Wall Street Woes

Well, my day is fucking ruined.

Today, your Aunt Slugger received an email with a link to this article. For those of you who cannot stomach the entire article, it is about how some investment professionals, faced with slumping incomes, are struggling to make ends meet.

"That is so sad," you may be saying right now. "This economy really sucks, and people are really suffering, and--"

So let me stop you right there. This article is NOT. ABOUT. THOSE. PEOPLE. This article is not about the married couple with two children trying to figure out how to put food on the table. This article is not about the single mother who can't afford soy formula for her baby with allergies.

No, this article is about people with a formal education in finance who cannot figure out that the rising cost of Wheat Chex is not the driving force behind their financial difficulties when they are writing checks for thirty grand for their 6-year-old kid's private school education.

It so happens that your Aunt Slugger moonlights in the investment industry, when I am not dedicating entire minutes at a time to this advice column that has saved so many lives over the years. Now the time has come for me to merge my more lucrative career (giving advice via a free blog that has no advertising and one regular reader) with my hobby (showing up to an office every day and referring to "The Wall Street Journal" simply as "The Journal"). So today I am going to issue a

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE INVESTMENT COMMUNITY

so that maybe we won't have to read any more of this bullshit.

First and foremost, do not ever, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be quoted in a national publication as saying this:

“If you’re making $50,000 and your salary gets down to $40,000 and you have to cut, it’s very severe to you. But it’s no less severe to these other people with these big numbers.”

This quotation comes from Alan Dlugash, who was also quoted as saying, “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress. 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?”

That's absolutely right, Alan Dlugash. People without money have absolutely no idea what real stress is. Wondering how you're going to feed and clothe your children - that's amateur hour compared to the crushing stress of knowing that your asshole friends will think less of you if you move your children from their elite preparatory school to a parochial school, or God forbid, the public school system.

Second, you need to move. The reason your mortgage is so high is because you bought an overpriced house in a gated white flight community with a town ordinance against fast food chains (except for Starbucks) and a city council with nothing better to do but fight bitterly about whether or not the seafood at the annual town barbecue is sustainable.

And finally--and this is critical--you need to be told about yourself. If you were half as interesting as you think you are, you would be twice as interesting as you are. You work in finance. You don't save the world. Stop being a fucking predictable mess of a human, with your prep school tuition and your European cars and your newfound salmon price sensitivity. Think about real human suffering. Homeless people. Hungry people. People in war-torn nations.

Think about that before you open your big mouth to a Bloomberg News reporter and make my eyes bleed on a Thursday morning.

Houskeeping Tips from Your Aunt Slugger

Many of you have written to me and said, "Aunt Slugger, your advice column really reminds me of something Martha Stewart would put together, and I am just surprised she hasn't picked you up as a writer for her magazine. It's only a matter of time, though. In the meantime, do you have any housekeeping tips for the public?"

Well, public, I am so glad you asked. In point of fact, yes, I DO happen to have some great housekeeping tips. In fact, just today, I stumbled upon a great way to find the inspiration to clean your apartment! Just follow these easy steps:

• Wake up at 6:05a.m. on a Saturday morning to the shrill beeping of your carbon monoxide detector, which is conveniently located twelve feet off the ground, on your ceiling.
• Wielding a household broom, which you can buy at any grocery store, stab at the carbon monoxide detector until it stops beeping.
  
• Using the used batteries from your remote control, attempt to change the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector and then notice that it is wired into the electrical system in your apartment, thereby suggesting that dead batteries are not the issue at play here.
  
• Come close to urinating on yourself when the carbon monoxide detector starts beeping again.
  
• Realize that OH MY GOD THERE IS CARBON MONOXIDE IN MY MOTHERFUCKING APARTMENT WE NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS PLACE THIS FUCKING SECOND.
  
• Put your coat on while screaming, "WHERE IS THAT FUCKING CAT? WHERE IS SHE? SHE'S GOING TO DIE IN HERE THAT LITTLE FUCKING ASSHOLE" to your significant other.
  
• Walk around the apartment holding wet cat food in your bare hand.
  
• Slip on a two-week-old stack of junk mail and stop, suddenly, realizing that you cannot, realistically, call emergency personnel to come to the apartment when it looks like this, a trash heap.
  
• Resign yourself to dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Begrudgingly decide you do not want the police to find your lifeless, pajama-clad body face down on the floor in your apartment, still clinging to a glob of salmon and mackerel entree in a savory broth.
  
• Leave the apartment without that dick cat, who is still in hiding, and call the non-emergency number for the fire department and ask for suggestions on what to do.
  
• When the fire department sends a full-size fire truck, with sirens blaring and lights flashing, to your apartment, try not to kill yourself out of sheer embarrassment.
• Cringe while one firefighter checks for carbon monoxide with a handheld device and the other firefighter looks at the piles of [circle one or all: Valentine's candy, those goddamn proxy voting statements from your mutual fund company, unwatched Netflix movies, winter boots, cat toys, grocery store receipts, and recipes that you clipped from the side of a Nilla Wafers box].
• Feel something between relief and horror when the firefighters tell you there is no carbon monoxide and that you have a faulty alarm. Relief because you are not going to die; horror because this means the alarm will need to be changed out, which means involving building maintenance, which means more people will see all your shit.
  
• Phone your apartment complex's 24-hour crack security force (which interfaces with building maintenance during off-hours). Naturally, you will be sent to voicemail. You instantly feel safer.
  
• Receive a call back from building security. Explain the situation. Experience momentary shock when the security guard's primary concern is the fact that the apartment complex will be charged because the fire department came out for a false alarm. (It should be mentioned here that the firefighters told you that you "did the right thing" by calling.)
  
• Lose your shit. Note that your significant other, who was pouring a glass of water while listening to you on the phone, has been rendered motionless by your unrelenting verbal assault into the phone.
  
• Once the security guard realizes that he has inadvertently released the Kraken, he will retreat. He promises you that maintenance will be there in about fifteen minutes.
  
• Commence a whirlwind clean-up of the apartment.
  

And that, readers, is how you find the inspiration to clean your house! My patented method is low-budget, non-toxic, and uses items you already have around the house: faulty safety equipment, cat food, and rage. Please be sure to share your success stories in the comments section!