Life Tough for 'TARP Wives'

Things aren’t easy for still-relatively-rich Wall Street execs and their spouses. “I haven’t even looked at spring clothes,” writes an anonymous, self-proclaimed “TARP wife” in Portfolio. “God forbid someone catches me out in something new.” Her husband, like most CEOs, is “scared to death,” and she’s “learning to fly so far below the radar that I have perpetually skinned knees.”

That means shopping in her closet, not eating out—“I’ve been turning out some pretty dreadful lasagna”—flying commercial, skipping the opera. Money is tight, since much of their wealth melted in the stock implosion, and the hubby gave up last year’s bonus. “I get that I may not win much sympathy,” she writes. “But we are getting squeezed.” (More TARP stories.)