“Poor People Don’t Know How It Works”: 30 Wild Activities That Only The Filthy Rich Could Even Think Of
While the world faces steady inflation and prepares itself for a probable global recession standing around the corner, all amid the shaky post-covid reality, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and all-consuming anxiety, there exist people for whom this chaos is a mere nuisance.
Welcome to the world of the super-rich that stand separated from all of the rest by a yawning wealth gap. Think of people with enormous fortunes, unimaginable extravagance and a lavish lifestyle that goes far beyond comprehension.
“What is an activity the ultra-rich partake in that regular people don't even know exists?” someone asked a while back on Ask Reddit. The thread amassed 23.7k upvotes and almost 15k comments from people who have experienced the life of the ultra-rich and the quirks that come with it, one way or the other. Below we wrapped up some of the most intriguing and juicy stories.
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I have a relative by marriage who buys land so no one can develop it.
Dated a guy who had a place at Ocean Reef (super exclusive, extremely wealthy community in upper Florida keys).
Sat with 5 other couples, going back and forth about whose mega yacht we should take out that evening.
Bob and Cindy's is the closest to the canal... but oh, Jim and Donna's is bigger! But, Mark and Tina's jacuzzi is already heated!... but Dale and Ira's has a full staff tonight!
I was just like... I have a kayak...
My whole dad's side of the family is ultra-rich, they own a private pharmaceutical that supplies hospitals in small countries (mostly third world) also luxury real estate as well as offices. . I got to live with him while attending college in my home country. My uncle had his first kid while I was there, and my aunt made him hire a 24/7 maternity nurse to take care of the baby at all times. They didn't want anything to do with their baby until she was at least 3-4 years old and "active". It really open my eyes to why my mother choose to get separated and raise her kids in an average life. Made me really thankful for the life I had, to see in person how disconnected and spoiled my half-brother and sister were was a rude awakening.
That’s disgusting. I can’t imagine not wanting to be a part of my childrens lives at all stages
Seasonal furniture.
"Well, it's getting on into April so we better get the spring couches and chaise lounges out of storage, and swap out the winter dining table and china for the spring set. Better get out all the matching drapes, too."
Go abroad for dinner.
I hear of wealthy Londoners (or nearby) who simply jump in their helicopter and fly to Paris for an evening meal, then come home again.
Met a cool young girl at my college - she was like a princess - she said that was the closest English word to describe her status. Before coming to school, she had NEVER - dressed herself, bathed herself, walked up or down stairs without a maid holding her hand... I initially found this out when I heard her ask someone for help going down a flight of, like, 6 stairs. She was cool about it, though, and learning.
My good friend works at a big mortgage company and the CEO has a huge house overlooking the ocean. His neighbor had a few trees that kinda sorta blocked parts of the ocean view so the CEO asked his neighbor if he could trim the trees. The neighbor politely said no. So the CEO bought the neighbors house for $15 million over market price and chopped all of the trees down completely.
Brings to mind a story about the duchess of Windsor (Wallis Simpson) having 100+ year old oaks , I think, cut down near one of the palaces. Makes me sad that wealth can erase any conscience or concern for the world beyond themselves.
Well, one ultra-rich person in particular. The CEO for a company I used to work for put a giant tank (pool) with a submerged "sunken ship" inside of it in his back yard so that he could scuba dive around in it.
That actually sounds pretty cool. I get a longing for some sort of... pirate or nautical adventure (for lack of better words) from time to time. I usually just watch Pirates of the Caribbean when that happens. This would be much cooler. I wonder if he has a treasure chest full of rubies and gold doubloons down there. I know I would.
Using the term "Summer" as a verb.
Well, excuse me. I'm going to go summer in my private beach-side mansion in the French Riviera while I sit by the pool-side and am fed peeled grapes and am fanned by pool boys.
About a year ago I started a job doing some demolition work. My first job was on the 34th floor of an apartment building in Melbourne.
The apartment was huge. Took up the whole floor just for the one apartment.
All external walls were glass so you had a 360 degree view of the entire city. Could almost see the whole state the view was that good.
Anyway, the apartment cost $4million and the owner didn't like the interior at all.
Our job was to remove EVERYTHING from the apartment. Walls, decorations, lights etc until it was a empty box. We took $80,000 of marble out of the bathroom walls and threw it in the bin! Went on to spend a further $2.5million and doing the place up again.
His reason for the purchase of the apartment?
"I want to watch the Grand Prix my own private box."
He wasn't using the apartment as a house. Just somewhere to watch a god damn car race.
Too much cash there.
Couldn’t they have kept/sold all the interior stuff that the owner no longer wanted? You know, “one man’s trash” and all that.
They buy fine art - museum-quality pieces - when it becomes for sale and hold on to it until it appreciates to a point where it's worth more to collectors than they originally paid for it.
That way, not only do they make a tidy profit, but they also get to enjoy the artwork in their homes as it increases in value.
My cousins have travel-around tutors that go with them when they travel around the world, so they technically never miss school. They aren't bound by the schedule of public or private schools in Texas, where they technically "live".
Also, they were just in South America shooting Dove (apparently) and they killed **30,000** in a single week, between my uncle, his 15-year-old son and his 12-year-old son.
My step-grandfather (uncle's father) was...displeased about the display, despite having been a hunter his whole life. Somehow, in his age, he's discovered the wrongness of some of the things he's killed. Specifically about doves he said, "I was at the [country club] last week and they have lots of doves out there. The regular gray ones and the white-wing variety. And they're just so beautiful and I said to myself, 'How could you have ever killed these magnificent things? How could you look at yourself in the mirror?'"
This man has been a hunter for most of his life and he's sworn off of it forever. He doesn't even fish anymore.
Good. Killing for no reason is evil. I understand eating meat. But killing for fun? Disgusting
A girl I know is a nanny for a very rich family and they flew her to the other side of the world to take care of one of their three kids. Just one. The other two have their own separate nannies.
Watching the weather report for multiple cities with ski resorts. If a lot of snow drops someplace, on moments notice a group of about a dozen will meet up at the private jet and go skiing for a couple days. During the trip, they might jet over to see a nearby sporting event. Then back to work as if nothing special just happened. A couple days later the designated accountant on the trip will send a spreadsheet around to everyone with their part of the bill for the trip. This bill can also include loses from the poker games played on the jet during flights.
Lived in Iraq, we had this super rich family that their kid got kidnaped, they paid almost half a million for him to get released. After a month he got kidnaped again.
They never left the country knowing they can afford to buy their lives. So they hired an entire squad to protect them.
My wife's grandmother worked as a personal assistant to a southern millionare. She said he used to have "poor parties" where him and his rich friends would basically LARP as their distorted impressions of common people.
I had some family friends growing up that had a handmade monopoly table.
It was wooden with silver pieces, and they used real cash.
AFTERNOON Tea
Imagine drinking tea and eating little sandwiches and scones off of fancy cups and plates while in an extremely elaborate and ornate room with a view.
Now imagine spending between $2000 and $5000 on each of these teas.
Some people do it every. single. day.
Legally watch current theatrical films in the privacy of your own home theatre.
Old money in my part of the world have a thing for fully restored private railcars, with all the modern amenities of a high end RV. They pay to have a track branched to their personal storage shed and then take them out maybe once every other year. Of course the process of taking them out involves paying a company such as Amtrak to haul the thing to their main line, hook it up to a commercial passenger train, and then lug them around the country to their destination. Get a handful of private railcar owners together and they hitch up, rent an engine, and tour the country with close friends the old fashion way on entirely private luxury train.
There's a company that hires male models to just hang out naked on a few islands for a while. The customers (almost entirely old, wealthy gay guys) take pictures of them from a distance. It's pretty much like that Pokemon Snap game for gay fellas. The models get paid a few thousand and the customers pay far above that.
One of my best friends owns over 33 fast food locations in Texas. They were constantly having theme parties where they would hire a company to come in and completely redo their house. They had a casino party where the company they hired removed all furniture from the first floor of the house and put in blackjack tables, slot machines, roulette wheel, etc. They had a complete Vegas-style buffet, 3 bars & they gambled with real money, not chips.
Every year before Christmas, Neiman Marcus comes out with a catalog of insanely expensive items. One year they had decided to buy a Lexus convertible that was being sold in the catalog. When the catalog came out they were on vacation and somehow they both ended up ordering the Lexus convertible. Not too sure why they didn't check with each other first to see who was going to order it but I guess when you have a lot of money it really doesn't matter. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with this family. With all that said, they were the nicest, sweetest, most caring family I have ever met. They didn't let the money go to their head and that's very hard to find these days.
I like wealthy people who are kind and are Appreciative of their good fortune
I work retail in a really rich area and you'd be surprised at the amount of obviously rich people who steal just for the thrill of it.
Being a salesman, I can usually spot a wealthy person based on their clothes or how they talk or even how they walk.
A fair amount of these people, from 11 to 60 years old, will just straight up shoplift just because they think they can. Partially because they dont think a 60 dollar item has any real value.
I just learned the other day that wealthy families go on "shopping trips" to other states just for shopping.
Never considered that some people might say "hey this weekend, let's fly to New York and get some new stuff." without having an underlying reason to be there (visiting family, business, tourism)
Also, my friend growing up had another friend who had a legit Giraffe taxidermied (?) in his bedroom that was multiple stories.
I live in Europe and I went to school with a single child of a single parent who would randomly jet off to New York for a weekend of shopping. They once had to buy SEVEN extra suitcases to bring all their new clothes back....
Until a few years ago it was not such a crazy thing to do. With some planning, a ticket would cost a few hundred euros. Once there you could buy Levi's, Ralph Laurent, DKNY and a few other brands at a very competitive price, and resell it to friends and family (and friends' friends, and family's friends, and friends' family etc) for a neat gain while still being much less expensive than official channels. I used to do my shopping when in NYC for business since even buying European brands was often less expensive. It is not like that anymore, though.
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on the flip side, we live on the border of a state that does not tax clothing with sales tax, so after growth spurts or when we really needed new stuff, we would cross into the next state to buy new clothes.
Wait we do this all the time. Mostly outlets - it’s the only reason for me to Eva visit Las Vegas.
I went to high school with a girl whose Mom took her to Paris and New York once a year for her new annual wardrobe. Her bedroom was bigger than my first apartment - with TWO canopied queen sized beds. She was actually really sweet and not nearly as stuck up as people assumed.
I know people that go on shopping trips to New York from Britain who definitely are not wealthy.
It's not just the wealthy that travel to shop. Living in the NW, when the Alaskans get their oil rebates a lot of them come here to shop for things that aren't in AK. Oregon is 100% tax free, and people come from connecting states to shop at outlet malls all the time for vacations. Same for large purchases like appliances.
I know people who do shopping trips across the state line where there's no sales tax on clothing for back to school shopping for growing kids. That's as close to this as I can relate to!
I worked closely with a Ritz Carlton hotel in Boston for many, many years. It was not uncommon at all for the ultra rich, especially from the UAE, to fly into town to shop. On several occasions they would rent full size busses just to store their purchases, and the busses would be filled by the end of their spree. The cargo area AND the interior, floor to ceiling. I always wondered if they ever used the stuff they bought, or just had it put away by servants, never to be thought about again. How could they even remember what they bought?
I grew up lower middle class and am still in generally the same level now, but our family would do things like this too. How is travelling a couple hours away something that only the ultra rich can do?
Poor people version is that you use bus with 40 others people and go to city 100 kilometers away.
This one doesn't make much sense to me since so many stores are the same wherever you go.
My mother was the private nurse for a family that owns the companies that make hospital beds, service equipment (like bedpans) as well as caskets. They also owned the companies that made the stuff for the products, like the screws. The whole supply chain. AFAIK, they are one of the largest makers of these products in the world. Good chance that anyone you know that stayed in a hospital used their equipment in some way.
The kids of the families would have piñatas filled with candy just because. They had birthday rooms. Like rooms in the mansions reserved just for birthday parties for the kids. When I visited, I would drive my "personal" corvette big wheel they got just for me up and down their hallways..
They are super Catholic. When the matriarch of the family died, she was buried in a marble and gold casket. They took the roses from her funeral and had them compressed into beads, which were made into rosaries.
The family was also super charitable and generous. Incredibly virtuous and friendly. Ran several soup kitchens, donated beds to people for in-home care. Usually anonymously.
My father said that they'd have parties and the men would go into the "Library" and drink liquor that cost $4k per pour.
I remember watching Disney films that were in the theater still in their own personal theater.
The coolest thing I ever received from them was a nice check that covered 1st year expenses and a letter congratulating me on my enrollment into college. My family never told them I got in. They just knew. That's also when I found out that one of the dormitories at the school is named after them.
Unrelated, a brother in my fraternity is so wealthy, that they bought the mansion next to theirs to turn into a garage to house their hundreds of motorcycles and F1 cars, mostly Lotus and Ferrari.
Another brother had no idea how to mop floors because the maids always did it at his house. We found out when he just poured the bucket of water onto the floor.
Third, a friend was so wealthy that the super-snooty, top-donor society to belong to at my university was named after his family.
I also went to a high school that the majority of my class had kids that drove Mercedes, hummers, cadillacs, etc. the occasional Bentley. sons and daughters of factory owners, athletes, etc.
And I drove a 1994 Ford F-150. Which I upgraded to a 1992 Smurf-blue Ford Escort. Being surrounded by wealth and wealthy friends, but never being wealthy is an interesting feeling. Generally positive, because I know that I have the connections and support to get out of a bind if absolutely necessary
I really relate to that last one. We shared a high school with the town next to my hometown, and most of those kids came from super wealthy families. Senior parking lot was a sea of Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, and the occasion Porsche.
There's a Russian mobster who lives in either Great Neck or King's Point (two towns very near one another on Long Island), I forget which, who designed his house to be a miniature version of the Palace of Versailles. My friend and his daughter drove up to look at it when it was still being constructed, and two heavily-armed guards came popping out of the bushes at them. My friend's daughter speaks Russian, so she says something like, "My dad and I just wanted to see the house", so one of the guards gets on his walky-talky, and then comes back and says to them, "My boss says the girl can come inside, but her father has to stay out here."
My friend's daughter said HELL TO THE NO, and they drove off.
I've never seen the house from the front, but I've kayaked past it and the guy has giant statues in his backyard.
Having house managers at all of their properties. These people coordinate all the domestic staff, and manage the properties so that they are instantly liveable at a moment's notice (down to the flowers of choice in every room) even if the owners only come in for a week or two in a year.
Their secretaries will usually call the house manager the day before saying "oh they'll be in london for a few days" and the manager will arrange everything from the pickup from the airport in the cars he knows each member prefers, coordinate with the secretaries to figure out any appointments they may have, instruct the chef to make their favourite menus.... all of this is done without any input from the owner. That's what they pay for.
I used to work for a travelling Performing Arts company. We had a performance in Boston and while there a board member wanted to take the entire company of about 20 people to her favorite Italian restaurant. At the same time there was a boil order on the local water because of a broken water main. Even though the pasta would have been cooked in boiling water and therefore been safe, that was not good enough. Instead, all of the pasta was boiled in Perrier. Let me tell you, that was some of the best damn pasta I've ever tasted!
Buy property in London and dig out the basement 2-3 stories for conversion to luxury living.
It's well known and really not that easy anymore. An ex city trader has just been awarded £533K from the builders of next doors iceberg basement as it encroached on his land and did damage to his property. I expect that firm to go bust and like a miracle, the phoenix will rise again from the ashes debt free with a slightly different name. Robbie Williams & Jimmy Page went to war over Williams' plans for an underground complex, the judge ruled he could have the swimming pool but the excavations must be done manually (by hand) so as to not damage Jimmy's Grade 1 listed Manor house.
The following is a true story based on real events
"Hey -whostolemyusername- you wanna fly down on my jet to Myrtle Beach and Golf tomorrow?"
"uh...I have work...sorry"
Some context: This was years ago. I was 17, the kid was 19 and his Dad owned an oil company - yes, an oil company. They were going to Myrtle Beach for business and invited my Dad and I who couldn't go because we actually had to work for money.
I work for the 1%, managing the home of a quirky billionaire. He bought his home for $26 million, then gutted it completely & spent two years rebuilding the interior & landscaping. He works from an office over his bedroom overlooking the ocean, and has a masseuse rub his shoulders and back every afternoon for hours. Also: He now charters private planes exclusively, but when he used to fly commercially he would buy two first class tickets so he wouldn't have to sit next to someone. I love him.
My family is rich but both my parents grew up poor so they've never really flaunted it. The only time I ever remember my dad doing something was at a church auction. There was a go cart and my sister and I like 5 and 8 went to look at it and I sat in it. Immediately a church guy ran over and yelled at us to get off and I cried. My dad quietly wrote a check and handed it to the pastor. All I knew is we got the go cart And dad said I did t do anything wrong. Five years later my mother tells me she was furious because he gave the church two hundred thousand dollars to buy everything and to fire that guy.
My dad's friend somehow got a contract with a few NFL and other sporting, movie, concert venues to be their ticket supplier (his company makes the actual tickets). The guy is crazy rich. He has a collection of wine that was formally owned by celebrities he bought either when they die or go bankrupt. Imagine going to your dad's friends house where he informs you something like "Tupac had a s**t taste in wine". I think he has in the ballpark of 100 "formally owned" wine bottles.
I feel like something small that people don't know about rich people is that many of them see therapists a lot. Not just because they're having an issue or something but because they have either nothing going on in their lives because theirs no need to go into work or because there's so much going on and it's hard for them to handle. And they're kind of really experienced, expensive therapists that don't just sit their and listen and as "and how does that make you feel?" They're like personal trainers for your thoughts and make you really work harder to make your life a little better. Like a life coach!
But yeah, this is nothing like the "they fly in private jets while s******g on golden toilets" like you see in the rest of this thread. Their's still some normality in them and they have problems like the 99% too.
Source: Parents are close friends with some ***big*** people and hear/know about this stuff.
It's like there is something more to the saying that money can't buy happiness.
My sister's friend comes from a very wealthy family. Even though she works a normal corporate job, she definitely uses some of that wealth for fun. At a sister's party, she and I started talking. She loves to travel, and used every possible weekend for a trip. On a four day weekend, she'd travel to Peru, or Tokyo, or some place like that to check it out
She told me once how she flew from Toronto to Paris, had lunch, flew to Istanbul for dinner, and then flew to Dubai the next day for a spa retreat.
She was actually a really sweet person. From her stories, I became less enthralled with her being rich and the stories with that, but more about the perspective she gained through seeing so many cultures and people.
Traveling is something every one should do if they can afford it. So much in this world to experience
Never doing a road trip. Never doing the standard TSA, because their plane is in their own hangar. Never packing a lot of luggage because if it's more than a week, they just buy more clothes. Never doing laundry on vacation. Just ship the dirty clothes home and buy more.
The woman has more clothes than goddess.
Building an extra wing onto the mansion to display 30,000 mounted dove heads.
I also worked on a house that took over a year to build - 3 floors, 20 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, cinema and putting course in the basement, etc.
I almost fell over when I found out that the house was only this family's weekend retreat when they FELT like golfing at this particular course. It was likely they'd use the house 5-6 weekends a year.
Many have their own private financial management company they set up just to manage their family's personal finances. I worked for such a company for a family who earned their wealth from a well-known global company.
Their private financial company had about 12 full-time employees including portfolio managers and investment researchers, CPA, accounting staff, data entry etc. In addition to portfolio management, we did the payroll for the household staff for all of their homes and paid all of their household bills, credit card and other personal bills for them. They also had a handful of traders assigned to them who worked on the floor of the NY stock exchange.
There is also private banking for such families. I would deposit checks that came in say for selling stock etc into the family's accounts every day. This was before most of banking had gone electronic. I'd go to their public bank but there was a special entrance into a secluded private banking suite. They always had 3 tellers just in private banking and no one was ever in line. I could quickly get everything taken care of without mingling with any plebs.
One of the brothers decided he wanted to vacation in southern France one year. He mentioned that to a friend. The friend said you must go to Monaco. Short story is the brother and his wife stayed at the Monaco royal palace for a week and mingled with Prince Rainier. When they got back, the wife showed me photos of their vacation which included the children and grandchildren of Prince Rainier swimming in the palace pool as they all lounged around enjoying their newfound American friends.
Going to be buried but a girl in my high school spent her sophomore year on a "Suite Life On Deck" cruise ship school. She went all across the globe and visited multiple different cultures all while receiving a top tier education...on a boat.
My sister worked for a man that owns one of the bottling companys for Coca-Cola. He bottles something like 5% of their total production, if I remember correctly. In any case, he is *hyper* wealthy. He has a massive estate covering something like 50 mi^2. As property next to his goes for sale he simply buys it, regardless of what is on it. If there is a house on the property he has it restored and then uses that to house his seasonal workers that he brings in to take care of the estate.
My sister was hired one summer to take care of and prepare his personal carriage that he would ride every morning. He had a paved trail system that wove throughout his property on which he would have someone take him around in a carriage each morning before starting his day. The driver would be housed and paid throughout the warmer months. My sister was hired specifically to take care of the horses (groom them, feed them, make sure they were kept up to date on health related items, etc.) and to help prepare the carriage. That's it. She got paid and was given housing for a summer to be solely responsible for this mans team of carriage horses.
This one is pretty messed up. My classmate at university was from a wealthy Russian family that had deep connections to the government and oil industry. He was so ridiculously rich that I couldn't even fathom it.
Anyways he found a few friends of similar ilk and they started some kind of underground club where they would fly in really hot Instagram models from all over the world for "photoshoots". In return for buying them nice clothes and things like that, they would hold just ridiculous sex parties where some really messed up stuff went down. Think the kinkiest of the kinky and that is what they did.
The only reason I even knew about it is because I worked as a part-time limo driver and these guys would occasionally hire me to drive their girls around. Before you ask, I never got in on the action.
Buying fully furnished houses. This is for people who already own a house (or two, or three...) and want another one. Say you already own a house in Malibu and another in Vail, but you'd like to add another little *pied-à-terre* in New York so you can fly there for an occasional Broadway play or gallery opening. You can afford to buy anything you want, but you want it to be ready to use; you don't want to spend all the time it would take to shop for furniture, linens, dishes, etc. So when a real-estate agent shows you a house, and you decide you want it, you don't just offer to buy the house, you offer to buy the house and everything in it, including the paintings on the wall and the gadgets in the kitchen drawers. If the paintings aren't exactly to your taste, you may want to replace them eventually, but at least you'll have a comfortable place to live while you do that.
I'm not good at interior design or decorating so that sounds cool to me if I had money for that lol
Its not uncommon in NYC to hire special consultants to help get your kids into the best primary schools.
I had just heard about a service called a Night Nurse. They live with you once your baby is born and take complete care of the baby all night. I heard it costs $150k for their services but after a month the baby is supposed to sleep through the whole night. Even though I've never heard of it, why wouldn't rich people pay to have someone else take care of the worst parts of parenting?
Edit: Wow this was super informative! I guess just to clarify, it makes sense there are services like this everywhere that don't cost that much, and I didn't go into a lot of detail, but the services described to me were for some Hollywood type people who "Are like George Clooney level" wealthy. These people also had separate full time nannies for each of their 4 children and a housekeeper that washed and ironed everyones' bedsheets every single day. I imagine whatever version they have of a Night Nurse must be pretty luxurious but it's awesome to know this doesn't have to cost a fortune!
My sister is best friends with billionaire family. They own a well-known American company. The father in this family collects expensive cars, rare cars. So they just have an enormous warehouse filled with cars that they just....collect.
For the first time in my life I went to a Michelin star rated tasting menu restaurant in NYC. It was about 200 dollars a person. 2-3 hours of 18 dishes. Momofuku Ko. Amazing.
This one guy next to us was a regular and was getting the wine flight. He was hanging out there like some dude in a sports bar. My jaw kinda dropped. Literally goes their every week and does the wine flight option with his wife. His assistant makes reservations for him. That's like more money per year than I have ever made, on a weekly dinner per year.
Well. It is time I tell my tale.
A few years ago I volunteered in dc at an organization that did ICT4D work, and the head of the group was a very wealthy man from Lebanon. He owned many horses and played polo but it wasn't enough. So he found out about Segway Polo, and he bought Segways and started a team in Lebanon. Now, Segway Polo started in Silicon Valley (duh) by Woz (Steve Wozniak) and he created the Woz cup, the World Cup of Segway polo.
So the Lebanese team wanted to host the World Cup but it wasn't easy for Americans to go to Lebanon so he decided to host it in dc. And myself and my coworkers at the org (there were three of us total in the dc office) were to run the event.
So I ran the Woz Cup in 2013, and I met people from all over the world, and it was so much fun. I learned to ride a Segway, and let me tell you, falling off those sucks. But also, the players all own multiple Segways ($$$$) and travel for it ($$$$$) and its ... interesting.
And I ended up dating a Segway polo player, but that's a different story entirely.
Know someone who's daughter is a personal hair dresser to super rich royalty in Middle East. Pretty much travels the world to hair dress one person. Good money and very luxury lifestyle. Everything paid for. No idea what that person does when she takes a break back home to Uk to visit family..
Taking a private jet to the Bahamas on a whim. All because you feel like going to the beach for the weekend. My husband's uncle is very wealthy. I'm always so jealous seeing their adventures on FB.
Friend installs high end kitchens. He gets flown to places like Hawaii to put in $200k to $300k kitchens that will never get used because the staff uses a different kitchen. He also does not hook up the gas as joke to see town many years it is before he gets called back to fix it.
I work in landscaping and we have customers who have very wealthy clients who get seasonal landscaping. Thousands of dollars for brightly colored annual and perennial beds all to tear it out in a couple of months. Once had a customer who installed 3x 15' spruce trees in a big planter just for the summer, probably over $10k.
Then the seasonal decorating, like $25k for Christmas lights. Then the maintenance contracts - clients who hire regular landscapers to come weekly and maintain their landscape for a cool $100k/year or more.
I ran a Music Lesson Consultant business in DC. When a rich person wants their kid to take piano lessons, they don't look up music teachers. They ask their handler/manager/staff specialist to contact a consultant to find the best teacher for their kid. That's what I did. Rich person's peon called me, gave me $500, I did a Google search and found a PhD music teacher on a listing and then enrolled the entitled brat. I still find it unreal.
Polo. Poor people don't know how it works.
My University had a polo club...there was a looot of wealthy students. However, the club was opened to students who wanted to try it out and learn more about the sport. It was actually quite nice as they made membership due affordable for people who would likely never have an opportunity otherwise to practice or even see this sport.
Well if Hollywood is to be believed, and I think it is, there is a fair amount of people hunting going on.
I used to nanny for a billionaire family with three homes and two jets. They had weird hobbies:
Horse jumping -- each kid in the family had his/her own horse, and had at some point participated in this sport. One of the kids was so competitive in it that the family would attend her competitions in Europe, which included flying several horses and a team of groomers over in special hired jets with horsey-related amenities on board. I spent hours per week attending these competitions with them, and it's the same thing every two minutes: girl with an awesome a*s rides a horse around a ring, jumping over hurdles that advertise for John Deere/Fiji/Mercedes. They sit at tables on a pavilion, drink wine, and wait for their kids' names to come up alongside a horse called "Scapula Princess Madonadon" or something. Afterward, everyone raves about what a great time it was. (I was told Bruce Springsteen would sometimes make an appearance because his kid rides, but never saw him there).
They spent their weekdays at one home, and their weekends at another one out of state. This required taking a private jet twice a week (and taking me along to watch the youngest kid). No suitcases though -- they had all the same exact clothes and such in their weekend home.
Elsewhere in the thread somebody mentioned the new-release movies on home theater screens. They totally did this, often on opening weekend -- they'd get the hard drives in the mail during the week, and wait for the encryption keys to be sent. Their "home theater" was about what you'd imagine (and battling the ender dragon in multiplayer Minecraft on it was pretty satisfying).
All the family's pets were registered as emotional support animals so they could be taken on commercial flights -- which the family almost never took, because of the private jets. One of my weirdest tasks on the job was carrying a federally registered rabbit through the TSA metal detector.
Their four dogs had two groomers, two walkers, and four different specialized diets. Their youngest kid had two nannies and two schools. The unemployed stay-at-home mom had a personal assistant who was somehow always busy. They had two chefs, a house manager, a groundskeeper/mechanic, four housekeepers (for three homes), two drivers, an untold number of pilots, and (at least) two personal assistants. I think sometimes they just liked hiring people and giving them highly specific, arbitrary tasks to perform.
Purchasing rugs as investments. Seriously. Rugs.
I went to a friend's house and his dad told me that the rugs in the house all cost over $30k each. The value of the rug actually increases as it becomes thinner and the color wears.
They aren't just any rugs. They are the kind that are hand made and have been for generations. Each one could be considered a work of art. Never heard that it would raise the value to be worn down though.
The hidden catering kitchen in the very large covered patio area. The normal-sized motorboat (and driver) that goes into the very large pool and gives people sunset rides at parties.
Flying the family (3-4 generations, about 30 people) first class from US to Greece, renting a crewed yacht for a month to celebrate an anniversary. Nice people, too. Sat next to them on a plane.
My family was invited to a 4th of July party every year by this very rich club owner in Atlanta. This guy always went all out. He had a gun range with very exotic firearms (not really my thing, though I did see the former police chief of Atlanta blow his thumb off with a 50 caliber colt revolver five feet from me), all you can eat and drink for free, massive water fountains on his ranch, helicopter tours of the ranch, hundreds of animals (nothing too exotic), water park rides, and a huge fireworks show. The best part for me though, was that he hired a couple of professional jet skiers to do tricks in his mansion-side lake in full view of all the attendants. It wasn't like an event or anything, they were just f*****g around all day while everyone else milled about.
A really rich celebrity's kid went to my school. My school is about an hour by bus from a major city. ALL of the pictures on this kid's Instagram are in that city, none in my school. It's insane how much time she spent there and how often she would have had to go back and forth. To be so rich that you don't even stay in the dorm or apartment you're in -- you go hang in NY penthouses at 19 for fun....nuts.
Referring to people as "the help".
You know, I don't care if you're rich. I don't resent people who were born into or worked really hard to become wealthy. And I don't care if your someone like a influencer who got famous for being online and I know some people have problems with that. I don't. Good for you. Wish I'd thought of it! But what I really can't stand are the uppity people like this who purposely treat people like c**p just because they can. The people who consistently put other people's lives at risk by speeding, being a jerk by parking in handicapped spots, buying and giving away tons of drugs and alcohol sometimes to underage people, avoiding taxes and thinking they're somehow above everyone else. All because the penalty is easy to pay. Kendall Jenner is photographed almost daily parking in handicapped spots and she gets tickets and she just pays them. Some rich teens will literally throw money at you and call you a peasant. Some celebrities go so far out of the realm of reality it's ridiculous.
I heard Chelsea Handler on Stern yesterday and she talked about how there is an invite only hookup app for models and actors/actresses/producers/social elite.
There's also a 'rich people' ebay-style site that you have to be invited to by another member and you have to provide proof your net worth is above a certain amount. You can buy things like helicopters, private planes, art, jewelry, prized items, and even hired help. Like intensely rich things you can't just go and buy at a store. One of my former employers used to brag about it. I can understand the hookup site; if you're a celebrity it must be hard to trust someone is with you for you and not just for your money or fame so it's easier to date-or whatever- people in your same circles. But Rich People Ebay is kind of crazy.
Buying a car. No, really—fly off somewhere for a long weekend and buy a f*****g car for while you're there. Then ditch it at the airport when you fly home. Not sell it—park it and walk into the hangar. Maybe one of your accountants will notice it at the end of the quarter and sell it off.
The elevator in the 3-story Manhattan brownstone. Another time, my mom's boyfriend who came to pick me up from a play date was told to "go around the back to the servant's entrance."
Ordering 7 new bookshelves for the 2,000 new books I ordered.
Definitely one of the things I'd have if I was super-rich would be a house big enough to house a massive library. With one of those ladders that you can ride along the shelves on. Yep, that.
Late to the party, but just frivolous money wasting.
I work at a sports centre where it costs roughly $4.30 to come in and get a wristband to use a basketball court casually.
A super-rich international high roller came in from the nearby casino, wanting to pay. No worries, that's $4.30 thanks...
He paid me $50 just to get me to get the wristband for him. ON TOP OF the $4.30.
Paid me $50 just to all about 10m
I was working on a house renovation and the owner was a Russian guy with money to spend. His new basement "spa" bathroom included a "grotto" with a 10 person custom made hot tub.
To fit the tub insert into the house, it was so big they had to cut a portion of the wall out (walk out basement) and build temporary supports to keep the house from collapsing. Once installed, he decided he didn't like the look of the tub and wanted it thrown out.
My boss offered to pay him so he could take home this custom insert and the owner *insisted* it get cut up into pieces so nobody else would have it. My boss said the whole tub + installation was over $100,000.
It is so awful for people like that to have a noone else can have it attitude!
Throw-away here, I work for a billionaire. During the very early stages of the financial crisis he and two of his billionaire friends created a contingency plan whereby if things got bad enough and the world economy collapsed beyond recovery they were going to PURCHASE THE COUNTRY OF NEW ZEALAND to escape what they believed would be mobs of starving people.
Apparently there exists a service in theme parks that for $1000/day, an official guide takes you around and fast passes every ride for you.
Spend more than a million dollars on a mobile app. No, not just the guy who embezzled $5 million dollars from his employer and spent $1 million on game of war. There are multiple people that have spent in excess of $1 million on that game... look up Ctesse or stayalive
According to a New Yorker piece, the super rich in Silicon Valley are building bomb shelters. Canned food, water, generators - full on shelters for when the financial systems collapse.
How many years will they last when they realize they have to grow their own food?
Buying cars in foreign countries to avoid paying taxes in your home country
A lot of the Chinese exchange students at my school do this, they'll buy luxury cars here just because it's so much cheaper than in China.
One of them got his car vandalized or something and instead of getting it repaired, he just bought a different car...
"Bone collecting" aka "Grave robbing" It is apparently a very common thing for wealthy people to pay to collect bones from the graves of people they didn't like so that they "literally own" that person.
I met a guy who was considering purchasing the entire Steam catalog but didn't want to go through the hassle of adding them all to the cart and buying them.
A lady walked into the yarn store I worked at and had a rough idea in her mind of a kind of sweater she would maybe like to make her dude. No pattern just an idea that it should maybe be loose and have cables. She spent $1,800 on single-ply hand-dyed cashmere for one sweater. The sweater didn't even exist! It still had to be made! We were all so excited to meet our sales goal that nobody told her that stuff pills like a motherfucker, not that she would have cared, probably.
Not just the ultra rich doing it, but a new one on me...
**Valet garbage service.**
I was out in LA walking around a neighborhood (not gated). You tell it was the kind of neighborhood where people would have housekeepers.
It happened to be garbage day. Suddenly all these brown skinned people appeared. They went into the yards, got the garbage cans from where they were stored. Wheeled them out to the curb, then as soon as the garbage truck passed, they wheeled the garbage cans back into hiding.
I talked to someone who lived there and turns out it's part of the homeowners' agreement that garbage cans cannot be left on the curb at all and they paid an extra fee for this mandatory valet garbage service.
My in-laws. Casually buying *SOOPED* up custom Porsches then waiting to make a solid investment exchange- for example, pay out 347k(ish?) and somehow (completely ethically, he just has a very entrepreneurial mind and attitude) manages to sell it for MORE than he purchased. Mad skillz my brotha
also, randomly deciding to take a trip (first class airplane, fine dining, fine lodging, you get the picture) half way across the world because why not
Edit: did I mention the custom cars were imported? so much customization that is had to be done in the homeland of the brand (germany), then shipped over to US. Talk about import fees!
My school car page in the yearbook being literally all BMWs, Mercedes, Rovers, Lexus, Audi, and the like (heck the parents let the kids take the parents' fancy ferrari/lambo/bently if the kids' cars were in the shop)
Ironically despite me not fitting in the socio-economic bracket it took me until like sophomore year (I attended since 4th grade) to realize that having a car page in a yearbook was *not* normal; not to mention that I never thought of the school as anything special since it was a -cheaper- private school compared to the other major players in the area. not-so fun times
Fly with executive bulk tickets.
I was gifted a pair of these once. Damn. Different world with executive bulk seats.
These tickets come with 24/7 direct-line concierge, accessible from any country, and can do the craziest things you've never even thought about for a plane ride.
Here's an example of some of the perks of exec. bulk fares:
The tickets are good for any seat on any flight, any where, any time. I ended up missing my connection back home before I knew about the perks at my disposal. I called concierge and ended up with a free town car ride back to my hotel, which he had "taken care of" so I could stay another two days, and he had reserved first class seats on six different flights for me to have choices.
the tickets are infinite adjustable. Say you flew round-trip from NYC to London but you suddenly want to grab some paella in Barcelona and bring it to Boston to have a seafood face off. You can do it. One call and it's all taken care of. Suddenly you'll find yourself going from London to NYC with 24 hour layovers in Barcelona and Boston, with Town cars waiting for you at each stop.
private security lines, and I mean private. Didn't have to wait for TSA and customs is a breeze.
flight crews are just that much nicer. When you have an exec bulk ticket, they assume you are an executive of an airline (or direct relation). Therefore they put extra effort into things. It's weird and hard to describe but the niceness is almost overwhelming.
-BAGS! Your allowed to check basically as much as youd like. Flying internationally I was allowed 2x100lb bags, which technically violates European law for worker safety, but that didn't stop anything. My fiancee had purchased some larger items and we ended up checking 6 bags. I had expected the worst and had already gotten out my card to pay for the overages when the attendant just said "that'll be fine, have a pleasant day Mr. ***********"
I found out later that executive bulk tickets regularly sell for $8k-$15k per ticket. That's a lot but not extreme, until you also realize that *only a few hundred individuals in the industry are allowed to purchase them directly. * it's so elitist.
Having a library at home with the shelves filled with thousands of Kindles. Each Kindle has only one book on it.
Well my gold digging grandmother likes to spend a fortune on fancy food that taste like s**t. I kid you not I watched her spend $400 (not including the tip) at a restaurant (it was just her, my wife, and I) and the food was so f*****g disgusting I couldn't bare to eat it. It was that bad, on top of that the portions were smaller than a on-the-go salad in a bag. But she refuses to eat at Waffle House because "it looks like the food sucks". Yea that's why the parking lot is full all the time. Meanwhile the fancy place she goes to looks like it isn't even open.
This whole thread made me feel depressed. I have to decide if I want to buy ramen for the week or put gas in my car to get to work. My mother can't buy medication. In retrospect- I wish I wouldn't have read it.
I just want enough to pay off my mortgage, car loan, bills, and have some left to get me through until I’m an old lady. I think I would still work part-time and get some more tattoos. I would help my family and charities. That’s it.
Same.I'd help my kids, have a break from work for about a year and go back. Love my job!
Load More Replies... I think it's interesting to consider how these people are to us is how we are to large parts of the world. What practices do we do that they would laugh at or even be disgusted at?
"You have small animals that you keep in the house? and buy little coats for?" That kind of thing?
Load More Replies...
What do you call an Irishman who stays outside all year? Pati'o Furniture
Ngl, kinda’ surprised how positive many of the comments were. Expected nothing but justified vitriol in comments, and found a lot of “that’s cool!” Or “I’d love to do that!”.
This reminds me of Gemini-Apollo astronaut Michael Collins' blue-blooded wife's comment about when he said he was going to the Cape, as NASA folks call Cape Canaveral. "Everyone knows 'the Cape' means Cape Cod."
My brother once disassembled a (10 year old) kitchen for his boss, which cost at least €25,000 to buy. It was unused... except for the sink and fridge...which was only used for drinks. They had a "utility kitchen" where the housekeeper cooked all meals. Intact furniture can be collected here (Germany) by the "garbage collection" and resold cheaply or given away. My brother and his colleague went to great lengths to carefully dismantle the kitchen so it could be picked up. The next day they found everything in a dumpster...destroyed and unusable. Even the electronic devices were destroyed... When asked why, the boss said it looked too messy in his driveway.
I knew a woman who bought a new faux Christmas tree for every room in her house every year. I asked her why she didn't just reuse them each year and she said it was too much of a hassle to store them. I made a comment in passing about how that must be how there are always so many Christmas trees at Goodwill just after Christmas. It hadn't occurred to her to donate them, she just threw them out in the trash! She loved the idea, though, so hopefully she donates them instead now.
This whole thread made me feel depressed. I have to decide if I want to buy ramen for the week or put gas in my car to get to work. My mother can't buy medication. In retrospect- I wish I wouldn't have read it.
I just want enough to pay off my mortgage, car loan, bills, and have some left to get me through until I’m an old lady. I think I would still work part-time and get some more tattoos. I would help my family and charities. That’s it.
Same.I'd help my kids, have a break from work for about a year and go back. Love my job!
Load More Replies... I think it's interesting to consider how these people are to us is how we are to large parts of the world. What practices do we do that they would laugh at or even be disgusted at?
"You have small animals that you keep in the house? and buy little coats for?" That kind of thing?
Load More Replies... What do you call an Irishman who stays outside all year? Pati'o Furniture
Ngl, kinda’ surprised how positive many of the comments were. Expected nothing but justified vitriol in comments, and found a lot of “that’s cool!” Or “I’d love to do that!”.
This reminds me of Gemini-Apollo astronaut Michael Collins' blue-blooded wife's comment about when he said he was going to the Cape, as NASA folks call Cape Canaveral. "Everyone knows 'the Cape' means Cape Cod."
My brother once disassembled a (10 year old) kitchen for his boss, which cost at least €25,000 to buy. It was unused... except for the sink and fridge...which was only used for drinks. They had a "utility kitchen" where the housekeeper cooked all meals. Intact furniture can be collected here (Germany) by the "garbage collection" and resold cheaply or given away. My brother and his colleague went to great lengths to carefully dismantle the kitchen so it could be picked up. The next day they found everything in a dumpster...destroyed and unusable. Even the electronic devices were destroyed... When asked why, the boss said it looked too messy in his driveway.
I knew a woman who bought a new faux Christmas tree for every room in her house every year. I asked her why she didn't just reuse them each year and she said it was too much of a hassle to store them. I made a comment in passing about how that must be how there are always so many Christmas trees at Goodwill just after Christmas. It hadn't occurred to her to donate them, she just threw them out in the trash! She loved the idea, though, so hopefully she donates them instead now.
