EDISON, N.J. — Mona Mond had a plan -- and it didn't include Wall Street going haywire and giving up a three-bedroom house with a half-acre yard for a small apartment.
She'd married a man with a career on Wall Street, and at the very least she was going to live in a house, preferably brand new, with a Jacuzzi in her bedroom and a pool in that yard. There'd be a maid -- and no skimping, no worrying that any day Amar, her husband, would lose his job.
The Monds would retire early with $10 million to $12 million in a rock-solid retirement account that would spew off enough interest to keep them going until . . . well . . . they actually got old.
Because that's how it goes during good times on Wall Street.
But now there are no sure bets -- "the Street" is besieged by instability.
"I'm so angry," says Mona, who is 32 and about to have a second child. "We are living so tight, and we feel so limited. I wanted a big nice house. . . . This was planned."
With the implosion of Wall Street, Mona's plan has been upended along with so much else in the world financial capital in New York. Families of thousands of Wall Street employees, whether they're high-flying fund managers, traders, computer programmers or secretaries, are being forced to adjust to withered expectations.
For those who still have jobs, their income is still substantial but likely this year to be smaller, and families are cutting back on their spending and their dreaming.
Over the last year as Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and others were swallowed up by other banks, thousands of jobs vanished and billions of dollars were lost. With experts predicting more layoffs, some are just giving up on Wall Street.
Carlos Alvarez has not been able to find a job on Wall Street since he left Credit Suisse last spring with the hope of making more money as a trader. He is taking a position with a company near his home in northern New Jersey. No one is happier than his wife, Fran.
"I never liked the whole Gordon Gekko greed image," she says, referring to the Michael Douglas character from the film "Wall Street" whose mantra is "greed is good." "I can see how America can feel like Wall Street is the bad guys. But I never felt we were part of it."
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About 185,000 people work in the securities industry in New York -- the hard-core Wall Street world of investment firms, banks and hedge funds. The average income is about $365,000, although top-flight managers typically make many millions more. (In New York's broader financial community of banks and insurance firms the average is $228,000.)
