When I walked onto that trading floor for the first time and saw the glowing flat-screen TVs, high-tech computer monitors and phone turrets with enough dials, knobs and buttons to make it seem like the cockpit of a fighter plane, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. We sometimes lived paycheck to paycheck off my mom’s nurse-practitioner salary.ĭad believed money would solve all his problems. “Imagine what life will be like,” he’d say, “when I make a million dollars.” While he dreamed of selling a screenplay, in reality he sold kitchen cabinets. He was a modern-day Willy Loman, a salesman with huge dreams that never seemed to materialize. I’d learned about the importance of being rich from my dad. Every January and February, I think about that time, because these are the months when bonuses are decided and distributed, when fortunes are made. I’d come to Wall Street after reading in the book “Liar’s Poker” how Michael Lewis earned a $225,000 bonus after just two years of work on a trading floor. I already knew I wanted to be rich, but when I started out I had a different idea about what wealth meant. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.Įight years earlier, I’d walked onto the trading floor at Credit Suisse First Boston to begin my summer internship. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million - and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough.
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