No matter how much you want something, sometimes you simply have to put the thought of buying it aside after consulting your bank account. That, unfortunately, is a scenario that many of us mortals are familiar with. However, some people don’t—and likely never will—know what that feels like.
It’s no secret that the ultra-rich can buy close to anything they want, and they have proven it time and again. They can buy things that many didn’t even know you could own or purchase, like time or mineral rights, just to name two examples. More examples of things the rich can buy while the poor don’t even know they exist can be found on the list below, where we gathered some of netizens’ thoughts on the matter. While money can’t buy happiness, looking at the list, it sure looks like it can buy a lot of other things.
#1
When companies like Lamborghini and Koenesgegg make limited edition supercars worth, like, 6 million each. Those cars are usually paid for before they are done being built.
Somewhere out there, is a few garages where there are dozens of these insane super cars are just sitting. Unused. I can’t imagine being so rich that 6 million for a decoration seems trivial.
Image credits: Sensei2006
#2
So a few months ago, for the weekend, I went and saw the Hearst Castle. For the uninformed, this is private castle that William Randolf Hearst, the newspaper millionaire, built out in Big Sur on the California Coast. He would send private invites to all the intellectual and political elite of Hollywood and San Francisco for the parties that he hosted every weekend. The parties have stopped, but the structure is still there.
S**t was *unreal*.
You walk up to the building, and the doorway has this 30-foot archway over it, carved from stone. Very ornate, angles and Latin inscriptions and all that. And the tour guide is like, this is a Roman archway about 1600 years old, that was the entryway to a cathedral in southern Italy. And you’re like, wait a second… I’m in California, and this is literally the side of a building.
The whole place is like that. Every room, every wall, every hallway.
The dude collected *ceilings*. He has a *ceiling collection*. He has like *forty goddamn ceilings* from a variety of churches and cathedrals in Spain from the 1300s-1600s. Each of his thirty-odd guest bedrooms has a different antique ceiling that he bought and shipped from a different medieval Spanish church and had his builders incorporate into his mansion. And half those bedrooms also have balconies or windows that were part of Roman villas, and most of the bathroom doors are Renaissance woodwork.
The entertaining room where people hung out and smoked before dinner, one of the walls consists of this big wooden structure that is where the Choir used to sit during mass in some big-a*s European church. There are more of those upstairs, in the hallway between his bedroom and the library. The library has like two thousand Greek urns and amphora.
I asked how s**t like this was accomplished, apparently he had multiple full-time staff working in Europe whose sole job was to find him five-hundred-year-old buildings for sale, so that he could ship their walls and arches off to California for his castle.
This is *one* of his mansions. This is the “1400s Spain”-themed mansion. Apparently there’s another one further north in California that’s “1600s France”-themed. I haven’t read anything about it, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he literally bought 6 chateaus, airlifted them from France to California, and stitched them together to make an even bigger château.
Image credits: throwaway_lmkg
#3
I stayed at a guys place who is in the top 100 richest people in Britain, and that dude had a f*****g HUGE Knex set.
I mean, it was a huge alcove just full of the stuff.
Image credits: anon
#4
In the days when Concorde was flying across the Atlantic any private jet owner with a Concorde ticket got priority landing at Heathrow. So wealthy private jet owners would book a seat on Concorde as they approached Heathrow, which they were not going to use, just to get the priority landing.
Image credits: ethelraed
#5
Time. You can really buy time. I used to work assisting a chef who did a lot of specialty (vegan or gluten free or macro or w/e) private dinners for rich people. Not big parties, just small dinner parties. I got to go to some ridiculously fancy penthouse apartments and I wound up being friends with the son of a very famous musician for a while.
Think about all the little things that you do in a day: getting ready in the morning, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, making phone calls, paying bills, going to the bank, etc- now imagine you don’t have to do any of them. They’re all done for you, and you don’t have to even think about them if you don’t want to. Your time spent traveling is also at a minimum because you take helicopters or private planes everywhere. You have so much more free time, leisure time, and you don’t have to ever deal with one of life’s little inconveniences again. Even the guy I was friends with (who was in college and trying to live a pretty normal life) had meals and groceries delivered, used a car service all the time, had his laundry picked up and done, etc- so he had all this time that normal college kids don’t have, to do his work or play music or whatever he felt like.
Everyone can sort of imagine the luxury items (art, cars, jewelry etc) but the part that is hard for regular people to understand is that, unless you want to, you don’t have to be involved in picking out what painting you want or looking at your budget or making the deal or anything. You just say, “I think we should have a painting on this wall” and then you get one. It’s pretty sweet, honestly. All the homes I was in had really great collections of one kind or another because the rich person could basically have a staff member whose entire job was to find, restore, and display Soviet toy cars or something.
Image credits: anon
#6
They pay people to do the most mundane of activities for them.
Image credits: dirtymoney
#7
Commercial real estate, mineral rights, and other investment products. The scale of the investment goes up as wealth increases, since after a certain point wealth is “self-sustaining” if invested properly.
They might also have a hobby of buying collectables likely to appreciate, such as rare cars, motorcycles, or other vehicles, wines, art, and jewellery. These items are ways of holding wealth that rarely depreciate and aren’t subject to inflation.
Image credits: wanderingbilby
#8
Oud. It’s oil from certain trees in India and Cambodia that have been infected by a fungus. Rich Arabs use it like suntan lotion.
The real stuff is fantastically expensive, ethically sourced or not.
Image credits: ZV9zV8OontJmmR
#9
I knew a rich guy who would buy himself and his entire family premium season tickets to the local basketball stadium every year. The cost was probably around $80,000. They had priority seating in one of the booths. They went maybe twice a year.
Image credits: zerbey
#10
I work with a very rich a chinese entrepreneur. He smokes black Russian cigarettes with filters re-wrapped with 24k gold. Pure excess.
Image credits: vflaneur
#11
Access to get out of jail free cards. You don’t even have to buy anything, just have the correct level of wealth. Get drunk and run over a bunch of kids? Boys will be boys!
Image credits: yaosio
#12
I’m in high value insurance, one thing that struck me as odd was a high end watch club. Apparently this guy pays for a company to send him super high end watches, we are talking 30 thousand dollar + time peices. He wears them till he gets bored, then sends them back for a different watch to be worn as long as he pleases.
I am in a similar club where company sends me products as needed, it’s called the dollar shave club, and I don’t even have to return the razors!
Image credits: mothfukle
#13
My mom used to work for a pretty wealthy guy and his wife. His wife took a liking to me, so sometimes I got to stay with her while my mom was working. They weren’t in the top 1%, but still pretty well off.
Doggie spas, I knew those were a thing. When they sent their iguana to what was basically a spa for a week…well, that I didn’t know was a thing. They had 4, maybe 5 bathrooms, and a specific person on the payroll just to scrub interior grout. They also had a guy employed to do nothing but rinse their cars after every drive in the winter, because we use salt on our roads, and he hated rust.
Image credits: lookielurker
#14
Entrance into grad schools. My buddy worked at an Ivy league school. Whenever someone applied for grad school and mentioned that his or her family were donors, my friend’s job was to look up how much was donated by the family. If they donated a certain amount, the kid got in…automatically. This was back in 1998. I think the amount was about 250,000.
Image credits: TheCoolerking101
#15
I grew up in a fairly wealthy household. Although divorced, my parents’ combined net worth is somewhere near 150 million.
My mom buys political influence. She does “recreational lobbying” for a cause she’s particularly passionate about. She has a relationship with a Congressman where he calls her cell phone and asks her how to vote on House bills.
My dad buys cars. I remember he was contemplating buying an Aston Martin DB9 for a while. He ended up deciding that the money was better off going to charity, so he just gave away $200,000. A couple weeks later he decided he wanted the car, so he went out and bought it.
Overall, wealthy people buy “yes.” You have the ability to buy whatever you want, when you want. I remember calling and asking if I could buy a pair of Prada heels just because I wanted them, or how my mom got me a six-thousand dollar handbag for high school graduation because she knew I thought it was pretty. Or, better yet, how my mom shot the congressman a text message and now I’m interning on one of the most powerful committee in Congress. It’s things like that.
Image credits: lilylilylilylilylily
#16
Late to the party, but some very rich people that I know through my family have a 15-foot tall motion activated fire breathing dragon statue.
Yes, you heard me. Fire. Breathing. Dragon. Statue.
When you drive past it, it breaths a 4-foot plume of fire straight up into the air.
Image credits: Philoplex
#17
Okay, a little story here. I used to work construction for a guy who had remodeled a rich Arab guy’s house back in the eighties. A few months later, he happened to be in that area again and had the idea of dropping by and asking if he could see his work after it had been moved into and lived in. The Arab owner wasn’t there, but the butler guy, after a few minutes of talking, let my friend in to look around. He said he had stuff to do, and to make it a fairly short visit. It was all very elegant and beautiful, with artwork and beautiful furniture and so on, but the kicker was that in one bedroom there was a huge round bed– and three perfumed, coiffed sheep.
So, that.
Image credits: zydeco
#18
I’m friends with a few of the superbly rich wealthy people of the middle east (mainly Bahrain and the UAE); some are very high up royal family and others own part of of some of the biggest family-corporations in the region. I estimate some of the net worth of these people to go anywhere from $10 million up to $500 million each.
Yacht options: We’re talking ridiculous yachts you would never use except for a few days a year. I know a sheikh who bought one specifically for use at the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 race – this is a 3-day event; you park your yacht at the dock and watch the race from there, then have a ridiculous party with overflowing drinks and 50+ random spanish girls who showed up from god knows where and music till the early hours of the morning, repeat for 3 days. Besides the simple act of buying a yacht (which could be anywhere from $10-50m) which is fine, there’s the re-doing of the whole yacht in special-order leather and wood grain all over with your name on it, including the everything from the seating area to the little wine glasses in the kitchen below, which was an additional $2 million for bespoke option of having your name engraved everywhere….
Music Studio: One of the sheikhs I know was always into music, and decided to build a studio. He spent about $7 million prepping it up with the best possible equipment in the world and hired some high level engineers and producers from around the world (these guys have worked on some of the biggest albums in the world) to sit there and work full time at this studio which was empty 95% of the time. Mind you these guys were being paid a minimum of $200k+ a year to be there not including their lavish housing, expenses, cars, etc.
Art: The way these guys buy art is silly. I was with one of them at an auction where he decided to spend only $100k because it wasn’t “his type of art”. This piece he bid on at $50k went up and and up to about $500k, and the auctioneer looked at the guy and said, Gentlemen in the back? When a few of the rich in the room looked at him he said, oh hell why not, ok. Bought it for $500k and walked out.
A lot more of these examples. Fun guys.
On the more philanthropic side of things, I know some who sponsor children, families and students in poorer countries, enough money to give them a living, education, and much more. Some of them sponsor a few hundred families each..
Image credits: theultimateusername
#19
One word: art.
I grew up with two artists as parents and my uncle is a high-end art dealer and it always shocks me when people don’t realise just how expensive art can be and how rich the people that buy it are.
I mean sure the super rich buy mansions and super-cars and sports teams, but just about anyone that’s ever watched a music video knows that. What I generally notice people being the most shocked about is almost always art.
To put things into perspective: the most expensive painting my uncle sold last year was worth 18 million GBP. It was in a private sale. To put that in perspective, how much of your net worth would you spend on a single painting to hang up in your house? 10%? 5%? I don’t know many people with only a million bucks that would shell out 50k on a single painting. Let’s say 2% is generous, at 2% then that person would have ~900 million GBP. But I may have forgotten to mention that this painting was to be part of a collection.
The most expensive painting I’ve ever HELD with my own hands was eventually auctioned off for ~44 million USD. That’s more money than I will make in 10 lifetimes.
Image credits: 112663636
#20
One of my RA’s from college was from Singapore from a pretty wealthy family. I asked him about Singapore life and his background and remember he taught me about the quality of clothes and shoes the rich buy.
I’ll use an example: The common person could go to nordstroms and buy a nice pair of leather shoes (if they wanted to drop a couple hundred there). The thing is, the rich and famous don’t buy the same expensive shoes you see in Nordstrom: They buy the high quality version.
He then took out a quarter and proceeded to make a giant scratch against the top of his nice leather shoe he was wearing. He looked at my jawdropped face and said “I’m crazy, right? Watch”
He then wiped the scratch away. He did it again with a suede shoe he had in his room.
He then proceeded to take out a nike tennis shoe he had in his closet and proceeded to role it up. “You think Andre Agassi buys the same Nikes we do? No way you could do this with the same nikes”
They rolled out and were perfectly fine. The rubber soles didn’t even stretch out.
So there’s that: The rich get a superior quality of the same shoes/clothes we commoners buy.
But guess what? I had reddit gold for 2 years and now peasants disgust me too.
Image credits: anon
#21
My brother and I bought an island together. In fact you don’t really but them, best way to do it is on a long term lease. It’s not actually overly expensive and we made a good amount of our money back through an agent.
Image credits: anon
#22
In home hospitals. Imagine a fully equipped ER with all the machines redone with wood paneling and designed to integrate into a room of your house. This is one of the newer things the über rich are installing to separate themselves further from the proletarian.
Image credits: popsnicker
#23
Sometimes I think the little things are more impressive than the big purchases. I stayed at a vacation home of a family with a net worth north of $300 million – mind you it was just one of their 5 or 6 residences.
The home itself was incredible but the detail I noticed was their cable TV. They had the most expensive cable package available – every channel you could think of – for a home that they visit *maybe* once a year. It’s one thing to own a multi-million dollar vacation home, but throwing away several thousand dollars a year for the privilege of watching TV one weekend a year is different thing entirely.
Image credits: anon
#24
Oxygen, Yep you read that right, You must have heard that there was a shop in delhi which during the peak pollution was offering pure oxygen to people, I don’t think so any poor can even think about it.
Image credits: Harish R
#25
Kidnap and Ransom insurance, though the world is weird enough that rich people could start bragging about it as a status symbol like a Bentley.
Image credits: Stanley R. Wigglesworth
#26
In the past, AAirpass. A one-time payment for membership got you unlimited first class travel for life.
Image credits: anon
#27
Wet wipes instead of toilet paper.
Image credits: alepocalypse
#28
More homes.
Once you have one pretty nice house you’re set, but then you get tired of it and when you go on vacation it’s always trouble with timeshares and hotels.
What if we owned a house here!
Image credits: savoytruffle
#29
I worked for a guy with so much money he bought charter flights so he could smoke on them. About $40,000 a flight. He was smoking c***k. You know the $350 cleaning fee for smoking in a non-smoking hotel room? He laughed at it.
Edit: The extended cruises. I know a girl who was a hairdresser on a cruise line that catered to the extremely wealthy. The shortest voyage they offered was six months. One could literally sail around the world on a cruise ship.
Image credits: FadeIntoReal
#30
Seems like most of it has already been said, but here’s something that hasn’t:
They buy stuff at different prices.
Yep, if you thought that being ridiculously well off wasn’t enough, they don’t even have to pay as much when they buy the same s**t that everyday people do.
I used to run an online game where you could buy in-game items for real money. There was one user who spent about $40,000 over the course of a few weeks. So I chat her, and she’s super excited to talk to me because I run the site. I ask her what her story is, and she says that her husband runs [massive company that owns lots of movie theaters]. We talk for a while and I mention that I’m trying to plan a vacation but I complain about how expensive flights are. Without a second thought she sends me her login to an exclusive “travel club” for the obscenely wealthy. It has a standard flight booking interface (think travelocity) but it’s first class only, and all of the prices are really cheap. Like, cheaper than coach. It doesn’t just have flights either, it has four and five star resorts all over the world. They’re all at steep discounts too.
I ended up flying to the Bahamas and staying at a five star resort for a week. $1000 for the flight (round trip, two people) and $1000 for the resort (again, two people).
They also had a sort of private jet sharing thing, which was expensive and I have no idea if it was discounted at all.
I later found out that she was giving all of the in-game items away to strangers. People are weird.
Also, apparently she didn’t even use the site because she’s afraid of planes. Wat.
Image credits: anon
#31
Those life-size stuffed elephants and giraffes you see in fancy toy shops, I guess. Somebody must be buying them.
#32
One of my good friends is a self made multi-millionaire who is easily in the top 1%. Through him I’ve learned a bit about how extremely rich people spend their time. Here are some tidbits:
– Some of them have their lives run by their wealth. When you have so much money managing it takes up a ton of time. Being rich almost becomes a job in and of itself.
– Everything becomes disposable and loses value. My friends younger siblings don’t care about their lambo or rolex or goose jacket because they know they can buy another the second they want it. Kids have a way of convincing themselves they deserve their lifestyle and can become completely delusioned.
– Organic wines, flying in private jets to stay in a country for a day, ridiculous watches, oil rigs, and private yachts (with submarines) are some of the things they can buy.
– Money can be isolating. Many wealthy people realize that a lot of people befriend them and want to use them. So they put up walls and it can be difficult to make friends.
#33
They pay for people. My cousin is married to a insanely rich man, billions. He had pro tennis players helicoptered in to his Hamptons mansion for tennis lessons.
#34
Low numbered license plates.
#35
Did gardening for some crazy rich people. The house is bigger than the high school I went to. Is in its own neighborhood inside the richest neighborhood. The f*****g wife would drive down the driveway at 40 mph. She was in charge of the house. She had a full time house manager, who had 3 full time people delegating s**t for her.
We grew her vegetable garden. Other people picked the fruit. Other people cooked them. Other people served them. Other people cleaned the dishes and other people took out the trash. This garden was gorgeous. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, mangoes, peaches, bananas, strawberries, and on and on. We literally were told to pull off every slightly brown leaf. It looked a dollhouse garden. Then she would decide she didn’t like that kind of tomato, so we’d pull out big beautiful producing plants, and plant a different variety. Truckloads of waste, every week. And then she f*****g fired us. It wasn’t good enough.
#36
Oooooh I finally have something to say. I worked commercial painting for a place in the mountains for. Billionaire that owned power plants. His house was 50,000 sq ft. He had it built on a mountain and he purchased the mountain along with several other of the surrounding mountains. He had it levelled for his home and then he used the stone to build a stone wall around the house. He owned a *city* out in Texas somewhere and had his favourite bar imported. *the entire building* with swinging doors and a stained glass window and a full bar. Just to be staining the wood in the bar cost him 50,000 dollars a day. We were there for over a year! The rooms all had bathroom with sinks made by hand in Italy. The windows were all from Italy and he had a huge trophy room in the basement. He had a helicopter pad and a landing strip for his plane. What was this all for? It was a *hunting lodge* not even a house but rather a place where he could come hunt if he wanted to. That was unreal the place was enormous.
#37
I have a couple of friends that have heated tile floors throughout their house. You take off your shoes and it’s heaven walking around. I want them sooo badly..
#38
My cousin married an extremely wealthy stock broker/lawyer/entrepreneur. Not really even sure of his net worth, but they are loaded. Huge house, huge infinity pool (where the water flows over the side), fully stocked bar/wine cellar. The dude’s scotch collection is probably worth more than my house. Buys some insane car every year. Just bought an Aston Martin and some custom Porsche not even legal to register in my state. Last year the guy was driving a Rolls Royce.
Now, none of that is even what surprised me. It’s all stuff you would expect a millionaire to own. Living on Long Island (I’m considered lower middle class), I’ve had a few wealthy friends. I’m not downplaying how awesome all of that stuff is, but living here will make you jaded to fast cars and big houses because they’re everywhere.
I went to his house for Christmas Eve last year and since he knows I’m such a tech nerd, he showed me his server room. In his house. The dude doesn’t have computers in each room, he has a huge a*s rack of computers that power his entire house. It’s a tech nerds wet dream. His home is completely automated. The lights, thermostat, music (speakers in every room). Cable boxes (and Dish Network for redundancy), security cameras. All run from a central location in his basement. Now, all in all it probably doesn’t even cost near as much as one of his cars, but I’ve just never even considered a set up like that in a home.
So yeah TLDR: If you’re rich you can power all the computers/TV’s/speakers etc of your house from a server in your basement.
#39
Think you’re doing well because a bank offered you a Gold or Platinum card?
You ain’t s**t on a dog’s butt until you get a Centurion.
A charge card that costs thousands just to join and a couple of thousand a year just to hold. It’s invitation only, so don’t call them because they’ll call you (but put the word out that you’re into buying a Matisse or a limited edition Lamborghini Aventador J because they WILL call you… just by showing them you have a six-figure annual spending rate ($250,000 or above is a good amount to aim for), your foot’s in the door).
Want to meet Bono for lunch and talk world affairs? Give customer service a call, they’ll see when and where he’s available and set it up for you. Want to get into Epcot early on a day they don’t open early? No problem.
#40
Years ago, I applied for a job as an overpaid personal assistant to an incredibly wealthy individual, a billionaire.
The interview process was the longest I’ve ever taken part in, spanned three days and at least ten separate interviews by the most-degreed individuals I’ve met outside an academic setting, including publishing houses. Most everyone had a PhD, at a minimum a masters degree, usually in an obscure part of the humanities or the social sciences.
Essentially, this man had bought the labor of numerous (how many, I can’t say, but sounded like at least thirty or more) highly-educated people to research and plan every part of his personal life.
I also had a roommate who was a personal assistant to a retired couture designer for a summer. She traveled to Paris, scouring for antiques. She would take digital photos- in the days before smart phones – and email it to him. He would then select what he liked and she would make the arrangements. Needless to say, I was jealous of her job. She also received a couple of his namesake jackets for free.
#41
Organs, from the Dark Web or wherever.Some down- on- his- luck teenager in a barrio in The Philippines gets $ 1000,which is a fortune to him, ends up minus one kidney which the rich one ends up paying $250,000 for- and it is probably done by a second- tier surgeon with more need for money than ethics and likely didn’t come top of his year in kidney- transplant surgery!
#42
You already know about the houses, cars, jewelry, boats, sports teams, etc. But maybe you don’t know about the stem cell treatments. Not the kind you get in the USA, made up of cells extracted from your own fat- I mean the kind you can get in Panama, made of placenta/cord blood. Very popular amongst the very wealthy.
#43
As someone who knows quite a few billionaires- they have a habit (lots of multi millionaires do this too by the way)that middle class people don’t generally know about… the answer is…
They spend as much money as possible on physical and mental health. I’m speaking about making sure to work out their brains via extra cognitive testing, and teasers (like doing a super set for the brain) they also spend hundreds of thousands if not millions (or tens of millions) on sculpting their bodies via trainers, nutritionists, and maybe a few elective surgeries. Two examples you can look at are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. If you look at them 20+ years ago compared to now, whats different? One, they look better in a physically attractive way, and secondly, they are more fit and act younger than they did before.
The not so secret for millionaires and billionaires is you cant buy immortality, but, you can make your life more worth living, and tentatively increase your longevity. Sometimes (not all the time) the average diet of a billionaire contains less harmful items in the food, than any other group. All the time, these billionaires have had, or still do have personal trainers that would look like the ones that made Kumail Nanjani (now to be in the avengers) look like an entry level personal trainer.
#44
Access. You can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. I have seen this first hand and it is mind-blowing the level of access and respect $1 billion+ gets you.
In this case, I wanted to speak with a very well-known billionaire businessman (call him billionaire #1 for a project that interested billionaire #2. I mentioned that it would be good to talk to billionaire #1 and B2 told me that he didn’t know him. But he called his assistant in. “Get me the xxxgolf club directory. Call B1 at home and tell him I want to talk to him.” Within 60 minutes, we had a call back.
I was in B1’s home talking to him the next day. B2’s opinion commanded that kind of respect from a peer. Mind blowing. The same is true with access to almost any Senator/Governor of a billionaires party (because in most cases, he is a significant donor). You meet on an occassional basis with heads-of-state and have real conversations with them.
#45
Experiences. Dream of it and you can have it. Want to play tennis with Pete Sampras (not him in particular, but that type of star)? Call his people. For a donation of $100k+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him.
Like Blink182? There is a price where they would simply come play at your private party.
Love art? Your people could arrange for the curator of the Louvre to show you around and even show you masterpieces that have not been exhibited in years.
Love Nascar? How about racing the top driver on a closed track?
Love science? Have a dinner with Bill Nye and Neil dGT.
Love politics? Have Hillary Clinton come speak at a dinner for you and your friends, just pay her speaking fee. Your mind is the only limit to what is available. Because donations/fees get you anyone.
The same is true with stuff. You like pianos? How about owning one Mozart used to compose music on? This is the type of stuff you can do.
#46
Private jets. From what I’ve heard, you haven’t lived until you drive to the airport, park and walk onto to your waiting jet and leave. All in 10 minutes or less. No TSA, no nothing. Unless you leave the country that is, then you have to deal with customs.
#47
Monocle repair and cleaning kits mostly.
#48
I did a casual AMA before and nobody asked this. I work at the VIP part of a casino. Weirdly common for insane rich asian dudes that come gamble is really really cheap instant noodles ‘indomie noodles’. they eat them all the time even though we offering them anything they want.
#49
Son of rich people here, it’s not things you wouldn’t expect, its the pervasiveness of being rich that trickles into everyday life.
I take taxis everywhere, so i am always relaxed and never late. I live in a beautiful apartment in a skyscraper, very close to work. I attended prestigious private schools, had tutors, supportive parents who told me I was smart, and eat quality foodstuffs, so I’m educated, pretty intelligent due to crazy brain stimulation, and have very high self esteem.
I was forced to do sports, and eventually fell in love with it, so i’m also in fantastic shape.
I eat out 5x a day. In short, being rich is totally awesome, and people who say money can’t buy happiness, are wrong.
hate me if you want, i stand by it.
#50
Napkin Rings.
#51
Pasta Jars. You take the pasta out of the packet, and put it in the jar.
Everyone sees your lovely pasta jar…
#52
At a very upscale clinic I saw advertisements for bags of IV vitamins (recommend once a week at $1,700 per bag) and also blood from younger people because it is theorized that it helps you stay young (recommend once a year for $8,000 per pint).
#53
Cases upon cases of Bordeaux wine, bought at more than $1000 a bottle, that are then stored and sold years later, that the owner never sees or tastes. Like gold or stock.
#54
I once billed a client $150,000 in legal fees for the acquisition of rare and valuable art. To be frank there wasn’t much work to be done, it was mostly negotiating the sale and purchase agreement, reviewing the insurance policy and some help with the import permits.
Not included in the invoice above was travel to Europe to accompany my client, attend private showings, being entertained by dealers and staying in amazing hotels.
I don’t consider myself poor but I had no idea about this world until I was engaged in it.
The world of high end art is luxurious, snobby, superficial, exclusive and staged. The value is artificially set by a small group of people but the vast industry is full of middlemen* making a percentage of high networth indulgence.
The end result of the millions spent was a painting which I am prohibited from naming, placed high above my client’s office which I still don’t understand.
* The parties involved in the sale include; dealers, brokers, appraiser & valuators, subject matter expert consultants, insurers, detailed security, shipping and logistics agent ( it cost roughly USD$30k to ship to Indonesia, and even more to insure), frame crafters, lawyers, the company that packed said painting for shipping (forgot what they were called), and a company that managed the entire aquistion experience outsourced by the dealers. I am sure there were more, such as ground transport and the wine expert.
Most of them were contractors or referrals by the dealer. They all made for a memorable experience and likely made a lot of money.
#55
Thanks to some family inheritances, my daughter and her husband moved to a wealthy neighbourhood in our town. Life is very different there than in the middle-lower class neighbourhood they both grew up in! One of the items that wealthy people use here in Calgary, are backpack snow blowers for the many winter days that sidewalks must be cleared after frequent snowfalls. My son-in-law told me that their neighbourhood is a hub for the noisy machines working away early mornings clearing sidewalks. For years I have been shovelling snow and, quite frankly, hate that job. SIL purchased a used blower on Kijiji and I tried it out. Weighs about 20 pounds and does a great job. I purchased a brand new one and now take 10 minutes door-to-door to clear both my front and back walks, with a few feet of my neighbours’ walks on each side of me. No neighbourhood I have ever lived in had anyone owning such a machine; I didn’t even know they existed.
#56
They can impart cultural capital to their children, which is important for interacting with institutional aspects of higher education, healthcare, legal systems, job interviews… There’s a lot of assumptions about what people know, how they speak, how they make decisions… that serve as gatekeepers for admissions to elite educational options, professional schools, and good jobs. For instance, when I was interviewing for MD/PhD programs, one school had a dinner at the dean’s house. I assumed it was a gated neighborhood, as there was a huge building and lots of buildings the size of my parent’s house. I ended up in one of the servants’ houses; the big building I assumed was the clubhouse was the dean’s home. I was the only interviewee who didn’t know people had housing for their servants on huge properties like that one. It went downhill from there.
They can also avoid systems like public education with private schools or tutors. They can avoid the medical system with concierge medicine (quite cheap down in Miami, actually). They can opt out of higher education by providing jobs for their children upon completion of high school in case a child can’t make it into a decent college. They can avoid restrictions on commercial airlines by flying private. They can leverage connections to get into countries with a lot of visa restrictions (or buy a green card for residency in some countries).
#57
Rich buy exclusive comforts like ac, expensive vehicle, security service, jewelry, investment etc while everyone buy food, clothing and gadgets like phones, music systems, entertainment… .
#58
Branded stuff, imported food stuff, parfums, shoes, clothing, antiques from Europe, bags, accessories etc there are thousands of things that leave alone poor even well to do earning middle class do know where is it available.
#59
An easier life. They can phone a concierge service and say I want a trip to X and this is what I want to do when I get there. Somewhere down the line they’ll be given an itinerary and bill. No looking up hotels, organising transfers and flights. And much of the time your luggage will be collected from your home and will be waiting in your hotel room when you arrive.
#60
All the gold bullion, diamonds, stocks, real estate they can get their hands on so they have something tangible to show their wealth while the digital cashless economy will make yours worth as much as a pinch of shit and can evaporate into thin air. But it’s those bloody hackers that took your money right,? just like people who had the flu were added to the covid numbers to inflate bulls**t
#61
Freedom from petty government edicts, group think, and from government “free Stuff” which is by far the most expensive chains you could ever receive!
#62
I’m not going to say that this is not commonly known but it is something that quite generally, only people of means take advantage of in today’s world.
You can purchase and prepay your “final expenses”, whether you want to be embalmed and placed in an expensive casket for burial or you can be cremated in the future and placed in an Urn at today’s price and not pay the inflated prices in effect at your eventual demise!
I learned about this from my parents and was then reminded of it at a luncheon of wealthy investors that included a gentleman who owns a funeral home and crematorium.
I have made arrangements for my wife and I at 2001 prices with no idea when we may leave this earth but I know I will be saving money!
#63
10 thousand dollar refrigerators especially purchased to store their favorite gelato for their servants to bring to them in silver dishes at their whim and call.
#64
IMPACT. Your money can literally change the world and change lives. It is almost too much of a burden to think about. Clean water for a whole village forever? chump change. A dying child need a transplant? Hell…you could just build and fund a hospital and do it for a region.
#65
RESPECT. The respect you get at this level is just over-the-top. You are THE MAN in almost every circle. Governors look up to you. Fortune 500 CEOs look up to you. Presidents and Kings look at you as a peer.