If you put your ear REALLY close to your speakers maybe you can hear the world's smallest violin playing in the background.

They can't even afford to hyperlink articles anymore!

Hey Ben, where is the link?

So once you run a giant company into the ground, you can run your personal finances into the ground?

brilliant!

is this meant to be informative or should i feel sorry for someone who makes monthly what i make yearly

@bloggerX: [online.wsj.com]

@Ouze: [online.wsj.com]

@mongoloid: I dont think consumerist is quite in the business of making you feel sympathy for someone who runs the whole company and economy to the ground.

WSJ on the other hand...

The only message behind the WSJ article is that people who keep spending wildly after they are laid off, even though they get signficant severance, are going to have a hard time when the severance ends. If you look at the people mentioned in the article, they had limited savings and didn't change their spending behaviours after getting laid off. That's a bad plan, regardless of how much money or severance you have.

These poor babies. It's called Schadenfreude! Seriously, zero sympathy. How vain can you get?

I got this link to work just before it was disabled in the summary above.

maybe we can start some kind of fund to help these guys out. it's unfair to expect them to be responsible for their own finances.

@microcars: Thanks!

"Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He's turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before"

+

"By Mr. Joegriner's own calculations, the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn't find work."

=

*Head explodes*

@craptastico: maybe they can take out some loans?

@endless: The same mentality that has ruined so many companies. What? I can't have my $300 pedicure or a $50,000 rug for my office?

I have no faith left in the executive classes.

I find it amusing that the group providing some of the severance stats is "Challenger, Gray & Christmas". Yeah, there will be a few challenging, gray Christmases this year I think.

Do they still have enough to afford this tiny, tiny violin?

@hypnotik_jello: Your right. It is vanity. Someone acting out of common sense and self preservation would be cutting expenses in light of the job market right now.

Maybe they should make The House of Mirth & Grapes of Wrath required reading as soon as one becomes unemployed.

@davebg5: Unfortunately, the background noise generated by most computer speaker systems costing less than $500 will drown out the violin sound.

Stories about those poor, poor rich people piss me off like nothing else in the world.

@Ben Popken: It's only disappearing once you're in the article. From the summary on the home page it's fine.

It's kinda weird.

When they have to give up their Upper West Side apartments and move to Queens, I'll be pointing and laughing my ass off.

@mongoloid: They got fussed at last time they were all, "Who cares" in a post about the suffering of the upper class.

I can't remember what that one was about though...

Am I supposed to feel sorry?

Nope, sorry. I just can't have sympathy on people who spend more money in a month than I survive on all year long.

@Sockatume: It's like an SNL skit. Next they'll be saying that the legal advice came from Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe.

@Coles_Law: I know - how is it more productive to earn zero income than to work part time in retail, or at mcdonalds, or anything? If he was laid of in March 2008 he isn't earning unemployment any more - time to suck it up and figure out a way to feed your family over the next few years.

@HurtsSoGood: "Poor, poor rich people." I love it! HA!

@Rectilinear Propagation: Just a stupid cacheing issue.

It's ridiculous for people who make $200,000 a year to have debt. With that kind of income, they should be saving their money and paying cash for their cars and homes.

ROTFLMFBAO!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAH!

I wonder if the responses would be the same for a not-rich person pulling the same sort of bullshit with whatever savings/severance/whatever they had after being laid off.

This story breaks my heart. No, seriously! All those poor ex-rich people out there, having to live like the rest of us schmucks!

A few days later, Mr. Joegriner received an offer and a contract. Despite the earlier enthusiasm, doubts began to surface. "What if we went all the way out there and they laid me off?" After fruitless negotiations, he turned down the job. The reason: The position didn't include a guarantee of severance pay. Says Mr. Joegriner: "I just couldn't take the risk."

@Coles_Law: WTF?!?!

I just...I can't...

*Head explodes*

I can sort of see most people justifying this psychologically "oh I'll get a job soon enough that I can keep spending" or something like that. First thing you should do if you know you're losing your job - regardless of severance status - reevaluate your finances and cut the fat.

@Jerry Vandesic: IAWTC. The same rules of "save your money" and "don't spend more than you make" and "have a budget" apply if you're making $30k/year or $3 million/year.

Gee 80 million dollars severance and nothing not enough money to keep up my appearance spending.... Meanwhile the rest of humanity have about 1-3 months to find another job before they end up starving and on the street.

Yes the CEO who steered Merill Lynch into the ground got 80 million + in severance for his trouble.

@ZekeSulastin:
"I wonder if the responses would be the same for a not-rich person pulling the same sort of bullshit with whatever savings/severance/whatever they had after being laid off."

Why not? Stupidity knows no economic or class differences.

@ZekeSulastin: The responses have been the same for not-rich people spending more than they earn. Look at any post about overdraft fees? There's always at least five people saying it's the OPs fault for spending more than they have in the bank (even if it was caused by an error).

There was the post about the woman who was on a talk show about her spending. Her children had serious medical needs but she couldn't or wouldn't stop shopping. If you think these comments are bad you should have read some of those.

"two months after that, the out-of-work couple moved to Greenville, S.C., to be closer to family and get a fresh start. Together, they had received about $60,000 in severance. "Now we have $600 to our name," says Mr. Hipsher.

Although their rent was cheaper, Mr. Hipsher says the family continued to spend like before. They moved with three cars -- two BMWs and a Chevy Silverado. They continued to buy cases of $36-a-bottle wine. They spent $250 a month on a cleaning lady, and Mr. Hipsher dropped $50 a week on flowers for his wife. The couple still dined out regularly."

They are both out of work and they have a CLEANING LADY!? What is wrong with them? The unemployed can't deign to sweep their own floors? It aint like their unemployed butts are too busy.

@davebg5: Beat me to it, I was going looking for my world's tiniest violin ....

I suppose now I'll have to say that "My nose bleeds for them."

@HurtsSoGood: I don't know. I have a lot of sympathy for people of all income levels who find themselves faced with immense hardship.

But if you lose your job and still make the decision to keep up with the joneses rather than save it, I have a little less sympathy. It doesn't matter how much money you had before - I have little sympathy for stupidity.

@davebg5:

Ha ha ha. This.

"Ms. Patterson sometimes wishes she had cut her spending earlier. But the money spent networking and socializing, she says, has "helped [me] keep sane.""

Yes, by all means, go out and socialize your savings away. You will be sane when you run out of your little savings stash and start living on the streets with those crazy homeless people. What a comfort!

@halcyondays:
Not really, no. I mean, they should certainly be saving their money, yes. But if they have enough in savings to buy a house, and they have good credit, then they should put their money in investments and get a mortgage- the growth rate on stocks will, over 30 years, be substantially greater than the interest rate they are likely to get on the mortgage. In the end they end up better off than if they just paid cash.

The problem is, they weren't saving much money in the first place, yet they borrowed anyway.

@Coles_Law: @sammy_b: I'm going to a tiny bit defend him ... in some professional environments, there's a real stigma against taking certain kinds of work -- notably retail and food service -- and it's considered a sign that you can't get work because you're incompetent at your job, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you WON'T get work because everyone sees that on your resume (or, in a small enough town, everybody knows). Some of this is definitely more about "OMG, what will the neighbors think?" but some of it is a legitimate concern about short-term stopgap work damaging long-term career prospects.

However. You can try to find back-office work or temp work where you're out of public view and leave it off your resume. Some kinds of often-lower-paid work are generally "respectable" -- teaching or tutoring, even part-time, for example. Even if there's a real fear that temporary work will damage your job hunt, there is plenty of work he COULD be doing that WOULDN'T. He's obviously not interested.

And this: "After fruitless negotiations, he turned down the job. The reason: The position didn't include a guarantee of severance pay. Says Mr. Joegriner: "I just couldn't take the risk."" is just moronic.

Maybe a more interesting point is how handicapped in some parts of the real world executives (lawyers, doctors, etc.) can be ... a lot of these guys graduate into high-paying salaried jobs but have no idea how to do anything entrepreneurial or how to function OTHER than in a large-company setting. A lot of them have a fairly limited skill-set that applies only to middle-and-upper-management in large companies. A lot of them don't KNOW how to find a job or do temporary things, and a lot of them are paralyzed by the fear of the newness of it. Everyone finds strange waters difficult to navigate, and I've definitely seen some high-level professionals who completely froze up when laid off and took some time to get their shit together (though generally before unemployment ran out). Not only is being laid off psychologically difficult, they simply had no idea what to do next and had to actually figure out HOW to hunt for work and HOW to be unemployed, and there was a learning curve.

Blargh, I don't feel like I expressed that well but I give up, I'm at novel length already. :)

@Rectilinear Propagation: I can't wait until these people waiting for a multi-million dollar offer have the balls to apply for their state unemployment check...

@mongoloid: You only make $16,666 yearly? The first person mentioned in the WSJ article made $200,000 a year. I'm not being nitpicky here, but your entire basis for your post was that this person makes more in a month than you make in a year. Unless you make $16,666 a year, obviously it isn't the case.

I don't think it's fair to say that all these people ran the economy into the ground. They're not all Merril Lynch CEOs. Some of them are in other high-paying fields that have nothing to do with the banking crisis.

@Coles_Law: *sigh* What this says to me is this man is likely someone who basically grew up having everything handed to him and never stopped to consider that things can and do change in the future.

He needs to learn that it is okay to cut back on spending and take a job for less money, fast.

*head explodes*

This is similar to how lottery winners (the poors) blow all of their money and have nothing to show for it in a short amount of time. Some people just don't have enough sense to handle personal finances and balk at the proposition of paying someone to do it for them.