Three Bankers: Allen

Read Part 1 in the 'Three Bankers' miniseries here.

Banker 2: Allen

Allen eventually made his way onto Wall Street, working for a midsize firm but pulling in a massive, six-figure salary. I always remembered Allen being a very sweet, if awkward and neurotic guy, prone to throwing money around. The most egregious display came when he took me to Vegas along with a group of other students, paid for drinks and bottle service (we went through three bottles of Grey Goose), and then spent the entire night sweet-talking the sister of a rising tech star. Not as a Sex Trophy. For business. I’m serious.

Oddly enough, despite his TriBeCa apartment and the fact that he paid for all my drinks on his company card whenever we went out (and never hit on me! Never ever!), I didn’t feel as if he rubbed his wealth in my face and considered him a good friend. At the same time, he had a certain naivete when it came to money, probably because he came from it.

“So Allen had brunch with the mother of a girl he was seeing,” a friend relayed to me over drinks one night. “And you know how he is. It was at Eleven Madison Park—”

“Obviously—”

“And he’s paying.”

“Double obvious.”

“And the mother asks him how he’s managing all of this, and Allen goes, ‘Whatever, I can afford it.’ She asks, how much of it are you saving? And he says, ‘Me? Save? I don’t save.’”

And why would Allen save his money? After all, he had plenty of it to go around. There was no such thing as a rainy day for Allen—having money was to him as natural as breathing, and sure, his parents could provide for him if things got bad, but he could always make more. He would pull in a million dollar salary as easily as he broke an egg yolk with the tip of a silver-plated knife.