Sunday 23 November 2008

Next Victim of Finance Crisis? The Mistress

An interesting equation emerged from the survey: Time + Affair = fewer gifts.

1 comment:

Guanyu said...

Next Victim of Finance Crisis? The Mistress

22 November 2008
The New Paper

Illicit love is taking a pay cut.

The latest lines some millionaires are singing to their mistresses?

Baby you can drive my car.

No, really, drive my car, because I’m not buying you one.

According to a new survey by wealth research firm Prince & Assoc, more than 80 per cent of multi-millionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances, reported the Wall Street Journal.

The survey said they planned to lower the allowances to their mistresses, while more than three-quarters planned to provide fewer gifts, less expensive gifts and fewer perks, like jet rides, resort vacations and top restaurant meals.

‘Rich people are getting hit, and they’re all expressing the need to curtail unnecessary spending,’ said Mr. Russ Alan Prince, president of Prince & Assoc, which is based in Connecticut, the US.

‘Lovers are part of the same calculation.’

Dumped

Mr. Prince said 12 per cent dropped their paramours completely for financial reasons, the Globe and Mail.com reported.

The firm surveyed 518 millionaires on a range of wealth management topics. All were worth at least US$20million ($31 million), owned a private jet and had a spouse.

Of those, 191 admitted to having kept someone on the side for more than a year.

Two-thirds were men and one-third were women. All had personal control over their finances, meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth-holders in their homes.

The gender figure is interesting, though.

Women were far more generous to their lovers.

While 82 per cent of the rich male Lotharios said they will be cutting expenses, only 20 per cent of the women said they will be doing the same thing.

More than half of the women surveyed planned to increase the number or value of gifts they would give their lovers despite the bad times.

Women with lovers

Ms. Susan Shapiro Barash, who teaches gender studies at Marymount Manhattan College and wrote Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets, a book about why women lie, told the Wall Street Journal that women value their lovers more than men during bad times.

‘For the women, lovers matter more than ever now because the rest of life is so dreary,’ she said.

‘For the men, they’re just cutting across the board.’

Ms. Barash added that women may value their lovers more today because their husbands are so miserable.

‘If your husband lost his job on Wall Street and he’s miserable, you need the escape,’ she said.

Mr. Prince put it best.

‘I’m finding it’s much better to be kept by women than men,’ he said.

An interesting equation emerged from the survey: Time + Affair = fewer gifts.

The study found that more than two-thirds of the millionaires who had been with their lovers for three or more years planned to cut back.

That compares with less than half for those with a tenure of one to three years.

‘What we found in talking to the respondents is that the magic of the relationship with their lover fades after a while, so they’re more willing to let them go,’ Mr. Prince said.

But by cutting spending, they also risk losing their mistresses.

Mr. Prince said more than half were not concerned: ‘They don’t care. They’ll replace them.’

A long-time wealth analyst, Mr. Prince still was surprised by how blasé rich men were about divulging the fact that they keep mistresses.

‘It’s like, ‘Of course we do. She has the pool boy, what the hell do I care?’.’