A complete list of Salon's Money Week coverage - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I N T R O D U C T I O N Introducing Salon Money Week By Scott Rosenberg Salon kicks off Salon Money Week, a special series of articles on our last great taboo. (10/27/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T O D A Y My cash ain't nothing but trash By Cintra Wilson The author's parents left her a legacy whose worth cannot be measured in vulgar coin: A terminally ludicrous relation to money (10/27/97) Welfare Cinderella By Ariel Gore How I went from rags to riches to reality in just one year (10/27/97) How you can negotiate a higher salary By Marty Nemko Career consultant Marty Nemko offers strategies for wringing money out of a Scroogelike boss (10/27/97) Is Anna Wintour really worth a million bucks? By Deborah Mitchell In the world of glossy New York magazines, the rich get richer and the poor get a dollar a word (10/27/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T O M O R R O W Your Money Is No Good Here -- Tim Cahill travels to cashless cultures (in Wanderlust)

po's tao of dough +++++HOW MUCH DO YOU MAKE? +++++FROM FIRST BOSTON TO SILICON VALLEY, +++++MONEY IS OUR LAST GREAT TABOO. BY PO BRONSON | in January 1987, at the age of 22, I was hired by the First Boston Corporation at the rate of $18,000 to be an assistant in the San Francisco office of the bond department, Taxable Fixed Income Sales. Within a week I was placing a half billion dollars a day of client money into short-term funds, and within months I was the resident expert in modeling newfangled derivative mortgage bonds on a finicky computer system I nicknamed the Ronco Mortgage-o-matic -- "It slices, it dices, and nobody but me seems to be able to get it to work." But no matter how exotic my responsibilities, I never forgot what was the most important line item in my job description. Other assistants weren't expected at the office until 6 a.m., shortly after trading opened, but I was there every day at 5, before most salespeople had arrived. The first thing I did -- even before starting the coffee or slipping out of my running sneakers and into my loafers -- was go in the Trade Entry room and tear off the daily update of the monthly sales report, which had been sent to this 17-inch-wide, upright line printer from a server in New York and had spit out overnight on green-and-white-striped, two-ply computer paper. The report printed twice, and I took both of them off into a lonely corner. With the first copy, I tore off each salesperson's several pages and delivered their portion to their foxhole desktop, usually into a cubbyhole they felt private and secure about, where nobody else could steal a glance. With the second copy, I divided the two layers of paper into separate reports, and put one on the desk of the office's managing director, and one on the desk of the sales manager. The report stated exactly how much commission each salesperson had earned that month. That fiscal year, salespeople's incomes varied from $850,000 to $240,000. Only three people in that office of 60 were entrusted with the information: the two men who ran the place and me, a 22-year-old kid who owned only one suit and hadn't had his shoes shined since he bought them. On the occasional day something caused me to show up a little late and, God forbid, I arrived at 5:45, after trading had started and salespeople were dropping off trade receipts in the Trade Entry room, an action that caused them to walk within a few feet of the precious report -- I got a stern glare from the sales manager as I delivered the report, a glare that clearly asked, "What if someone had seen the report?" In 20 months of work, I never took a day off or missed a day sick. What was particularly odd about the secrecy of the report was that this was finance in the '80s, after all. Nobody had to feel guilty about earning half a million dollars at the age of 31. In fact, it was quite common for salespeople earning half a million dollars to complain that they were underpaid. The market mantra was "Everything has its price," and this was said with pride, so there was no shame in having sold out the best years of your life for a big wad. In addition, most of a salesperson's commissions were earned on new bond issues, and trading of new bond issues occurred over an international public address system called the squawk-box, or the Hoot 'n' Holler. So when a heavy hitter dropped 200 mil on Bank of America, everybody in First Boston's offices around the world knew exactly how much commission he had pocketed for the sale. So why, oh why, was the sum of these instances, the total of what people made, such a guarded secret? Why, when everybody was rich, did it matter just how rich you were? I was entrusted with this secret information on my first day. The sales manager was in the office at 5. He could have taken the report himself, but he probably didn't want to be seen doing something so menial as tearing reports off a printer. There were other assistants who had been at the firm 15 years and had seen everything -- layoffs, instant riches, betrayal -- they surely wouldn't even blink at the earnings numbers. But instead I was chosen. There was something about me, something that must have come out in that first interview. How do I know that I wasn't just chosen randomly, or handed down the duty by some assistant who didn't want to show up an hour early? Because it had happened before. It had been happening my whole life. In June 1978, at the age of 14, I was hired by the Millstone restaurant at the rate of $2.35 an hour as a busboy for the summer. The Millstone was a high-volume soup 'n' sandwich shop on First Avenue in downtown Seattle, near Pioneer Square, and this was my second summer clearing tables. Most of the 15 employees were college-educated actors and actresses, and top wage -- cashier's wage -- was $4.25 an hour. I know this because after I'd been there a couple of weeks, the owner chose me as the person to pass out paychecks. Two of the women working there, both sandwich makers, were from Harvard. It must have been humiliating to have attended the oldest American university, then come to the Emerald City and landed good roles in the Intiman Theater's production of an Edward Albee play, and to read high praises of your work in the Seattle Times, all the while getting paid $2.85 an hour to make ham & Swiss. How much more humiliating was it for your paycheck to be handed to you by a cherubic eighth grader who spent his own $2.35 on dope and video games? I was entrusted with these people's painful secret, and I did a better job of it than the owner, who no doubt hated that twice-monthly ritual of confronting the very people she was so grossly underpaying. As I learned over the summer, paytime had historically been the occasion when all sorts of brewed resentment would boil over, resulting in raise requests and, when they weren't granted, quittings. Paytime had been a sort of showdown at the Millstone corral. But when I took over, the emotions calmed. Turnover dramatically eased. A simple measurement of employee anger -- the number of dishes broken per week -- also went down. I had a gift. I didn't make people go weird around money. So obvious was my gift that even the owner soon entrusted me with her money. I was given the title Assistant Manager and a 10-cent raise and at the end of the day, I cashed out the cashiers and totaled their receipts to learn the day's take, which I then walked down the street and deposited into our bank account. I was a math whiz, so I never made a mistake transposing numbers. It turned out that even the owner was uneasy with money, uneasy with knowing how much she had earned, and the daily totaling had been a hugely dreaded stress that sent her home twisted up and churning with consternation. Whether the take was as low as $600 or as high as $1,100, it was a whole lot easier for her to learn it from me. No longer so uptight, she was less likely to fire someone and more likely to dole out her dime raises without fear that her mortgage payment couldn't be met. People often ask me why it is that they feel so relatively comfortable talking about money with me, and when they push the question I give them what sounds like a plausible answer: Once you've had a half billion dollars go through your hands on a daily basis, no amount of money impresses. Also, after my 20 months at First Boston, I was offered a position as full salesman, with a starting draw against commission of $300,000. My alternative was attending the writing program at San Francisco State, to which I'd recently been accepted. I tell people that once you've looked 300K in the eye and turned away, money will never have talismanic power over you again. But the truth is, turning away from the 300K was easy, because money had already lost its sway. I grew up with money. I don't mean we had wealth; I mean that money was always a factor. I grew up with money the way our generation grew up with television -- always on in the background. Mom was constantly threatening that my two brothers and I were going to eat her out of house and home, and to avoid this fate certain favorite foodstuffs had to be rationed: two slices of bologna a day, two slices of American cheese, one glass of juice, two glasses of milk and one big bowl of unsweetened cereal. At the grocery store, we knew not to ask. When I moved in with my father during high school, the manufacturing company that he had bought out of bankruptcy had returned to bankruptcy. He had to be a Houdini with money. He leased a Jaguar, but we had to pay the phone and energy bills in cash. We rented a boat in the Canadian San Juan Islands for two weeks every summer, but on the day before my high school graduation I learned that for two years nobody had paid the school tuition, and I wouldn't graduate. So I've never had the luxury of keeping money matters at a distance. I've never had the luxury of not knowing. I've always been cut in on the deal. I suppose what I have is similar to the human clinicalness with which doctors go about examining our bodies. It's an oxymoronic bearing, one that simultaneously conveys 1) a detached indifference, a nothing-shocks-me ease, and 2) a deep, knowing respect for how sensitive this may be to you. In other words, though I am utterly indifferent to how much you earn (no matter how much or how little), I am wholly sympathetic to how much your income matters to you. N E X T+P A G E+| Why I am like the plastic surgeon who specializes in boob jobs - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC WHITE

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