Morning Coffee: Lavish pleasures of the dual income financial services family. London cuts likely as brokers merge

efinancialcareers.com:

If you live in a family with a single financial services income, you may find that your life isless lavish than you'd envisaged and that you can't afford all the things you want. If you live in a family with two, though, you can buy hundreds of pairs of shoes and a custom-made closet to accommodate them.

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This is the takeaway from the Wall Street Journal's behind the doors profile of Kelli and Fei Wang, who work for Morgan Stanley and for Merrill Lynch respectively. 

The 40-something Wangs live in Chicago. She's a director at Merrill Lynch wealth management; he's a senior vice president in family wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Together they occupy a $1.8m house that's «Ralph Lauren meets Tom Ford,» combining what their designer says is «a mixture of buttoned up and timeless sophistication and sexy, modern, crisp elegance.” Both are fashionistas, and alongside the 200 pairs of shoes there are collections of designer bags, including one owned by their two and a half year old daughter, who has her own collection of Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton mini-bags. Every year, they go to Italy and France and their joint goal is 'to have the best experience possible' whether in terms of 'food, art, clothing or design.'

If all this leaves you feeling a little inadequate or inclined to encourage your own spouse into wealth management, there are other ways of doing it. Business Insider has been talking to Daniel George, a former Google developer and leader of AI projects at JPMorgan. George, who is married to an AI developer at Google, single-handedly saved $1m and retired from JPMorgan aged 29. He did not buy hundreds of pairs of shoes. „My only possessions were clothes, a