http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_road_to_bankruptcy.php The article in The Atlantic I linked above has a few material details that the guy in the NYTimes article left out. For example, this is the wife's 3rd bankruptcy. I don't feel sorry for this guy even a little bit. This is not the story of a guy who made a few bad choices and got taken advantage of by an unscrupulous lender as the article seems to imply. This is a couple who have a very long history of spending beyond their means despite earning a relatively high income.
Sickening isn't it? By the way, is it just me or is $120k way too much to pay for an economics reporter?
There is a bit of irony in this if you think about it- the financial reporter who is supposed to watch the Fed for the NYT failed to do a due diligence even when seeking a mate. Maybe he should apply for the IG job at the Fed- sounds like he has just the qualifications they would look for, lol.
"I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments. That left me with take-home pay of $2,777" Bloody hell! So the guy is making $10k gross, and his net income after tax and divorce payments is $2777? So basically he is paying 72% of his wage to the government and his wife. Unbelievable. Folks, this is what happens when you get married, and reach middle-age in a western country. You spend 9 months of each year working for other people, then have to scrimp by the other 3 months just to make ends meet. You are, in short, totally fucked.
He story, his salary and his actions are a shining example of why the NYT has turned into the almost bankrupt piece of crap it is. Nothing about the story or the writer is credible. The the story was sort of a connect the dots formula. That the times published it shows they do not have an ounce of integrity. They let the own reporter be the news? (comment by previous poster) and used the story as an infomercial for their book for which we can speculate contained a big advance because he could get his infomercial published in the New York Times? An NYT editor let this crap get published without pointing out his wife filed multiple bankruptcies. The new your times is losing money because they have turned into MSNBC.
It's tough to feel sorry for him about that since he's almost certainly in favor of high taxes and big alimony payments. Or was before he got nailed with `em. He is a reporter for the NYT after all. 4k for his wife and two kids compared to 2.8k for him sounds like a fair split. She's spent 10 years building a family so has no job skills that could pay the bills for just her, let alone two kids. And he's only paying 30% of his income in taxes. That's not too bad, especially when you consider that he's voted for massive government spending all his life. And heck, now he's living in his house, rent-free. The only people to feel sorry for in this country are the suckers who work for a living and pay their bills on time. Then they raise another generation of suckers.