McManus Delves Into Comedy

The funniest story in the Sunday paper this week was from one of my favourite more acidic reporters Jenni McManus who SURELY must be taking the piss when she writes a serious article about how the rich are struggling. Hilarious. I can hear tears of sympathy in the outer Auckland suburbs as I read it.



Instead of interviewing the men she talked to two female "professionals and socialites"! Well you can't be both I am afraid. Most of the Aucklanders who ravage the social pages each week as "socialites" are living this credit card, "on borrowed money" sort of lifestyle of no substantial assets or cash to their names at all bar for perhaps for a few a diminishing trust fund and bagfuls of "P". As Whaleoil deems them, most are simply "broken arses" who trust in the maxim that if they hang out with the very few people at those functions who actually earn even over $100,000, that the wealthy fairy will rub off and they too will suddenly become rich and famous to match their tiny bit of outwards beauty.

If you are concentrating on your business you simply don't have time or more importantly energy to gaily trot off to party after party during the week unless it is your job to go to parties which gives a pretty good indication in the small pond that Auckland is, just who these two wankers were that agreed to be made fun of. And these are two professional socialites who spend $15K on clothing for their husband!!! Ha. Is there even one female socialite without full time employment that would be stupid enough to marry a man who earns less than they do? Come ON!

If we add up all the expenses of the 2008 family listed in the print version I get $428,500. But the article states this family lives on a $500,000 salary. Impossible given that a $500,000 salary would accumulate some $200,000 in taxes (mostly at the top rate) leaving these paupers with $300,000 per annum to live off. So their deficit is $128,500 per annum.

This has to be one of the cuntiest pieces of writing I have ever seen bound to wind the entire population of New Zealand into writing letters to the editor. For balance next week McManus should interview a dairy farmer and cut down their income and expenditure to see the difference or perhaps so we can have a good laugh at them as well.

The nanny, the school fees, the babysitter, the gardener, the marina fees (who bothers owning a boat unless it's a $10 million+ superyacht), $60K on clothes, the flowers, the botox.

Sensible married women with children earning $500K don't have to pay for these things themselves. They make the husband pay or if he is a submissive earner then let him stay at home and be the gardener, babysitter and the nanny.

Those of us who are single don't waste it on crap and live within our means. It's quite a large means and even though life doesn't suck on this sort of salary, you can't afford all the adornments that are in this article. It is simply nonsense as is the size of the mortgage to be honest and owning a beach house. You have to submit your expenditure to the bank when getting a loan and these sums wouldn't cut the mustard for a loan that large. There was even a reference to a Lamboroghini. I can tell you right now that a person on $500,000 a year can't afford to buy one. Even with finance, which I don't believe you should ever need if you can afford to actually drive the car you do. Cash is for cars.

My spending pattern has remained the same as it was when I earned a quarter of what I do now. Therefore there is no need to budget when you earn this much money unless you are a spendthrift or a complete fiscally irresponsible idiot. You buy what you want when you want it, trusting yourself not to be a loony tune with the dosh. These women are obviously good at their jobs but piss poor with their own money. Lets hope they are doing something fluffy and unimportant like PR or marketing and not actually in charge of other people's money. They sure as hell can't manage their own or show discipline to the exercise of looking after large dollops of cash.

You see then, how stretched executive salaries are becoming and why they're trying to cut back. Note our survey doesn't include telephone, mobile and internet connections, or medical and dental care, as most are funded (at least partly) through work perks. It also excludes taxes as most people on this rung of the social ladder use accountants to dodge them.

I agree that the comms are usually paid for by work, as is medical care. But tax dodging? In New Zealand? Yeah right.

Ughm, before joining their bracket, I used to do the taxes of people such as this and sorry to make the article less sexy but they don't dodge taxes if they are on a salary. And even if they pay less tax than the top rate of 30% or the company or trust rates, they then have professional fees to do this that would negate the effect for even a mid range CEO. Individuals would need to own their own company with major available loss offsetting to bother going to an accountant to pay less tax.

The article sums it up at "Grand total: $513,220". To have that much to spend they must be earning in the vicinity of $800K plus.

And not many New Zealanders will be doing that. Well not enough that are silly enough to spend it all, live beyond their means and be interviewed about it!