Mediaboss Marketing

February 29, 2012, 1:41 AM EST

By Max Abelson

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

Im not Zen at all, and when Im freaking out about the situation, where Im stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, its very hard, Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the countrys top 1 percent by income, doesnt cover his familys private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

I feel stuck, Schiff said. The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

People who dont have money dont understand the stress, said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. Could you imagine what its like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?

Bonus Caps

Facing a slump in revenue from investment banking and trading, Wall Street firms have trimmed 2011 discretionary pay. At Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Capital, the cuts were at least 25 percent. Morgan Stanley capped cash bonuses at $125,000, and Deutsche Bank AG increased the percentage of deferred pay.

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