Another hard year with the nose to the corporate grindstone has come to a close and with it the time of year that, as adults, we all wait for with greater anticipation then Santa's arrival when we were little rug rats ........... bonus time!
For those that don't work in the financial markets this is the reward at the end of the rainbow for all of those long days, high stress levels, endless hours meeting client demands, deadlines and time away from riding. Of course along with this time of the year comes the stories of McMansions, private jets/yachts, ski chalets, trophy mistresses and of course the waiting lines at the local Ferrari dealership where people don't blink an eye at dropping a quarter million on the trophy car.
Over the last few years these buyers of luxury have been the wizards that figured out how to get anyone into a house cheap, then structure up an exotic collateralized loan with the junk mortgages and sell these off at a handsome profit. This year thanks to these masters of the universe, we are all feeling the pain - plummeting housing prices, loss of net worth and the fears of recession - and for some of those that pound it out in the trenches of Wall Street a pummeling of the annual bonus pools as firms have to put aside billions in reserves for current and future losses.
Well none of this was going to stop me from finally securing that trophy vehicle, so with bonus number in hand I raced off to the dealer to make the upgrade. Arriving early I was able to avoid the lines and decided it was time to trade in (aka give away) the trusty/rusty '91 Chevy pickup with 176k for that top end '97 Dodge (sans rust) with only a scant 123k on the odometer. Hey if I slap a prancing horse sticker on the sides of the fenders and play some Pavoratti maybe in my own mind I can convince myself it's a Ferrari (probably gets better mileage too). At least the glass is half full ......... I can haul the trash to the dump and carry my bike to the races, bet you can't do that with a 599GTB!
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