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“$200 Worth Of Pizza For $1.3M”: 85 Times The Ultra-Rich Spent Money In Ways That Feel Almost Offensive
Everyone likes to splurge now and then, perhaps adding something to their collection, getting first class tickets or just a sweet treat after a long day. But as with everything in life, more money gives one access to new realms of possibilities.
Someone asked “People who have worked for the wealthy/rich, what is the most bizarre luxury you've heard of?” and netizens shared their examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, prepare to do the mental math on sending a private jet for some pizza, upvote the most interesting examples and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments down below.
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#1
I caddied for a guy who has an underground tunnel connecting his main house to his guest house and I asked him why and he said “because it gets really hot outside and I don’t want to walk out there”.
Absolutely wild.
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#2
I used to walk a golden retriever who had his own apartment. The elevator went straight up to his floor. His only neighbor was his owner.
SanJoseCarey:
The house across the street from me was occupied for over a year by 3 cats! Someone came by twice a day to feed them and clean the liter box. Now the guy who was feeding them lives there too, rent free as long as he takes care of the cats. Deal continues until the cats [pass]. He likely has about 10 years ahead of him on this “lease”. Home owner is an animal lover and doesn’t need the income from the rent.
#3
$10,000+ a month on designer Dior skin care but she looked like Magda from Something About Mary. Also spent thousands a month on “sacred water” that her so called “guru” had her convinced was special magical healing water that would reverse aging and remove toxins and negative energy from her body.
#5
Pizza from a local joint in The Bay Area. Delivered to his yacht….. off the coast of Costa Rica.
I contacted the place, had them par-bake the pizzas. Took them to another place to blast freeze them. Packed them in dry ice and chartered a plane to fly direct to CR. Sourced a pizza oven that went with the pizzas. Chartered a seaplane to fly it off the coast to deliver. $200 worth of pizza for $1.3M!
#6
Not me, but my cousin was a private pilot for the rich and famous. One of clients was a Saudi prince who was quite overweight. He never flew anywhere without his living heart donor. Yep, a man who’d [donate] his heart should the prince need it. His plane seat also swiveled so he could always face Mecca.
#7
Worked on a $12 million dollar house in Beaver Creek that was being built, owned by some billionaire who invented cable TV or whatever.
I was looking at the bathroom off of the private bar, whose bar-top had $100,000 of silver dollars embedded in it, and noticed a very distinct looking black basin thing, asked what it was.
Guy I was working for: "Oh, that's a $100,000 hand-chiseled onyx vomitorium."
Me: "WTH?"
Them: "Yeah, after drinking too much at the bar, it's considered low class to have to puke in a toilet, so it's a custom-built luxury basin for them to puke in".
#8
Worker for a UHNW family once. They had a shadow house an exact duplicate of their main home built next door dully staffed just so they could move in while the other one was being deep cleaned.
#9
I was the divemaster leading dives for a wealthy couple. They liked the local diving on Monday. By Friday they bought a house.
Next trip to the island they decided it would be easier diving if they had their own boat. Bought a 34ft dive boat. Then decided they might want to move it from one side of the island to another depending on dive conditions so bought a trailer and truck to tow it with.
Then decided it might be easier if they had their own scuba compressor to refill tanks at home.
All this for maybe two weeks per year. Just charter a boat for the time you are on island.
#10
A company comes in and installs Christmas lights and decorations in your yard. They drive by twice a week and straighten and fix any bulbs or lights that are out. Then end of season they remove all of it and store it for you for next season. This privilege was $10,000 per season after you paid for all the decorations.
#11
Day nanny. Night nanny. Weekend nanny. All of the kids were school aged. The kids were so overcome with excitement when they got to spend time with their parents, one of them would get physically sick.
#12
I'm a woodworker so I need it to make money. Dry wood specifically. I met someone who owns a different company and also a wood kiln. He has a 5 acre warehouse with stacks of rare wood worth millions. Some is endangered and can no longer be imported. He does not do woodworking. He bought it all as a precusor to a hobby he probably won't do anything with. Some stacks are worth 100k a pop. The kicker, he wants to wholesale stuff I make without paying me up front for orders.
#13
My friend worked for a rich guy as his errand boy - used to send him down to the casino with 50s to play slots for him and let him know if he wins.
#14
When I was in high school, I was hired at a local estate to wash and dry the elderly ladies in residence's hair. There were two of them, in their late 80s/early 90s. Huge stone mansion on a lakeshore bluff. I washed their hair in a regular pedestal sink, as they leaned forward from a wooden bench seat. Both had white hair that was down to their hips, kept braided. I was there one week, and Miss E's hair went down the drain and became stuck! I freaked and fessed up, to which she calmly told me how to free her hair via a trap valve, and it worked! I was beside myself but she calmly said it happens a few times a year and not to "fret, dear." She was incredibly chill.
They had two separate rooms full of Wedgewood China, but each room had different colored pieces. It was incredible. My mom and aunt worked there, cleaning. Different times and circumstances.
#15
Credit cards for dog.
Private jet for wine (literally just flew wine in from around the world to whatever location they were at). They had a separate jet for personal travel.
#17
Tyler Perry bought 2 (alcohol) bars that came off a sunken ship, had them restored and installed 1 in the house and the 2nd in the basketball court/ballroom under his tennis court.
#18
My stepfather is head of security for a hedge fund billionaire. some wild stuff i have heard is:
$500k a pop on 3 armored and bulletproof escalades.
sent him to pick up a new car for his wife, a Bentley. she didn’t like it so he sent my stepdad back to pick up a maybach for her instead.
has sent my stepdad across the country on his private jet in the am to pick up food just so he could fly back that afternoon so this guy would have dinner.
he is a big mercedes guy and according to my stepdad, has about 50 different ones dating back to his very first one he got over 40 years ago, all in immaculate condition.
he is very generous though. for my brothers 30th, he flew my mom, brother and stepdad on his plane to NYC, put them up in a crazy hotel and got them front row for billy joel at MSG.
i am sure there is other stuff that i have been told and am forgetting… but billionaires are a completely different breed when it comes to spending money.
#19
My cousin worked on an old English manor house restoration & the guy who owned it came from quite humble beginnings. For some reason he'd never wear the same shirt twice. His wife bought him really nice branded button shirts like YSL. He'd wear them once, she'd wash/iron & repack them & give them to charity shops. That seemed to be his only quirk, he was absolutely sensible about the rest of his life.
#20
The rich people I worked with don’t see money as the asset. They view life through time spent.
I’ve seen 150k get spent just to grab a box of wine. Because it was the wine they liked and it was less time spent getting “that” box of wine (not boxed wine) compared to drinking wine they don’t like. So, while they did their thing at the destination, we acquired the wine they really wanted.
Edit: Hired a private jet to fly them somewhere. Drank all the wine on the flight. Had us fly back to get more wine. Believe me, we offered to get it somewhere closer. They wanted their wine from their house. We got the wine.
#21
I used to garden for a family that had an indoor figure skating rink in their house, complete with its own Zamboni.
#22
Shipping their bedding to an Italian hotel from Canada because they can’t sleep on anything else.
#23
A girl I met on vacation worked on super yachts. She had one client who was saudi royalty. Thought he was too good for toilet paper so he would wipe with towels and leave them on the ground after.
#24
He had a piano delivered to a hotel room in Paris so he could make his lesson, as his teacher traveled with him. In order to get the piano into the suite, it had to be hoisted by crane from the outside through a window that was temporarily removed. Paid for by him, well actually the company he embezzled from.
#25
A buddy of mine used to work for the owner of the Brewers. At the height of COVID, he had a hospital-level COVID testing machine in his garage. He’d have parties during COVID, so guests had to test in the garage and get a negative result before they could enter the house. Positive results meant driving home.
#26
I'm a horse trainer. We had a very rich client who's daughter wanted to ride at a barn in LA even though they lived in SF. They would fly her down to the barn multiple days a week for her lessons in the private plane. The daughter was not a skilled rider and the trainer she rode with in LA was totally average. The whole reason the mom rode and had horses was so they had something to do together even though the daughter never came to our barn.
#27
The dad built a go cart track. Concrete. Kids loved it for a while. It sat idle thereafter.
#28
I did not work for them, but my mother's cousin and her husband built a house by a prairie dog town, which they treated as pets. They even installed a door for them to go into and out of the house.
Then they built their super-mansion and transplanted that whole prairie dog town to the new place. Insane.
#29
I signed an NDA, but one thing I thought was wild. There was a pilot and airfield and he flew just to get like their specific cravings, like if one of them wanted a steak from Japan this guy would fly there and back to get it.
#30
Owner and his family were in Hawaii, owner had a migraine and dispatched his private jet to San Diego to pick up some medicine for his headache. Just two pilots no passengers.
#31
A friend of mine was a butler for Bruce Springsteen.
Showing my age here, but anyone who grew up watching Fresh Prince will immediately think: "oh, rich people, butler, that's nit particularly odd", and you'd be correct. Plenty of rich people have butlers.
What made this so strange, was that my mate, was a butler at one of Bruce's holiday homes.
Bruce would, apparently, spend somewhere between 2 - 12 weeks per year at this property, yet, would maintain and pay a full complement of staff year round. At any given time, fully employed, there would be 2 butlers, 3 cleaners, 2 cooks, a pool technician, and several landscapers.
They were all employed, (and housed), at this property full time, year round, just in case The Boss felt like dropping by, or if he had some friends who needed a place to chill.
Paying the best part of 10 people full time wages, just on the off-chance you visit a property for a brief interlude, seems absolutely wild to me.
#32
Guy wanted to go night skiing, but the ski resort wasn't offering it this year for whatever reason. He bought the ski resort.
#33
Buying accolades. My best friend canceled a date with me because his father was accepting a prestigious award by the city for his humanitarian work. I congratulated him and said I didn’t know his dad did those type of work, he said he didn’t he bought it lol.
Also would like to add, when you’re wealthy it’s no longer about money but status. It seems that you’re no longer competing about money, who has a bigger house, car, etc but things that are not easily obtainable (like awards). I now look at Oscar’s, Grammys differently now.
#34
Also an elderly woman who bought a $2million dollar apartment and then decided she didn’t want to move after all. A week after the closing, she put it on the market to sell. It was just a whim.
#35
Huge fully kitted out kitchen. Nothing to make food with (pots, pans, utensils) and 2 barren fridges.
I was so excited to make some food in a pro level home kitchen, but they didn’t even have salt… They had someone bring in 12 different varieties of salt before I started cooking that were purchased from a boutique.
Oh but the wine and spirit selection was top tier.
#36
One summer in college I worked for a tree company. We were cutting down a few trees as part of a big landscaping project at a mansion in Greenwich Connecticut. Place was huge. These people also had a house in Colorado and there was a rock there that they wanted to add to the Connecticut project. So they paid for the engineers, crane, riggers and trucking company to move this rock, about the size of a car, from Colorado to Connecticut. Chained it down on a flatbed and drove it across the country. A rock.
I was getting paid $4.40 an hour and had to buy my own safety gear.
#37
I worked on a design for a house that had so much incredibly valuable art on every surface they hung 2 large Warhols *in the garage*. A 20+ car garage, but still.
#38
I worked for a Multi Billionaire he would have a habit of buying these beautiful mansions, Chateaus, etc. and doing these crazy expensive remodeling projects. He never wanted to wait so he would buy another house in the same neighborhood while he remodeled. Dude had multiple projects all over the world.
#40
I met a famous photographer - he had a gorgeous house on the water in Miami with an indoor poor and two house keepers….. for his dogs.
#41
I had a patient who had an outdoor pool that was a bit bigger than the size of a standard LA Fitness pool. I remember seeing them during the winter and they still had the pool in operating condition, no cover or anything. It was also heated so you can literally see the steam coming out of the pool. The kicker? They said no one used it during the winter because it was too cold.
#42
Not as exciting as the other stories but i know a man that gave a lot of money to research. His husband was a very wealthy and influential man and they had multiple life insurances they forgot about. When the husband passed away unexpectedly, the man rediscovered the funds. He decided to use the money to fund as many research projects as he could. Their extended families weren’t happy. I got a chance to have dinner with him and I was blown away by how normal he was.
#43
A room for making pastries and dough.
#44
Two story poolhouse made out of glass, nearly every ground floor panel of glass opened up for the summer (this was in NJ). It also had a complete kitchen along with a hifi sound system installed all along the second story.
None of that is the excessive rich part.
They also had air blowers on each panel of glass to keep it from fogging.
#45
Just regular rich, not billionaire rich, but I sold some art to a lady who had a wine fridge in her walk in shoe closet so she could have wine while she picked out her shoes…..
#48
Wealthy women who just stop washing their own hair. Someone else washes their hair for them every time and styles it.
#49
I didn't work for this family and only heard it from my friend: a Saudi prince and his family paid enough to get a Chick-fil-a to open on a Sunday.
#50
My mom cleaned the apartment of a very famous luxury designer. The stairway banister was made of silver and had to be polished by hand every day.
#51
Twins and a 3yo. Each child had a day and night nanny each and there was another nanny just there to oversee the nannies.
Edit: the twins are 6 months old.
#52
I used to work as aquarium maintenance and there was a house that had a tank in it. It was about 30 x 30 feet I would get in and clean it, and it was full of small sharks, puffer fish, eels, and hundreds of other exotic saltwater fish. I would go there once a week to get in and clean it and feed the fish and backwash the tank. I’m not really sure how much the guy paid for it but I know he paid my boss 7000 a month just to keep it clean and this was back in 2010.
#53
I would have to dump all the leftovers from every meal for the barn cats. They would not let me make soup or pasta sauces of the extra, they would not eat the same food the next day. Lobster tails, whole salmon and wagyu steaks. ...daily! I asked to wrap it for the employees to take home and the answer was "no." Not even to donate to Seniors we all knew in the village. I did live-in for two years and I could only eat and take a snack to my room. Not permitted to leave with anything, to visit other workers or to have a smoke or a tan in the corner of the property on my break. It was a life changing experience in some ways....I left actually damaged and have gone on to live in a kinder and not so materialistic way...but, I also have a few ultra-posh products I like to indulge in.
#54
Our house painter told of painting the interior of a mansion belonging to a wealthy tech guy. The wife had a huge room with rotating shelves along three walls and every shelf full of designer purses. She had a similar room for shoes.
#55
When I was a cleaner in Aspen I was dusting and picked up a crystal bowl to wipe under it and the Lady of the house said "Do be careful that particular piece is worth 10K dollars" I set it down gently but thought what a waste.
#56
No leftovers. Chef either threw it all out at night or staff took it home.
$3k for tulips in the spring in the yard.
Eye doctor made house calls.
Separate governess for each child. 3
They bought the very expensive house next door for essentially storage.
#57
A casual friend of mine is a private pilot for billionaires. They have some of the usual $B stories (trophy hunting, ignoring/bribing their way through passport control) but the ones they get bothered about are the logistics. They decide they want to go somewhere in an instant and then make a show of strained patience while the pilots file flight plans and get clearances and all the other paperwork required. And the mind-numbing dollars around *parking* jets around big events: Basically around a big game or fight LAS becomes a "drop zone" for most pilots who land to offload the owners/clients and then ferry the plane to PHX or another huge airport to park until they're called back to pick them up. Double the already stupidly expensive airport fees. And flight plans.
#58
Didn't work for one, but I was friends with this chick whose dad/family were loaded at the time.
One thing that stuck out that I never forgot, was that she said they never reused or washed socks. They just always bought new socks.
#59
I worked for a lady who had a part of her closet completely dedicated to silk scarves and really expensive camisoles.
There were hundreds in there!!!
#60
My partner and I would hang up and take down this man's birdfeeders everyday because he liked to watch the birds in the morning when he was at him Ohio home.
#61
Walk in refrigerator. Also they had a massive yard. Think of movies where its a gate with huge green lawn to the house. They didnt like how it looked so they just decided to rip it all apart and have a crew lay down sod and plant the trees they wanted and the driveway rocks were crushed seashells. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
#62
One of my clients (I am a cleaner) gifted her husband an old (I’m assuming collectors type?) boat for his birthday. He appreciated it, and then he bought another marina to put it at so it didn’t have to travel over land. I think it’s like their 4th marina/yacht sales company?
#63
A dear client of mine, is quite wealthy. He bought the empty section across the road from his house a few years back so that no one would build a 2 storey there and block his view.
Anyway, fast forward a few years, and he decided to build a 3 bedroom lovely home there, for his grown daughters to stay in when they come to visit, about once or twice a year from abroad. His own home is very large but he likes to give them their space.
I guess it's a long term investment for him too, but this beautiful home sits empty for 11 months of the year.
He had them choose everything, on his dollar. What they wanted was his command, and he set about making sure the right furniture etc was delivered and set up.
He does do a lot of good for the community also. But his daughters and grandchildren are his world. He bought them brand new cars too.
It's so sweet when his family are over, staying across the road in the house he built for them, and he pops over with his breakfast to have alongside their coffees.
#64
Filet mignon for a 9 year old, every day, as an after school snack.🙄 hundreds of bags of freeze dried strawberries. the kid would eat a $20 bag in one sitting. i can’t even imagine buying one of those at the grocery.
oh, and buying a NYC 4 story brownstone sight unseen. from your house in an unnamed tropical country. and completely re-doing the entire thing before you get there and then selling it two years later.
#66
I was a landscaper for a while. The company i worked for did huge projects up in the mountains for crazy rich people.
One property just had the mansion built on it, but the owner wasn't happy because there wasn't enough water around. Mid landscaping project we had to rip about 20 trees out and start digging a 150 foot pond. But they wanted an island as well.
We had to build up on spot with rock and dirt to make a 20ft island and the rest of the pond went down to almost 40 ft. Then, after it was lined with stuff to keep water in and filled with water, they wanted the island to be covered with grass.
We had to take rolls of sod over on a rowboat and cover the island with grass and trees.
#67
In college I worked construction for a company serving the extravagantly wealthy. The one that stuck out to me was the billionaire who had a private art museum installed on his 150 acre estate in one of the most expensive markets in the country. He had these sheds built for some modern art that I helped on. I believe the title of the houses were the Clay Houses because inside they housed clay sculptures using alpaca hair from the tax break alpaca farm on site. My understanding is that each shed was $1 million. They flew in stone masons from Scotland to do the exterior stone work and I think even the stone itself may have been from Scotland (this was a long time ago so I can't be sure). I kinda liked the one with a cave like thing going into the back wall, but the other two were pretty boring.
#68
I worked for a wealthy oligarch in Balashov who had each of his rooms in different themes. The kitchen was like the inside of a spaceship, his dining room was like the inside of a coal mine, one the bathrooms was like you were in a jungle. He always carried around a $35,000 Hermes handbag.
#69
I once worked for a very wealthy woman. She’d complain that she couldn’t find her (sunglasses, gloves, sweater, etc.) because she could never remember which one of her houses she’d left it in.
#70
My sister’s ex was the Walton’s personal pilot. He would fly them to Vail so they could ski and they would often make requests like wanting “beer from Bentonville” so he would fly to Bentonville and fly them a case of beer to Vail….so many private jet trips for stupid [things] like grabbing their bikes or wine. Just a drop in the bucket for them.
#71
The guy had his deceased dog cloned.. and he had his gym rebuilt, all the equipment he had prior was brand new.
#72
Kids in attendance at a Bar Mitzvah were gifted a pair of Nikes as a keepsake. It was a 300 person event and there were at least 100 kids.
#73
One of his retirement projects was to open an art gallery that never turned a profit. I was one of several artists he supported by just buying up everything I did for about 5 years.
#74
They got mini horses as lawn ornaments for their main house, that they spent 5 months a year at.
#75
Urinal next to bed. Husband, did not want to have to walk to the bathroom, in the middle of the night.
#76
Not worked for, but dated the son of an insanely rich family. The dad had a $3M condo across the street from the hospital he worked at because sometimes he didn’t want to drive home. The drive home was 10 minutes.
#77
I worked for a couple who had someone from farrow and ball come to choose the colours for their home. (It's a paint company)
They paid her a lot of money and the paint bill was thousands.
A visitor they had said, "It's so refreshing to see someone going with magnolia."
They were really nice people though, which in my experience, is rare for wealthy people.
#78
Vintage band shirts. Like with literally no budget and don’t ask if its too much and don’t ask if its a band I even want. Just buy them. 90s rage against the machine for $900? $1400 for Soundgarden? Just keep a steady supply.
#80
Startup funder. He let stay in a building that was 3/4 warehouse wrapped around a central office. We'd be working in the back and he'd just drive in Lambo and other exotic cars and park them there.
#82
One boss was dehydrated after several days of digestive tract problems. His doctor was away on vacation but called him to recommend he go to the emergency room for IV fluids. He was perfectly ambulatory and not in any danger, but the doctor told him to call 911 and arrive at the hospital by ambulance to bypass the line. He did -- mutiple thousands of dollars for that taxi service to the head of the line.
#83
Worked briefly at a 5-star hotel in Dubai. One guest had his personal chef flown in from Italy for a 3-day stay, along with specific olive oil from his own estate. Total cost for the chef alone was more than my annual salary. The food wasn't even that different from what the hotel's chefs could make. It was about the flag of having your own chef.
#84
A mattress that cost over $600,000. I had no idea there even were such things and it's not some super custom made by elves thing. It's been there a couple months but will probably been gone before a year passes. The dog doesn't like it.
#85
This guy is a multimillionaire . He has huge garage built under a lawn tennis court. In the extreme far corner was a newly imported Lamborghini Centenario … that’s it.
I mean it looked pretty cool but kinda of just forgotten about.
What do you think ?
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