NEW YORK (Reuters) - Maybe the Jackson Pollock can wait until next year.
Nearly everyone feels the pinch in a financial crisis, and even media, sports and entertainment executives are thinking about ways to rein in the spending -- from dining out less frequently to buying cheaper holiday gifts.
"My kids... if they ever hear this, I'm in deep trouble," Steve Lanzano, chief operating officer of media agency MPG, a unit of France's Havas (EURC.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said when asked how the recession has affected his personal spending.
"I was going to get them each a flat-screen TV for their rooms, but I'm not doing that right now," he told the Reuters Media Summit in New York this week.
While many of the CEOs and top sports executives at the summit are rich enough that privation is unlikely, they say limiting spending is financially responsible and better for the public image.
That was never more apparent than when the chief executives of General Motors Corp GM.N, Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Chrysler LLC -- the "big three" automakers -- aroused national scorn when they flew separate private jets to Washington last month to ask Congress for bailout money for their companies.
"It's incredibly, shockingly stupid if you're going, when you think about it," IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chief Executive Barry Diller said. "On that count alone I wouldn't give them any money. And not because of any reason other than why would I give money to someone so dumb to go to Washington to ask for money and fly in a Gulfstream."
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who described himself as a frugal man who lives a "cautious and conservative" life, said he's watched the price of his regular lunch of grilled cheese or a hot dog with a large Diet Coke rise to $4.02 -- hardly a four-star feast.
"We have to, in an environment like this, live cautiously and act responsibly," Selig told the summit. "I read about people who live in these huge homes, and have seven homes, six homes, nine homes. We have lived in the same home in Milwaukee for 32 years now and I wouldn't want to go anywhere else."
MLB President and Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy, sitting next to Selig, suggested that the commissioner could try switching to a cheaper hot dog.
LESS WINING, DINING
Many people tend to spend enough of their money to think that they could use some more, whether they earn $50,000 a year or $500,000, and often, their needs keep up with their income. Sometimes it pays to check that impulse.
"Do you really need another suit?" said Nick Brien, chief executive of Mediabrands/Universal McCann, a unit of advertising giant Interpublic Group of Companies Inc (IPG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Brien, who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, outside New York City, said he and his family are eating out less too.
Strauss Zelnick, executive chairman of video game maker Take Two Interactive Software Inc (TTWO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), is taking a break from buying contemporary art, a pact he made with his wife. They also are spending less on vacations. Continued...
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