifestyles. As Olivia points out, it’s not always easy to be affluent: “I would say it’s harder to grow up with money, in a way . . . [it’s] a badge of honor in America culture, to start from the bottom and climb your way up . . . Nobody’s going to, like, pat you on the head and say ‘Good job,’ when you’re like, ‘I grew up as a child of inherited wealth.’ ”

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