@silverlady, I think Gabler said he makes $1 to $2 a word. The same pay he made 20 years ago.
@busdriver11, maybe she was. Maybe it was a case of fancy title—low pay.
A friend told me his nephew got a job. CEO of a company in Wisconsin. The nephew’s pay was something like $15 an hour. 
Okay, then, I’m an airline executive. Of my own cockpit, monitoring a crew of two (including myself).
I guess you could be CEO of a money losing company and earn nothing.
It was a tiny company. I don’t get the title.
In our neck of the woods you could have gotten a bigger house for half as much and it would still be worth more than what you paid for it, though not nearly as much as it was supposedly worth in 2007. (NYC suburbs too, just not the Hamptons!)
“The Gablers decided on the spur of the moment in 1994 to make Amagansett their year-round home. After renting summer houses here for years, they bought a renovated farmhouse near Barnes Hole in Amagansett and enrolled their two girls, now 13 and 11, in school, all within a week.”
http://easthamptonstar.com/Archive/1/Neal-Gabler-Triumph-Entertainment
“First Gabler was criticized for not having a second job. Now he has too many jobs? Gabler said he works 7 days a week. Morning to night. It’s in the story.”
No one said anything about him getting a second job - they criticized his wife not getting a job at all.
He has all these jobs which I’m sure he is not doing for free - plus a new book coming out about Barbra Streisand any day and he can’t come up with $400 in an emergency and I’m supposed to buy that it’s because he’s getting squeezed? Just no.
Well, maybe he’s working as a creative writer. Little bit of fiction going on.
Yes. Some people did criticize him.
How many days does he have to work? 8 days a week? Well…there is a song titled 8 days a week. I can’t remember the rest of the lyrics.
I think Gabler works hard. I think he also has been too focused on fitting in with his work colleagues and neighbors and showing he fits in with his spending habits. Now that this article is out, though, he’s blown his cover. I’d be interested in reading a follow-up piece from him in a year or two.
On this thread?
Writers write every day.
He mismanaged his finances. I have no sympathy for him. He put himself in this situation.
Wow, Harvard Medical School! He must be proud (no sarcasm there, I would be proud! But what does it cost?)
“We drive a 1997 Toyota Avalon with 160,000 miles that I got from my father when he died.” I occasionally drive a 1997 Lexus ES300 with 190,000 miles that I bought new in 1996 for commuting to my new (at that time) and last job. But aside from that similarity, we also came to similar forks in the road, and I consistently took different paths.
I hope his family knew ahead of time and was OK with him airing family details.
@emilybee, Yes. In this thread.
More than one person.
Why don’t you ask @busdriver11 to tell you the parking car story?
Must have missed those posts but it certainly wasn’t me saying that.
Seems to me that all his jobs would add up to a pretty comfortable income - it’s not like he is working several min wage jobs to put food on the table. If he had managed his finances better he wouldn’t be in the pickle he’s in.
@emilybee, I didn’t say you said anything about that.
This thread is running against Gabler in a landslide.
I don’t have a problem with him. I don’t even know the guy.
It seems to not matter that he was working hard - they were simply living beyond their means, over and over, for years and years. He should have realized long ago that they couldn’t catch up while going at the same speed. If they moved to Amaghansett after “renting summer houses there for years”, then they were paying lots of money for those summer rentals that they couldn’t afford at the time.
He just wanted to have what he wanted to have whether it was logically attainable or not.
I bet he might be looking for a book deal for this like the other NYT writer from a few years ago. Suddenly there’s a Presidential election and a lot of talk about the squeezed and beleaguered middle class and he decides he fits in that story.
Gabler sold 3 books in the 90’s. He sold a screenplay. He did well in the 90’s.
I don’t know why it is so hard to understand that people in the upper middle class can be squeezed. Just because you make it into the upper middle class doesn’t mean you get to stay there.
I remember this guy. He owned 5 Pacific Stock Exchange Seats. The value or price of the seats fluctuated. At one time, I think they were selling for $400,000 a piece and they rented for 2 percent a month. 2 percent a month. That was $8,000 in income per seat the month the seat was selling for $400,000. He was living on this income. Then we had the tech crash. The seats dropped to $40,000 within a year. He was working out right after the crash and he had a heart attack and dropped dead.
I think the drop in seat prices killed him.
By the way, I owned one seat. Bought a seat for $15,000. Watched the seat price go to $400,000. Then crash. I sold the seat for $40,000.I should have sold the seat for a higher price but I didn’t.
So shoot me.
“I don’t know why it is so hard to understand that people in the upper middle class can be squeezed. Just because you make it into the upper middle class doesn’t mean you get to stay there.”
Leaving aside things like devastating health issues or a crisis like a fire, people in the upper middle class only get squeezed when they decide they need all the accoutrements if an upper middle class lifestyle and that that is more important than saving. Nothing prevents them from living below their means, or “upgrading” only in certain key things. This guy had summer rentals for years, a SAH wife and a house in an extremely expensive area. Was there a law he couldn’t have had a townhouse and his wife couldn’t have worked? He thinks it’s a sob story that he drives an older car. I say big deal.
Post 298 is false. It doesn’t matter what people think.
Yes…there is a spending side but…
Incomes can drop. Fixed income investment yields can crash. Investments can drop in value. The stock market has had two 50 percent drops in the last 16 years. Inflation can crush. We had the housing crisis. We just had a huge oil price drop which has affected investments all over the country and the world. Many upper middle class people are no longer upper middle class and their spending habits made very little difference.