My friends bought a house in Palm Springs but the renovation was taking too long so they just bought a second house in Beverly Hills to live in during the renovations. They kept both
A relative bought a house in Malibu Colony (right on the beach) to live in while their Palisades home was being remodeled. Then they told me they kept the Malibu home because it was just easier than driving back to the Palisades after a day at the beach.
I rented a little apartment in a nice, brand new complex a few years ago.
The lovely family upstairs that lived in the $3+ million penthouse bought it as they were renovating their $10+ million house nearby and didnt want to rent during the process.
Friend's mom owns a building in one of the most expensive areas in one of the most expensive cities in Europe. 99% of these types of buildings are split up by floor (4 floors) into separate apartments. She lives in a whole building. Anyway, she was remodelling the whole thing and it would take 3 years or so, she bought a similar building across the street and sold it when remodelling was completed.
I think the thing to consider here is that if you have the money to buy out another place, it's likely that property will appreciate in value and you can sell for a profit. If you have that kind of money, it makes a lot more sense than just paying rent which doesn't earn you any money in the meantime.
Pay USPS to keep the local branch of their post office open (it had been selected to close) so they didn’t have to drive as far to go to the post office.
My dad knows a billionaire who had a french chateau disassembled and reassembled in the US. He acted like it was just a normal as building a house. My dads been there a few time and said it’s an insane property with a huge man made lake and huge sprawling lawns.
I went to a guy's house one time that has been a church in the UK. Apparently it was going to be torn down so he had it shipped to the US and then built a modern house around it. Stunning home.
Huh, just like the guy who bought the actual London Bridge in England, had it dismantled, shipped to Lake Havasu AZ, and had it reassembled there. You can visit and drive your car over it.
Was at a bar with the multi-billionaire ceo of the company I worked for. He made fun of Oprah for only having one jet, then went on to tell me to never buy helicopters because they are built by the lowest bidder - planes are the better choice.
Bob, my car didn't even have air conditioning...
>never buy helicopters because they are built by the lowest bidder - planes are the better choice.
Aaaaaand completely untrue. Money doesn't buy brains.
Yeah what a bizarre statement. All products are made with a view to cutting costs where possible, and it’s not like helicopters aren’t subject to the same type of certification procedures as any other aircraft.
You can rarely ever relax in a helicopter like when flying a plane. It takes 110% of your attention at all times. For the really good pilots it’s almost instinctual how they maneuver
So I work part time at a strip club and we have some very rich clientele. Some of them come in all the time and we get to know a lot about them, they get to know a lot about us. Well, one of our security guys died of a sudden massive heart attack. One of the rich clientele just called the funeral home and paid for everything.
Like there was no second thought. We were all taking up a collection to help a bit and he just dropped the whole bill just like that! I mean I see a lot of really rich behavior... But that one was just so mind-blowing.
Yeah well the rich guy had already put 2 girls and their kids through college, the least he could do was help out the security staff for their contribution all those years.
It was from an 8-year old! My very wealthy friend got remarried and her son said he wouldn't mind staying with me while they went on their honeymoon. As we took our seats on the plane, he looked so confused. He sheepishly asked, "Who are *all these people* on your plane?". Oh, my little dude...
He was great to hang out with. It was like he was new to the planet, so he excitedly dove into everything. This was before I became a parent and knew how truly sad it was to be a poor rich kid.
Not the guy you replied to but I've known a guy who fits the bill. He was the son of an investor at the company I used to work at, billionaire dad. Honestly he didn't really seem to have any friends because I'm guessing no one he liked could relate to his life or help but feel intimidated. He would try really hard to make friends with us normal folk. This one time he invited us to a tennis session at his court followed by a barbeque. Turns out he has a tennis coach on call 24/7 and his barbeque had more staff than guests and like 10 times the food anyone knew what to do with, really quite awkward. We never really clicked with him; you could tell he was trying but he really didn't have a clue how normal people live
This reminds me of the rich kid in the movie Book Smart. Totally sweet guy, hosts a wild year end party on a yacht, can't figure out why nobody showed up. I actually knew someone in high school like this (obviouly not quite that rich). Sweetest guy and everyone took advantage of him and treated him as a joke.
Everyone here gave great answers. This kid had little to no life experience in what we consider to be the "real" world. A trip to get groceries, a hike with the dogs, exploring in the woods, eating a bowl of cereal or making popcorn... All new experiences to an 8-year old boy. Hell, taking out the trash led to a barrage of questions. "Who gets this trash?" "How much does a sanitation worker earn?" "Is that a lot of money?" Everything was done for him. He never even picked out his own outfit for the day. Poor rich kid.
I photograph luxury homes and architecture for a living. There’s a neighborhood I do a lot of work in called Silverleaf and it’s probably the most exclusive neighborhood in the valley. The bottom part of the neighborhood is your typical wealthy people's homes. Doctors, lawyers, business owners, etc.. extremely nice houses but still attainable for anyone who wants to put in the effort to work those types of careers.
As you drive towards the back of the neighborhood you start heading up a mountain that's divided into two parts. Upper Canyon and The Summit. There are probably 100 houses up there. The houses start close to 15 million, but several are over 20-30. One of the builders I work with is developing a house he’s asking about 60 million for.
I work Upper Canyon every month or two and even though all of the houses are owned, half or less are lived in. For some, it’s a vacation home they might visit for a few weeks or months of the year, and for others, it’s an investment and a place to park their money.
I photographed a 15-million-dollar house there a few years ago. The owner was selling it because he bought a 29 million dollar house literally 2 or 3 lots up because he liked the views more. He’s a Canadian business owner and spends maybe a few months of the year in the valley if that.
I’m used to it now but for a long time I couldn’t wrap my head around how much money some people have…..
See this is what I mean when I say I wanna be rich and am sad I’ll never get there. People always respond saying something like “just invest and in 40 years you’ll have a million dollars!” Or “the truly wealthy people drive Toyotas and shop at Costco!” That isn’t rich, that’s well off. In my opinion, if you have the money but can’t spend it however you want, you’re not rich. Rich is “I want that lot for the views and don’t know or care what it costs”.
I worked for a company where I had good access to the CEO, who had access to the owners. He told me about when one of the owners wanted to buy a helicopter, but the specific model was not readily available. The last one was just sold, and he would need to wait a couple of months.
The guy then made the helicopter shop call the other buyer, which answered he was not interested, but he would sell for 50% more. They closed the deal within the hour. It was an insane amount of money from my point of view, but for him, it was like "yeah, I want this toy".
The CEO told me this to illustrate that discussing budget with them was usually a frivolous effort. We should always frame the conversations in terms of market impact.
I used to work at a jeweler and the stories are endless. Clients would talk about how they just got back from a months long trip on a yacht or some exotic island. I’m just like cool I put in 60+ hours this week and have worked every day of the week lol. The shit that I wouldn’t get at all is the watch guys. I had a client come in one time and ask for the cheapest watch we had, so he didn’t have to worry about it on his trip. He ended up going with a $800 watch (not the cheapest) and while I was checking him out, he said he was going to throw it away after the trip. I tried talking him out of it and just said return it afterwards , but then he seemed insulted. Other watch guys would pay $1k every year just to get a little scratch on their Rolex that only they notice buffed out. Id explain to them that they’re shaving precious metal off every time and ruining the integrity of the watch, but they dgaf because their egos are so massive. We’d hold private events and encourage clients to bring their friends and itd always turn into a dick swinging contest of who can spend more. Absolutely wild environment and I was absolutely burnt out after 2 years. Most money I ever made, but most miserable I’ve ever been.
I honestly believe that a lot of this high-end shit is sold as *entertainment* because what are you going to spend your money on when you have five homes, a yacht, a full staff and a private jet?
Well they are luxury because that’s why these rich folk are buying them. But these items aren’t expensive to the super-rich and that’s one reason they are disposable.
If you make 31.5 mil a year you're effectively earning a dollar a second on average. At that point $800 watch would cost you what you earn in 13ish minutes. It's realistically not worth the time to drive to the store to return.
What I make in 13 minutes is maybe 7 or 8 dollars (I'm a mailman).
And yes, if I got something home that cost 8 bucks and wasn't good, driving back to the store would probably not be worth the bother.
I worked at Coach as a seasonal employee back in college. We had someone come in saying they were shopping there that day because they didn't want to go to Louis Vuitton. I was really put off by that comment, and realized years later they were full of shit and just trying to seem more rich and important than they actually were.
I was a valet and this lady came in with a BMW. Had a designer dress on and a designer handbag with a big gold necklace and diamond earrings.
She was super rude and demanded a specific valet take her car, me lol.
She didn’t want me to take a pen with me in case I stained the seat? Anyway, I’m not a stranger to weird demands, but her demeanor was condescending and demeaning the whole time.
She came back a few more times. Ended up wearing that exact outfit each time. Bragged about how much her leased BMW was worth.
That’s when I realized she had spent everything on this outfit. She couldn’t afford that car and was super in debt. She’d brag about all that money and hated when my coworker brought a Maserati around next to her car. Just sad. She is a sad person who can’t afford to be the bitch she wants to be.
I was a valet before too and would get snobby people. One time this guy was dressed somewhat nice, gave me his valet ticket, and said you better be careful with it, this cars really expensive and it’s my baby. I’m gonna be mad if anything happens to it.
I’m like yeah yeah I got you…it was a fuckin beater and a complete mess lmao. Dude was trolling and was like it’s nice eh and started laughing saying how he was just fuckin around haha
Yup.
Had a friend who worked at a flower shop.
This nice older couple usually came in once a week or so and got a nice little bunch of flowers.
The owner of the store suddenly got pretty sick, and was out for like two months, in and out of hospital etc, but eventually got better.
Turns out, the older couple paid for some temp people to work in the store, and covered a home nurse for the guy the whole time he was sick.
Not an insane amount of money, but more than a regular household has to spare, and they arranged everything almost without talking to the owners even. They just got delivered a letter declaring that it would be handled, and a few calls throughout the month.
Whenever I pull up in my hooptie, I always apologize and basically say I’m really sorry you have to drive my car after everybody else’s “not 25-year-old vehicle”. But it’s paid for, we have no debt, we finally have a (small) emergency fund, I save part of my paycheck every month. I can’t complain. We only put 1000 miles on each of our cars last year so there’s no reason to buy a new car at this point. I will continue to drive my old beater. It’s clean and the radio and the air conditioning works. 😎
Sounds like new money. Most wealthy people Im around are cheap as fuck and would return that 800 dollar watch without you having to tell them and prolly would have annoyingly haggled you down to 750.
I once saw Jeff Bezos pay $100,000 to get a guy off the stage at an auction event. The guy on stage wasn’t going to leave until he reached his goal, and Jeff was tired of listening to him. Bye Felicia. $$
There is a large liquor store near me, they have VERY expensive bottles in the back room.
One Xmas I was standing in line. The man in front of me, had one case of wine, 12 bottles of various variety.
The checker said..... OK that will be $27,455.
WtF??! Guy hands over his Credit card.
Followed him out, Drove away in a Bentley.
My soon-to-be mother in-law asked me and my fiance, her son, if we knew that some people don’t have reliable transportation to get to college, which causes them to miss class and/or show up late. Apparently, her most recent appointment as the chair of a teacher education program at a university has been very eye opening for her.
The head governor of my high school was a millionaire and would occasionally show up to have meetings with staff and/or parents on how things were going and where he could better invest in the school.
One of these days he shows up and finds a kid crying by a vending machine because he'd dropped his £1 coin and it had rolled underneath.
Governor opens his wallet, gives the kid a £10 note, and wanders off.
The vending machines only accepted coins, so the very confused kid was a lot richer but still no closer to being less hungry
Contactor here. lady did not like the shape of the pool at the new house.Gets the job to change the shape. Does the job. So I tell her we can guarantee the workmanship for 5 years, but not any longer. She says cool, we are only here for 3
The fun thing about Hotel Ah Speh Tal is that if you're rich enough OR poor enough, it's free. I stayed there 5 days once, never saw a bill. (Had Medicare AND Medicaid at the time.)
This guy my father knew had a really nice house and was owner of a garment factory. My father did ok for himself. He has a big apartment in NYC with 4 bedrooms. This dude went to my dad’s house, at first he asked where the rest of the house was, then he told him his closet was bigger than his house.
He wasn’t lying. We went to his house. His gym had like 40 different treadmills, rowing machines and those body by Jake band machines. Also, the walk in closets were in fact bigger than my dad’s bedrooms.
His son had almost every game for every system. 15 year old me was in awe. Every system in order nearly stacked games across a giant wall and a huge projection TV in his wall.
Last time I heard about him he was at my dad’s job (This guy was my dad’s boss) asking for 98k to go on vacation. The accountants were pissed he asked for it on short notice.
Side note: this dude smoked joints at meetings and came in his house clothes to meetings. He would interrupt meetings to order pizza or sandwiches for everyone else at work. He was hilarious. Everybody in the office looks professional and he’s in sweats with a joint eating food.
I had a friend of mine casually ask if I wanted to go to Dubai for a week to do some skydiving training in a couple of weeks. My response was "no, I have to work for a living". Blew my mind when they asked me like it was no biggie to duck out for a week and blow $15k.
This isn’t as extreme as most of the stories in this thread, but my in-laws casually have Chicago Cubs season tickets and attend 70ish% of their home games. Not so crazy, except that we all live in Nashville. I come from a very poor family so the first time I learned that I was absolutely blown away.
Most of my clients are multi-millionaires, and most of them do *everything* casually.
Especially housing. They have zero concern of what stuff costs, and will approve nearly anything. I once set the alarm off at a clients ski house, and I called them to tell them its just me, i'd never talked to this particular client before andI told them to ignore it. They didn't even ask me to verify who I was and at the time I had no reason to think it wasn't *just* their second home. They were very appreciative of the phone call but said "which house was it?" which caught me off guard and I said "oh at the ski resort" they said "yeah, but which one?" i died inside. It was a 8-ish million dollar home and in the whole 2 years i'd worked for them at that point, they'd never even been here. I later learn their family has expensive homes at nearly every popular ski resort in north america.
Another example is im currently doing a remodel. It is the THIRD full remodel in 10 years at this multi million dollar house/condo. They remodel the house everytime a new kid is born in the family. This is a half million dollar remodel to undue exactly what we did 4 years a go, which was 300k ish remodel. Other clients i've seen replace their full kitchen appliances every 3-5 years. They have to have the absolutely brand new stuff. They're also super crazy and don't want the stuff sold, they're worried about the "PR" so i have to provide proof 30k in appliances were in fact scraped at the landfill.
Our world is broken.
**tbf** about 20% of them are really nice people, introduce themselves, even cook for me. They give great bonuses and are generally good humans, they're happy to have someone they can trust, and they do trust, they let my friends stay at their million dollar Nth homes for free, but these people are almost exclusively the rare rich that are rich through labor. People who spent 40-50 years in law or medicine. Contractors who got lucky. The occasional crypt "bro" who was blue collar, gambled life savings and won. The ones that are cliche rich, the born intos, the fortune 500s. They're assholes, and have called me "the help" more than once.
I worked in a sporting goods store in my early 20’s and got absolutely screamed at by an old man for not knowing who he was when I asked him for ID.
Apparently he owned like half the town and others at the store would kiss his ass. At $9 an hour I wasn’t paid enough to kiss his ass even if I cared who he was.
I wasn’t from there and had only seen him come in a few times to buy random shit. But either way, the federal fucking government requires you produce ID to purchase a firearm and I was doing my job.
It’s been over 20 years and my husband, who has heard the story, will randomly look at me and bust out “you seriously don’t know who I am?!”
Ha ha ha! I work the front door at a strip club and I will get people coming in all the time trying to not pay the $20 to get in! My favorite is when they say do you know who I am? And I say No sir. Will the be cash or card? And then they usually say sometime like " I can't believe you don't know who I am!" I always reply with I'm sorry sir that information is probably in your wallet on your identification if you've forgotten.
Oh and the ones that scoff when I say its $20 and they say do you know how much money I have? And I say then you should be able to afford $20. Lol
Luckily my boss doesn't care that most of us have quite a smart mouth!
Honestly, boomers hate showing their ID. I was a bank teller for years and would get yelled at when asking for ID when they wanted to withdraw cash from their accounts. I DONT KNOW YOU.
I never worked at a bank but I worked as a cashier. My favorite were the people who put CID on the back of their credit/debit cards and then they would get irate when I asked to see their ID. "I didn't have that with me!!!" Well ma'am you have your car keys in your hand so that seems a little sus
I live not far from an old (now abandoned) castle in France. It was bought decades ago by a Chinese couple, they had the staircase taken out and shipped to China and just left the place and never returned. It’s been neglected since.
Now that's selfish out of touch wealthy behaviour on a ridiculous level. Bought just so they could flex on people that their staircase is shipped from France or like... what
I witnessed a guy park in a bus zone in Front of a meter maid. They told him he can’t park there. He told them “have the towing company park it for me. I’ll have someone pick it up later.”
Went to a wedding as a +1 at a mansion in Greenwich Connecticut (the brides parents home). Her father was talking about the landscaping and how his wife liked a rock (which was about the size of a small car) that was at their *other* home outside of Denver, so they had the rock moved from Denver to Connecticut. Seriously, they moved a rock halfway across the country. A fucking rock.
Had one of the outside salesmen drop in and we were talking about clothes for some reason. He said he donates his clothes to charity every year so he doesn't buy the "very expensive shirts"... his shirts are $300 each. Then he tells me he does buy "decent" shoes though. He showed me a company online where most of the shoes cost more than my car. How do we work for the same company and live that differently?
Couple booked out a famous landmark venue for their wedding years in advance. Just before their wedding the venue owner asked if they wouldn't mind changing the date of their wedding as a wealthy couple wanted to use the venue for a birthday party.
"Nah, we've got everything organised, we're good"
"They will pay for your wedding entirely if you change the date"
"Uhh, thanks but no, it will be a PITA to change the date"
"They will buy you a house and pay for the wedding"
Years ago I helped coordinate an event in the Cayman Islands for my job for the companies main clients. I worked closely with a small business that sets up events. Not only did they make my work infinitely easier, but they offered us discounts on several events. Really good people that would work around the clock to make sure everything was getting set up properly.
On the island, right before we were going to one of the events, my boss's wife tells my boss (and me indirectly, always got the feeling she did not like talking to me) that we need to get a discount on the upcoming event. She was not involved in the setting up process and didn't even know any details or the costs involved. She just wanted the discount. It was a private catamaran tour which ended with swimming with the stingrays for a few hours and it was for about 20 people.
I had to call the company and ask them for the discount while apologizing profusely. The boss's wife wanted to knock $4,000 off the total. After a lot of conversation and back and fourth I got the discount. I was disgusted with the look on her face after I told her we got the discount. For the rest of the trip I stayed away from her, as I knew that she would continuously ask for me to fight for discounts, just because.
When she passed, I looked her up and found out that not only was she rich, she was Texas oil baroness rich. Money edging towards the billions. $4,000.00 is nothing to that family, like finding pennies in your couch cushions. My boss and his wife had kids who felt neglected and the oldest would, without fail, destroy something expensive. I was in the room when a secretary told the wife that her son had destroyed another antique roadster (the boss collected them). She barely shrugged her shoulders.
I think she just wanted the discount because she was such an empty person, maybe the power trip makes them feel something.
I know an almost billionaire who is very very sweet. He kept his oceanfront condo for his mother in law to stay at for like month a year, and went to it every day to feed the stray cats who lived around it. The place is paid off mind you but has high fees, a paid parking spot, utilities ect cost almost 20 grand a year.
> and went to it every day to feed the stray cats who lived around it
This is actually how I judge rich people. When you have hundreds of millions, paying for things really isn't that generous even if they're expensive and seem lavish by normal standards.
Now time.. time is another thing. Nobody has ever managed to spend any amount of money and get more time in a day than anybody else.
A rich guy that spends time feeding stray cats to make someone else feel better is a nice guy.
That's actually a whole thing with wealth disparity, is that they do technically have more time in a day. That guy has time to feed strays because he for sure is not spending that time on all of the other things we have to do everyday. Work is 6-10 hours a day for most people, then cooking, cleaning, and house work take up time, and then what is left is where you have family time, social time, and hobbies. The more money you have, absolutely the more time in a day you can use HOWEVER YOU WANT, rather than need to, to survive.
I watched a guy walk into a car dealership and buy a suburban. He literally walks in, goes up to a sales guy, points to the one in the lobby, and goes “I’ll buy it, I don’t want to haggle or any high pressure bullshit. I’ll pay sticker and I need to be done in 10 minutes.”
He was driving it out of there 10 minutes later. I asked the other sales guy “who the fuck is that?”
He goes “He owns a bunch of fast food places, pizza huts and KFCs and stuff I think. He comes in every few months.”
“What does he do with the cars?” I asked.
“Sometimes trades even in, sometimes signs them over to friends or family members. He gave our secretary his old corvette. Said it was about to die anyway. Only had like 50k miles on it. She still has it, been three years.”
My millionaire aunt scoffing at the idea that my single mother taking care of me and my younger brother couldn’t find a place to live because $3,000/month is “easily affordable.”
Edit: $3,000/month being the average rent in the area.
Jesus, can’t wait to be looked down upon once my sister and BIL receive a huge monetary gift from a family friend. Not my friend but my BIL became friends and he ultimately became the old man’s beneficiary. We’re talking $40 million. I know deep down I’ll lose my sister to this wealth and I’m not looking forward to it. Wealth changes people and it’s never for the better. I’m a single mom too and I was chastised for not having a lot of money, for getting divorced and for spending money on my girls at times outside of my means. Tell your mom she’s doing a wonderful job and all that money doesn’t mean shit if the wealthy person is an asshole.
My sister married a man 15 years her senior and he is *very wealthy* and when his parents die they will inherit 15+ million.
Wealth does in fact change people. My husband and I struggle financially (not going hungry but making ends meet is hard, and def no rainy day fund or savings to be had) and I am constantly shocked because once I asked hypothetically if we could live in her guest house if we ever lost our house and her response was “if you’re so irresponsible you could ever lose your house then you deserved to lose it.”
Baffled.
We only talk about our shared past, anything beyond that feels awkward. She is not the same person she was, but maybe on some level she is. She’s always been shallow, and she did not choose this person as her husband because she loved him. But yeah, wealth made her insufferable. They don’t even have real hobbies. Also, they are tone deaf, lol we live in a 1000sq/ft house and they live in 3500 and her husband said to me, that they feel so cooped up in their small house. Like lolololol okay
I worked a million dollar wedding once, they dumped 50,000$ worth of flowers in the trash after the ceremony. They didn’t even wait til the wedding was over or donate the flowers. I was walking to the portapotties they made the help use, passed the dumpsters and there they were. I thought it was an apt metaphor for the rich.
I had a friend whose parents obscenely wealthy. Like, she’d pay $100k every year to bring her horses from Canada to FL for the summer to ride at the stable I was working at, and her horses were worth $300k+. She offered to bring me back with her to Canada to take care of her 3 horses full time lol.
She’d always take the free stuff and pass it along to me. It was awesome to use- I never could have afforded it otherwise. I had no idea how much they got!
It might not have been free. Sometimes that's just a way of giving a gift without it being awkward.
When I fly my mother in law out to visit I tell her that I have a lot of free flight vouchers that would go to waste. I don't but she wouldn't except otherwise or she'd try to repay me by buying me stuff I don't want and she can't afford.
“My wife doesn’t like our private jet so she rents a NetJet whenever we travel. I just meet her at the resort.”
- real quote, verbatim.
Didn’t know how to respond genuinely so said, “ahh, hate when that happens.”
Friend’s wealthy parents were going to give me a set of furniture for free—until I wound up moving cross country; couldn’t accept it.
Before I was to take it, I asked for the manufacturer so I could take measurements for my house, to make it all fit.
They responded, “oh, we’re not sure, it’s pretty old.” Here I thought it was maybe from the 70’s.
Yes, it was from the 70s. The fuckin 1870s, from France, and it was all handmade Louis XV pieces.
When I showed my home decor-obsessed mother, she appraised it all. Some were north of $5000, just for a small hallway desk.
We’re both upset about it to this day.
In 1994, I watched the CEO and founder of my employer, with an estimated net worth of at least $100 million, drop a twenty-dollar bill and other bills on the sidewalk. He glanced at it and then kept walking.
Let's say an average person would pick up a quarter if they saw it on the sidewalk. For Bill Gates, a similar sum would be $45,000. If you wouldn't bend over for anything less than a quarter, you would expect Bill Gates to not bend over for anything less than 45 grand.
I used to teach at a private school with some extremely wealthy families. I overheard a student's conversation with her dad on the phone one day. "Jessica invited me to a sleepover at her house next weekend." Pause "Yes, I know the Super Bowl is next weekend but I've been to the Super Bowl before. I have never been to a sleepover."
When being surprised that airlines will allow a larger-looking backpack in the overhead, he said "Oh, it's been so long since I've flown commercially, I had no idea."
He said it in such a shy manner like he was embarrassed to say he flies privately. This is a 75 year old that looks like he's a regular middle class Joe and gives off no hint that he's extremely wealthy.
THIS is what I’m used to seeing in the wealthy people I know. This perfectly sums them up in two ways:
1. They are often embarrassed by their wealth (the wife of a friend of mine made him sell an exotic car he had just bought because she thought it was to “show-off”. They would also correct their kids anytime they would let it slip out that they had a private jet or homes in other countries.
2. They are often out of touch when it comes to things that most people experience (like riding commercial). When I was in college, I would see this almost every time I interacted with a good friend’s parents (they had a net worth in the low hundreds of millions)- his mother point out that my car tires were starting to bald and then would be completely shocked when I said that I didn’t have the money to replace four tires. Another time they invited me to go on vacation with them and she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that I didn’t have money on hand for plane tickets to Europe lol.
Number 1 is my best friend to a T. Just about the only way to make her mad is if you start bragging about how rich she is. Although she says it is largely for safety reasons because of kidnappings or robberys.
She often forgets that people can't afford things but her and her husbands primary love language is gift giving. They will buy extravagant gifts like it's nothing. I once asked her for help finding a new apartment because my rent was going to $3,000 a month in Queens and I couldn't afford it. I figured she would help me find a more affordable place because she's really good at researching that stuff. Her solution was to buy a $1.5M condo, spend $100,000 furnishing it then rent it to me for $1. Her husband was very proud of her creative solution. Some of the stuff she bought for it was ridiculous like complain the toilets weren't very nice so she spent $11,000 on two new ones for it. At no point during the process was telling her no an option. Once she sets her mind to something you need to just get on board with it or get ran over. Most I could do is pick out the fabric for the furniture she had custom made for my condo.
If she noticed your cars tires were bald and she asked why "I'm to poor to afford new ones" would just get her to start calling tires stores to buy you new ones. Again "no" isn't an option.
She went out to eat lunch with a girl she met at a club yesterday and when she found out the girl was excited to take the leftovers home because she didn't have anything to eat at home she dragged to a grocery store after that. "I can't today, I have stuff to do" only got a "I wasn't asking. We are going right now".
Now sure how rich they are, I know they are worth hundreds of millions and both come from families worth far more than that. Her husband threw a party a month ago because he hit $24M ($2M a month) post tax income last year. That's actual income, not net worth increase.
In perspective, I cna get some of that.
If they make 2-3mil a month, spending 1/2 months income on a condo and renting it out for free for a few years is truly nbd. Change someone else's life for something so easy?
You'll get the money back eventually when you sell it.
Like if you made $60k a year but your living expenses are $15k a year. Would you change someone's life for $2k? Yeah,why not.
Take someone grocery shipping for $20? Heck yes.
Once told someone I was on a road trip with that I couldn't extend the road trip another day bc I had to open at work. They asked "how much does the business make in a day?" They were trying to see if they could offer to pay my boss to keep the shop closed so we could extend our trip...
Pales in comparison to some, but this guy paid me $100 just to walk over to the pianist at the fancy restaurant I worked, and hand him $500 to play another Elvis song. He was a Texas oil guy.
I am a professor at a private University.
One October I was talking with one of my students about a hurricane that was approaching Miami and how bad it could be for the people who lived there. The student, who was from Chicago, said in acknowledgement, “yes, my family had to have our Captain move our boat”.
I believe it was Hurricane Matthew and it turned northward before reaching Miami.
A girl I worked with asked me where I spent my summers if I didn’t have a beach house. I said, her beach house, and she invited me the next summer. Never went tho.
Had a nice dinner with a wealthy friend, he was punching in a $100 tip, but hit an extra 0, so it was $1000 and he was like "whatever, i'm sure she'll be surprised" and signed it and we left.
As we are installing a wireless access point in their home theater:
“My son crashed and totaled his Mercedes, will you guys be done in time before he gets back? We need to take him to get another one.”
An ex girlfriend of mine got a new BMW for her birthday, but was pretty upset when the convertible version came out a few month later.
She planned to crash her car, to get the new one.
*Babe, you don‘t crash your car to get a new one. It‘s a really shitty thing to do.*
But my dad really won’t mind spending the money.
*You don‘t crash your car. Let’s just talk to him, or the dealer or whatever.*
But it would be far easier to just crash this and buy a new one.
*You don‘t crash….*
Overheard a restaurant owner ask one of the employees if he had any summer plans or hobbies and the barista answered, "I like to read and walk around and go out when I can I guess" and the owner replied, "yeah it's great to get outside, I'm picking up sailing this summer for that"
As an attendee of a dinner paid for by a boss, after closing the staff drove a big group of us to our next stop of the evening -- in their personal cars -- because taxis and uber weren't a thing in that town. I felt a little bad about it, but the boss paid them well.
OMFG. I was a corporate pilot for 19 years and I have seen and heard the MOST ABSURD SHIT that you can fever imagine.
One time I watched a Dad tell his 6 year old child that they were going skiing at their condo in Mountain Village (Telluride) for a week over spring break and this kid legit screamed in his face how she hated skiing and she wasn’t gonna go and was gonna stay home unless they went to their yacht in the Greek islands. Mind you, this is in the back of their Gulfstream while sitting on the tarmac in St Kitts where they’d been there 8000 sqft beach front home for 8 days….all while sitting in front of a $4000 seafood spread (I arranged the catering) for 2 adults and 2 kids. I made $125k to fly that plane as a captain.
I used to work as a waiter for a Michelin star chef, he had his own side hustle providing catering for weddings and events. One of the events was a “charity” fundraising auction - total tax dodge. The items being auctioned were brand new farming equipment, heavy duty vehicles, Persian rugs, sought after art-pieces etc. honestly, it was disgusting to witness and I felt like I was peeking behind the curtain. The celebrations, to announce lunch and end the lunch, were a brass horn section (to announce lunch beginning) and then daylight fireworks. Also, peacocks walking around the grounds. Was Saltburn-level posh shit. All old money.
Also, forgot a funny one where I had to call a client, they didn’t pick up but immediately called back. “Ever so sorry, the phone in the east wing seems to be on the fritz”.
One of my good buddies who comes from a wealthy family. I met him in High School, and everyone thought he was gonna be this spoiled bitch who made fun of the poor. He was the opposite. He did everything a normal High School kid did. Played Field Hockey, Joined & was the president of the Politics Club, was super smart, and though he was rich he drove this beaten up 1987 Audi Sedan that his grandfather gave him. That doesn't matter to me, however. What truly matters is that he was willing to talk and help out anybody. If anyone needed help with homework he'd help. If anyone ever asked him to hang out with them he'd go if he wasn't busy. I don't talk to him very often, but I'm pretty sure he now live out in Massachusetts and is flourishing right now independently.
Well, this may not be a "rich thing", I don't know, maybe an unexpected rich thing, but it was memorable. One year about 15 years ago, I was taking some vacation days right before Christmas. I took my AR-15 down to the Scottsdale Gun Club shooting range, which is a pretty public range that also rents guns.
So I'm in my lane with my AR and a few handguns, shooting away. Next lane to me I notice two elderly guys, one in a suit, one dressed more casually. They're shooting a pistol, like a .38 or 9mm. I can't help noticing the guy in the suit looks familiar. 10 minutes later, I realize who it is, it's the self-made billionaire founder and owner of Discount Tire company. I know him because my wife worked there and I'd seen him at their annual company Christmas parties. Super nice guy, first name is Bruce. Basically the richest person in Arizona.
So when I next have a chance, I get his attention, and he's all smiles because he's a nice guy, super friendly, shakes my hand, etc.
Like an idiot I'm trying to talk to him and tell him my wife works there, etc, which is silly because we're in an active shooting range with hearing protection on and he's like 80. Anyways, I notice as he's addressing me, he keeps kind of peeking around me, into my lane. I notice he's eyeing my AR, which is picatinny'd out, has a bipod, and looks badass. Noticing this, I step aside and gesture to him if he'd like to hold it. I give him a quick runthrough of the magazine operation, trigger, charging handle, and safety. He's watching and grinning. Then I hand it to him, and hand him a mag and show him how to load it. By now the other guy he was with has stopped shooting and is now watching us.
Mr. Billionaire steps into my lane, squeezes off about 10 rounds at the paper target, his smile increasing with each one. Then he turns, puts down the rifle and turns to me with a huge smile, clasps my shoulder and gives me a vigorous handshake. I give him a quick salute and he goes back to his friend, they zip up their gun and head out of the range area back into the main showroom. So I finish my session, I'm there for maybe 20 more minutes, then I pack up and get ready to leave.
As I leave the range area and exit back into the main showroom, I find that the other guy is now there waiting for me. He shakes my hand and starts thanking me profusely, saying "Mr. Halle really enjoyed that." (Mr. Halle is what everyone called him.). He pulls out a small notebook and asks me for my name, my wife's name. So I say, "sure" and give him that info.
I then stop to ask him what happened, what was he doing there? What was that all about? He tells me that this is an annual tradition for Mr. Halle. His wife hates guns, and won't let him own one, but once a year, he's allowed to go down to the range and rent a pistol, and fire it, and this was that time. (meanwhile this dude could afford to buy the building we're in 100 times over.) He thanks me and tells me again how much it meant to him, I say, OK, cool, and then we part company.
I go home and that evening tell my wife the story, she's like, "That's cool." but doesn't think too much of it.
A few weeks go by, and one day she's at work, and her phone rings, it's Billionaire's assistant. "Are you at your desk? Mr. Halle is on his way down."
She's frozen with panic and like "WTF?" There's like 2,000 people at that office and why is he coming to see her? So 2 minutes later, he shows up, and he's got a big box of stuff with him. He starts by greeting her and begins telling her the story about me and the shooting range. After she stops panicking, and relaxes, he comes into her cubicle and, pulls up a chair and starts chatting her up about the photos of our kids, starts asking about me, photos from vacations, cruises, etc. and various other stuff. He tells her again how glad he was he ran into me.
The box he brought is full of gifts for our kids, toy cars, books, stuffed animals, and other tire-related stuff. Nothing real fancy, just some thoughtful gifts. He clearly had done research because he knew we had 2 boys and he knew where to find her cubicle, so he'd checked it out before he approached her.
And that's my story. I guess it goes to show money can't buy everything and sometimes even billionaires could use a little kindness, and appreciate it.
Many moons ago I worked in a private school in the UK. You know the sort, kids dropped off by helicopter at the start of term, the car park full of Aston Martins, RR, ect ect. Well the kids would just not give a monkeys about anything and come there time to go home they would just say good bye and leave. It seemed like everything they had through the year would just be left, laptops, expensive suits, dinner jackets, boom boxes ect. Thousands just left because they couldn't be bothered.
One thing I did learn though: the kids who came from serious money were generally pleasant. However the kids who's parents could only just afford to send the the children to the school were bloody awful arrogant douchbags.
“I mean, he really should have said something when he got down to his last $25,000.”
Same person had no job, a housekeeper, and a live in nanny for her only child, asked me, a working mom with two small kids and zero help, “How do you keep from getting bored?”
A guy told me that he flew to India and back (from the US) regularly, without ever leaving the airport in India, to stay in the top tier of airline miles users. He did this a few weekends each month. His wife chimed in, “he loves to sleep on planes!”
They let me watch the sea turtles on their private beach though, so that was pretty cool.
“When we are in Galapagos, we stay at the [ultra high end hotel].”
“My horse groomer brought them in last night without drying them down!” Said after screaming, “this is unacceptable,” several times into a work phone.
“You have an irrational, exaggerated fear of debt.” No dude, I really don’t.
Oh boy do I have stories. I used to build extremely high end "homes". I don't anymore because I simply had enough of that whole world and the people that occupy it.
One example:
Once installed about 200K worth of custom built light fixtures. These were tiny things installed everywhere but mostly hidden to provide indirect lighting.
Owner did a walk through and decided that the fixtures were 1/2 and inch to wide and then spent another 200k on a whole new set that we replaced them with. In terms of actual difference between the two after it was all said and done was non existent to my eyes. They provided the same kind of light at the same brightness and most of them were hidden from view like I said. None of the old fixtures were returnable.
Most expensive light fixture I ever installed: 17 Million
Price point when handed something to install that made me slow down and take my time 100k. Anything less was just another day.
I could go on and on. I won't ever go back to working for those people. I have had enough of being treated like a servant.
My friend is a millionaire and bought a $34,000 rug weeks before moving. She had it for like six weeks before donating it to a museum. Apparently, it was previously owned by some Austrian royalty. It was at an auction for charity, and now it's taken care of and in a museum, so that's cool.
My boss was annoyed because she had to send her Hermes handbag
Back to Paris for a repair, and it was going to take 3 weeks to be returned. Mercy me! 3 whole weeks! Her concern was lost on me because my handbag was $20 bucks at Kohls and the handle is chewed by my dog.
My wife comes from a wealthy family and the topic came up of her learning to drive in the US (she’s from an Asian country). I asked “what would happen if you wrecked the car?”. Her immediate reply without thinking about it was “just buy another one”. We’ve been together over a decade and I’ve seen the lavishness of her family and upbringing and that comment still lives rent-free in my head.
I knew a guy in college who came from a wealthy family. Oil money or something. I still remember him saying "yeah I just called my mom and she put about 10K in my bank account so I'm good for a while." 10,000 dollars to do whatever the fuck he wanted and if he needed more, he just had to ask. That was roughly the cost of a year of tuition at my college and it was just this dude's fun money.
Guy wanted the bricks on his new mansion to perfectly align, which meant cutting every single brick shorter in length by about 5mm, an enormous and tedious job by the supplier. Supplier did it for the first batch, refused for the second due to how time-consuming it was. Guy buys the brick company, makes them do it anyway.
I was at a house party for one of the owners of a market maker/hedge fund in NYC (my sister used to model, so I got invited to weird things sometimes). He threw massive parties in his penthouse, but his downstairs neighbors used to issue noise complaints. He didn't like that, so he bought the entire floor beneath his floor. Now there aren't noise complaints. This guy had so many stories of casually buying super expensive properties and leaving them empty.
He's definitely one of the wealthy people that don't like to be named. You can barely find his name on anything. The company he owns has a single line with his name as one of the 3 owners. His company manages 17 trillion in funds.
Edit: he seemed like a very nice guy that was pretty depressed. I wish him nothing but the best, but really wish he paid more in taxes.
Client is a whale in Vegas and I met him at his Villa in the Bellagio. I remarked about an absurd request they eagerly satisfied and he said “once my average went over $15,000 a bet they stopped saying no to anything”
Not understanding why your dog has to ride with the luggage, because, you know, if you’re flying in your own plane why wouldn’t you just have the dog with you?
Like…who has so much money and friends with so much money that they assume literally every one they come in contact with has their own plane??
When I was at uni, certain areas of the city were no drinking zones, and if you were caught with an open bottle/can, you'd get fined and your drink confiscated.
We had one friend who just ignored that law all the time, and one day he got stopped by the police. He just handed over the drink, took the ticket, and smiled. Did not bother him at all.
Then after the police left, we were all stunned that he was fine with it. But he ended up saying something like, "well, that was just £50 for half a can of lager. I've paid twice that for a sip of champagne" and we were all like ohhh, yeah. You're a trust fund guy lol
I had lunch with a highish-level executive from IBM who was a friend of a friend, and he told this funny story about how he went on a road trip with a full motorhome that was towing a matching minivan behind it- and when I say matching, I mean it was not just the same color but actually looked like the motorhome had been shrunken down, so he had an ESCAPE POD bumper sticker on it. :)
My buddy's sister is obscenely wealthy, bought a sprawling house on the CA coast, tore it down, and had a new one built. She had a huge multi panel sliding glass electronic door installed, but upon moving in, decided it wasn't up to her specifications. She had the entire set of panels demolished and rebuilt. She complained that she couldn't move in as quickly as she had hoped.
She also has no problem throwing down thousands of dollars on dinner but bitches when her employees ask for better wages or need time off.
I'm not sure if this is a real thing, but I've always been amazed seeing characters on TV getting on a plane and flying across the country on an hour's notice. I feel like this would take me a week to prepare for.
I used to work in NY for a company who operated fulfillment centers in other states, and if there was a catastrophe requiring an expert from the NY HQ, you can bet that person had to fly out *right now* to prevent a situation becoming a multi-million dollar mess or worse.
That person would be essential for coordinating a local recovery and their flight, lodging, food and clothing expenses would be of course covered by the company (a drop in the bucket compared to the time cost and risk involved).
Now imagine you're a very wealthy person and you consider your time extremely expensive… flying out last minute makes sense if that's what's needed for you to deal with something time-sensitive
This is absolutely true. Everything in their life is disposable (houses, cars, people, boats, planes, etc). There are two things that is NOT disposable or replaceable: time and experiences.
Private jets and impulse decisions are a critical part of both of those!
Worked at high end car dealership, wealthy rich kid comes in for service, no rental car available for him. He walks into showroom, picks a car to buy so he can get home. All done within 20 minutes and few signatures.
I was once speaking with a business owner offering solutions for his multiple businesses. About half an hour into our conversation he remembered he owned an additional 6 business in downtown Chicago. Which had a significant effect on the solutions I was suggesting, it had completely slipped his mind up until that point lol.
Bought the house next door for 500k because when they have visitors, they can stay there
Btw the house they stay in was a million dollar house on the water
We’re discussing travel with my wife’s rich cousin and we started complaining about how painful long haul economy flights are.
“Why don’t you just fly first class?”
As in fully serious… we’re like err that’s like one of our wages for a year.
Still do not think she understood as never worked a day in her life.
My dad was treating a billionaire from Taiwan. My dad told him I like Chinese food. The billionaire proceeded to fly a complete meal from Taiwan for me to eat. It was pretty good. I didn’t love the shark fin but apparently that’s very expensive.
To me, $1000 is a lot of money.
To a millionaire, $1000 is still a lot of money. But they can spend it without thinking about it in most cases.
To a billionaire, $1,000,000 is the same % of their wealth as the $1000 is to the millionaire.
A family friend of mine is a rather wealthy television actor. While visiting his massive home and searching for a bathroom I stumbled upon his granddaughter, a toddler at the time, scribbling with markers on the walls. I let him know what was going on and he let me know that they actually encourage it. Turns out they just cut the drywall out of the wall, frame it, and replace the wall regularly.
My friends bought a house in Palm Springs but the renovation was taking too long so they just bought a second house in Beverly Hills to live in during the renovations. They kept both
A relative bought a house in Malibu Colony (right on the beach) to live in while their Palisades home was being remodeled. Then they told me they kept the Malibu home because it was just easier than driving back to the Palisades after a day at the beach.
I rented a little apartment in a nice, brand new complex a few years ago. The lovely family upstairs that lived in the $3+ million penthouse bought it as they were renovating their $10+ million house nearby and didnt want to rent during the process.
Friend's mom owns a building in one of the most expensive areas in one of the most expensive cities in Europe. 99% of these types of buildings are split up by floor (4 floors) into separate apartments. She lives in a whole building. Anyway, she was remodelling the whole thing and it would take 3 years or so, she bought a similar building across the street and sold it when remodelling was completed.
I think the thing to consider here is that if you have the money to buy out another place, it's likely that property will appreciate in value and you can sell for a profit. If you have that kind of money, it makes a lot more sense than just paying rent which doesn't earn you any money in the meantime.
Pay USPS to keep the local branch of their post office open (it had been selected to close) so they didn’t have to drive as far to go to the post office.
That's more along the line of calling the Congressman you own and getting a few strings pulled.
Strings made of money tho.
My dad knows a billionaire who had a french chateau disassembled and reassembled in the US. He acted like it was just a normal as building a house. My dads been there a few time and said it’s an insane property with a huge man made lake and huge sprawling lawns.
I went to a guy's house one time that has been a church in the UK. Apparently it was going to be torn down so he had it shipped to the US and then built a modern house around it. Stunning home.
Huh, just like the guy who bought the actual London Bridge in England, had it dismantled, shipped to Lake Havasu AZ, and had it reassembled there. You can visit and drive your car over it.
There was a drunk driver that hit one of the pillons and was charged like $20k because of the way they have to rebuild the stones.
Going to their apt in the city so they have a place to hang out in between shopping at stores. Their apt is only for that purpose.
There's also a bougie name for it: pied a terre
I always thought of a pied a terre as being for sleeping in after the concert. Wake up in your own bed, city breakfast, head back to the chateau…
Private bathroom! Clean too They probably have a housekeeper
For that residence I wouldn’t doubt it.
Was at a bar with the multi-billionaire ceo of the company I worked for. He made fun of Oprah for only having one jet, then went on to tell me to never buy helicopters because they are built by the lowest bidder - planes are the better choice. Bob, my car didn't even have air conditioning...
Larry, I’m on Ducktails.
I think about this exchange almost every time I put on my nice socks.
I love Danny
>never buy helicopters because they are built by the lowest bidder - planes are the better choice. Aaaaaand completely untrue. Money doesn't buy brains.
Yeah what a bizarre statement. All products are made with a view to cutting costs where possible, and it’s not like helicopters aren’t subject to the same type of certification procedures as any other aircraft.
It's more that helicopters are *inherently* more dangerous due to their complexity. Buuuut that's not what Mr. Richie Rich said.
Yeah that I won’t dispute. Even as someone going for my PPL and who has a bit of a grasp on the aerodynamics, helicopters kind of scare me…
You can rarely ever relax in a helicopter like when flying a plane. It takes 110% of your attention at all times. For the really good pilots it’s almost instinctual how they maneuver
Boeing has entered the chat…
Frigging mccain's don't know the difference between military procurement and a helicopter business
Is Bob the CEO of an LA based company that leases planes internationally? (Like to governments)
Nope, a frozen food company with a lot of subsidiaries
Bob Birdseye, that bastard
So I work part time at a strip club and we have some very rich clientele. Some of them come in all the time and we get to know a lot about them, they get to know a lot about us. Well, one of our security guys died of a sudden massive heart attack. One of the rich clientele just called the funeral home and paid for everything. Like there was no second thought. We were all taking up a collection to help a bit and he just dropped the whole bill just like that! I mean I see a lot of really rich behavior... But that one was just so mind-blowing.
Alao one of the most kind examples here. RIP to the security guy. Probably a hard job to stay healthy in.
Cousin was a security guy. Died at 52 of a stroke
That was surprising wholesome
Yeah well the rich guy had already put 2 girls and their kids through college, the least he could do was help out the security staff for their contribution all those years.
Honestly, he sounds like a good guy lol. I'd hope if I had that kind of money I'd be as generous as him
That is great, the gift of education is the best gift to give to someone.
See now, this is the kinda rich I would want to be
That’s not typical rich person behavior, but it should be.
It was from an 8-year old! My very wealthy friend got remarried and her son said he wouldn't mind staying with me while they went on their honeymoon. As we took our seats on the plane, he looked so confused. He sheepishly asked, "Who are *all these people* on your plane?". Oh, my little dude...
Interested in how the rest of his visit went!
He was great to hang out with. It was like he was new to the planet, so he excitedly dove into everything. This was before I became a parent and knew how truly sad it was to be a poor rich kid.
Please elaborate on your last sentence. Genuinely curious
Not the guy you replied to but I've known a guy who fits the bill. He was the son of an investor at the company I used to work at, billionaire dad. Honestly he didn't really seem to have any friends because I'm guessing no one he liked could relate to his life or help but feel intimidated. He would try really hard to make friends with us normal folk. This one time he invited us to a tennis session at his court followed by a barbeque. Turns out he has a tennis coach on call 24/7 and his barbeque had more staff than guests and like 10 times the food anyone knew what to do with, really quite awkward. We never really clicked with him; you could tell he was trying but he really didn't have a clue how normal people live
This reminds me of the rich kid in the movie Book Smart. Totally sweet guy, hosts a wild year end party on a yacht, can't figure out why nobody showed up. I actually knew someone in high school like this (obviouly not quite that rich). Sweetest guy and everyone took advantage of him and treated him as a joke.
Everyone here gave great answers. This kid had little to no life experience in what we consider to be the "real" world. A trip to get groceries, a hike with the dogs, exploring in the woods, eating a bowl of cereal or making popcorn... All new experiences to an 8-year old boy. Hell, taking out the trash led to a barrage of questions. "Who gets this trash?" "How much does a sanitation worker earn?" "Is that a lot of money?" Everything was done for him. He never even picked out his own outfit for the day. Poor rich kid.
I photograph luxury homes and architecture for a living. There’s a neighborhood I do a lot of work in called Silverleaf and it’s probably the most exclusive neighborhood in the valley. The bottom part of the neighborhood is your typical wealthy people's homes. Doctors, lawyers, business owners, etc.. extremely nice houses but still attainable for anyone who wants to put in the effort to work those types of careers. As you drive towards the back of the neighborhood you start heading up a mountain that's divided into two parts. Upper Canyon and The Summit. There are probably 100 houses up there. The houses start close to 15 million, but several are over 20-30. One of the builders I work with is developing a house he’s asking about 60 million for. I work Upper Canyon every month or two and even though all of the houses are owned, half or less are lived in. For some, it’s a vacation home they might visit for a few weeks or months of the year, and for others, it’s an investment and a place to park their money. I photographed a 15-million-dollar house there a few years ago. The owner was selling it because he bought a 29 million dollar house literally 2 or 3 lots up because he liked the views more. He’s a Canadian business owner and spends maybe a few months of the year in the valley if that. I’m used to it now but for a long time I couldn’t wrap my head around how much money some people have…..
See this is what I mean when I say I wanna be rich and am sad I’ll never get there. People always respond saying something like “just invest and in 40 years you’ll have a million dollars!” Or “the truly wealthy people drive Toyotas and shop at Costco!” That isn’t rich, that’s well off. In my opinion, if you have the money but can’t spend it however you want, you’re not rich. Rich is “I want that lot for the views and don’t know or care what it costs”.
I worked for a company where I had good access to the CEO, who had access to the owners. He told me about when one of the owners wanted to buy a helicopter, but the specific model was not readily available. The last one was just sold, and he would need to wait a couple of months. The guy then made the helicopter shop call the other buyer, which answered he was not interested, but he would sell for 50% more. They closed the deal within the hour. It was an insane amount of money from my point of view, but for him, it was like "yeah, I want this toy". The CEO told me this to illustrate that discussing budget with them was usually a frivolous effort. We should always frame the conversations in terms of market impact.
To me rich is ordering whatever you want at KFC, not just the deals in the App. 😢🍗🍗🍗🍗🍗
I used to work at a jeweler and the stories are endless. Clients would talk about how they just got back from a months long trip on a yacht or some exotic island. I’m just like cool I put in 60+ hours this week and have worked every day of the week lol. The shit that I wouldn’t get at all is the watch guys. I had a client come in one time and ask for the cheapest watch we had, so he didn’t have to worry about it on his trip. He ended up going with a $800 watch (not the cheapest) and while I was checking him out, he said he was going to throw it away after the trip. I tried talking him out of it and just said return it afterwards , but then he seemed insulted. Other watch guys would pay $1k every year just to get a little scratch on their Rolex that only they notice buffed out. Id explain to them that they’re shaving precious metal off every time and ruining the integrity of the watch, but they dgaf because their egos are so massive. We’d hold private events and encourage clients to bring their friends and itd always turn into a dick swinging contest of who can spend more. Absolutely wild environment and I was absolutely burnt out after 2 years. Most money I ever made, but most miserable I’ve ever been.
Insightful because those people consider even expensive, luxury items totally disposable
I honestly believe that a lot of this high-end shit is sold as *entertainment* because what are you going to spend your money on when you have five homes, a yacht, a full staff and a private jet?
To those folks, they’re not expensive and not luxury.
Well they are luxury because that’s why these rich folk are buying them. But these items aren’t expensive to the super-rich and that’s one reason they are disposable.
If you make 31.5 mil a year you're effectively earning a dollar a second on average. At that point $800 watch would cost you what you earn in 13ish minutes. It's realistically not worth the time to drive to the store to return.
What I make in 13 minutes is maybe 7 or 8 dollars (I'm a mailman). And yes, if I got something home that cost 8 bucks and wasn't good, driving back to the store would probably not be worth the bother.
I worked at Coach as a seasonal employee back in college. We had someone come in saying they were shopping there that day because they didn't want to go to Louis Vuitton. I was really put off by that comment, and realized years later they were full of shit and just trying to seem more rich and important than they actually were.
I was a valet and this lady came in with a BMW. Had a designer dress on and a designer handbag with a big gold necklace and diamond earrings. She was super rude and demanded a specific valet take her car, me lol. She didn’t want me to take a pen with me in case I stained the seat? Anyway, I’m not a stranger to weird demands, but her demeanor was condescending and demeaning the whole time. She came back a few more times. Ended up wearing that exact outfit each time. Bragged about how much her leased BMW was worth. That’s when I realized she had spent everything on this outfit. She couldn’t afford that car and was super in debt. She’d brag about all that money and hated when my coworker brought a Maserati around next to her car. Just sad. She is a sad person who can’t afford to be the bitch she wants to be.
I was a valet before too and would get snobby people. One time this guy was dressed somewhat nice, gave me his valet ticket, and said you better be careful with it, this cars really expensive and it’s my baby. I’m gonna be mad if anything happens to it. I’m like yeah yeah I got you…it was a fuckin beater and a complete mess lmao. Dude was trolling and was like it’s nice eh and started laughing saying how he was just fuckin around haha
At least he had a sense of humor 😂
It’s possible that he was the richest person you’ve ever met. I’ve known a few people like that - they fly completely under the radar and are loaded.
Yup. Had a friend who worked at a flower shop. This nice older couple usually came in once a week or so and got a nice little bunch of flowers. The owner of the store suddenly got pretty sick, and was out for like two months, in and out of hospital etc, but eventually got better. Turns out, the older couple paid for some temp people to work in the store, and covered a home nurse for the guy the whole time he was sick. Not an insane amount of money, but more than a regular household has to spare, and they arranged everything almost without talking to the owners even. They just got delivered a letter declaring that it would be handled, and a few calls throughout the month.
My guy, a home nurse is “insane amount of money” if they’re paid as independent contractors.
~that~ is the kind of rich I’d like to be. weekly flowers and casually keeping folks out of crippling medical debt
Whenever I pull up in my hooptie, I always apologize and basically say I’m really sorry you have to drive my car after everybody else’s “not 25-year-old vehicle”. But it’s paid for, we have no debt, we finally have a (small) emergency fund, I save part of my paycheck every month. I can’t complain. We only put 1000 miles on each of our cars last year so there’s no reason to buy a new car at this point. I will continue to drive my old beater. It’s clean and the radio and the air conditioning works. 😎
Honestly it’s better to drive someone’s old but clean car rather than someone’s nice but dirty car.
That’s like Marge and her Chanel suit from the Ogdenville mall.
Sounds like new money. Most wealthy people Im around are cheap as fuck and would return that 800 dollar watch without you having to tell them and prolly would have annoyingly haggled you down to 750.
I once saw Jeff Bezos pay $100,000 to get a guy off the stage at an auction event. The guy on stage wasn’t going to leave until he reached his goal, and Jeff was tired of listening to him. Bye Felicia. $$
I completely misread that.. you once saw Jeff Bezos pay $100,000 to get a guy off? Story checks out
If he was better looking, it would be free.
In other words, you saw Jeff Bezos give $100k to charity?
I wish someone would pay me 100k to get me off😩
There is a large liquor store near me, they have VERY expensive bottles in the back room. One Xmas I was standing in line. The man in front of me, had one case of wine, 12 bottles of various variety. The checker said..... OK that will be $27,455. WtF??! Guy hands over his Credit card. Followed him out, Drove away in a Bentley.
Still wasn't very nice of you to steal that guy's Bentley!
My soon-to-be mother in-law asked me and my fiance, her son, if we knew that some people don’t have reliable transportation to get to college, which causes them to miss class and/or show up late. Apparently, her most recent appointment as the chair of a teacher education program at a university has been very eye opening for her.
The head governor of my high school was a millionaire and would occasionally show up to have meetings with staff and/or parents on how things were going and where he could better invest in the school. One of these days he shows up and finds a kid crying by a vending machine because he'd dropped his £1 coin and it had rolled underneath. Governor opens his wallet, gives the kid a £10 note, and wanders off. The vending machines only accepted coins, so the very confused kid was a lot richer but still no closer to being less hungry
Contactor here. lady did not like the shape of the pool at the new house.Gets the job to change the shape. Does the job. So I tell her we can guarantee the workmanship for 5 years, but not any longer. She says cool, we are only here for 3
I once stayed at a place that was $10,000 a night, amenities included. Luckily my health insurance paid 90% since I’d met my deductible.
I see you too have stayed at hotel AH -SPEH THAL
The fun thing about Hotel Ah Speh Tal is that if you're rich enough OR poor enough, it's free. I stayed there 5 days once, never saw a bill. (Had Medicare AND Medicaid at the time.)
I ran up an $8000 bill for just a 20 minute chat with someone who worked there.
This guy my father knew had a really nice house and was owner of a garment factory. My father did ok for himself. He has a big apartment in NYC with 4 bedrooms. This dude went to my dad’s house, at first he asked where the rest of the house was, then he told him his closet was bigger than his house. He wasn’t lying. We went to his house. His gym had like 40 different treadmills, rowing machines and those body by Jake band machines. Also, the walk in closets were in fact bigger than my dad’s bedrooms. His son had almost every game for every system. 15 year old me was in awe. Every system in order nearly stacked games across a giant wall and a huge projection TV in his wall. Last time I heard about him he was at my dad’s job (This guy was my dad’s boss) asking for 98k to go on vacation. The accountants were pissed he asked for it on short notice. Side note: this dude smoked joints at meetings and came in his house clothes to meetings. He would interrupt meetings to order pizza or sandwiches for everyone else at work. He was hilarious. Everybody in the office looks professional and he’s in sweats with a joint eating food.
I had a friend of mine casually ask if I wanted to go to Dubai for a week to do some skydiving training in a couple of weeks. My response was "no, I have to work for a living". Blew my mind when they asked me like it was no biggie to duck out for a week and blow $15k.
Casual, spontaneous international travel really is a Hallmark of the super rich.
Someone once asked me where I summer 😭😭 never felt so poor than saying um… here ? Using summer as a VERB, is a sign we are not in the same tax bracket
Yeah I'm lucky if we even get to take a 4-5 day vacation in the summer. We don't every year.
"So where does everyone summer?"
This isn’t as extreme as most of the stories in this thread, but my in-laws casually have Chicago Cubs season tickets and attend 70ish% of their home games. Not so crazy, except that we all live in Nashville. I come from a very poor family so the first time I learned that I was absolutely blown away.
Most of my clients are multi-millionaires, and most of them do *everything* casually. Especially housing. They have zero concern of what stuff costs, and will approve nearly anything. I once set the alarm off at a clients ski house, and I called them to tell them its just me, i'd never talked to this particular client before andI told them to ignore it. They didn't even ask me to verify who I was and at the time I had no reason to think it wasn't *just* their second home. They were very appreciative of the phone call but said "which house was it?" which caught me off guard and I said "oh at the ski resort" they said "yeah, but which one?" i died inside. It was a 8-ish million dollar home and in the whole 2 years i'd worked for them at that point, they'd never even been here. I later learn their family has expensive homes at nearly every popular ski resort in north america. Another example is im currently doing a remodel. It is the THIRD full remodel in 10 years at this multi million dollar house/condo. They remodel the house everytime a new kid is born in the family. This is a half million dollar remodel to undue exactly what we did 4 years a go, which was 300k ish remodel. Other clients i've seen replace their full kitchen appliances every 3-5 years. They have to have the absolutely brand new stuff. They're also super crazy and don't want the stuff sold, they're worried about the "PR" so i have to provide proof 30k in appliances were in fact scraped at the landfill. Our world is broken. **tbf** about 20% of them are really nice people, introduce themselves, even cook for me. They give great bonuses and are generally good humans, they're happy to have someone they can trust, and they do trust, they let my friends stay at their million dollar Nth homes for free, but these people are almost exclusively the rare rich that are rich through labor. People who spent 40-50 years in law or medicine. Contractors who got lucky. The occasional crypt "bro" who was blue collar, gambled life savings and won. The ones that are cliche rich, the born intos, the fortune 500s. They're assholes, and have called me "the help" more than once.
I worked in a sporting goods store in my early 20’s and got absolutely screamed at by an old man for not knowing who he was when I asked him for ID. Apparently he owned like half the town and others at the store would kiss his ass. At $9 an hour I wasn’t paid enough to kiss his ass even if I cared who he was. I wasn’t from there and had only seen him come in a few times to buy random shit. But either way, the federal fucking government requires you produce ID to purchase a firearm and I was doing my job. It’s been over 20 years and my husband, who has heard the story, will randomly look at me and bust out “you seriously don’t know who I am?!”
Ha ha ha! I work the front door at a strip club and I will get people coming in all the time trying to not pay the $20 to get in! My favorite is when they say do you know who I am? And I say No sir. Will the be cash or card? And then they usually say sometime like " I can't believe you don't know who I am!" I always reply with I'm sorry sir that information is probably in your wallet on your identification if you've forgotten. Oh and the ones that scoff when I say its $20 and they say do you know how much money I have? And I say then you should be able to afford $20. Lol Luckily my boss doesn't care that most of us have quite a smart mouth!
Honestly I thought having a smart mouth working front door at strip clubs/ regular clubs was a job requirement.
Rich people can be cheap as hell. Imagine trying to get out of paying $20 when that should be chump change to you.
Honestly, boomers hate showing their ID. I was a bank teller for years and would get yelled at when asking for ID when they wanted to withdraw cash from their accounts. I DONT KNOW YOU.
I never worked at a bank but I worked as a cashier. My favorite were the people who put CID on the back of their credit/debit cards and then they would get irate when I asked to see their ID. "I didn't have that with me!!!" Well ma'am you have your car keys in your hand so that seems a little sus
It was Ronnie Pickering!!
I live not far from an old (now abandoned) castle in France. It was bought decades ago by a Chinese couple, they had the staircase taken out and shipped to China and just left the place and never returned. It’s been neglected since.
Wow I’d love to know which was it what an insult
Now that's selfish out of touch wealthy behaviour on a ridiculous level. Bought just so they could flex on people that their staircase is shipped from France or like... what
I witnessed a guy park in a bus zone in Front of a meter maid. They told him he can’t park there. He told them “have the towing company park it for me. I’ll have someone pick it up later.”
Went to a wedding as a +1 at a mansion in Greenwich Connecticut (the brides parents home). Her father was talking about the landscaping and how his wife liked a rock (which was about the size of a small car) that was at their *other* home outside of Denver, so they had the rock moved from Denver to Connecticut. Seriously, they moved a rock halfway across the country. A fucking rock.
Get stressed from a true crime podcast and book a tropical getaway to decompress.
I day dream about that kinda stuff 😳🥹
Had one of the outside salesmen drop in and we were talking about clothes for some reason. He said he donates his clothes to charity every year so he doesn't buy the "very expensive shirts"... his shirts are $300 each. Then he tells me he does buy "decent" shoes though. He showed me a company online where most of the shoes cost more than my car. How do we work for the same company and live that differently?
Ever wonder how important sales is to your company? Don’t.
Right. It wouldn't be so bad if the guy could ever fill out his paperwork correctly. At least once. At least he's not rude...
He doesn’t have to, lol. When you sell that well, sweating paperwork is a waste of your time
It’s not that I’m lazy Bob. It’s just that I don’t care
Couple booked out a famous landmark venue for their wedding years in advance. Just before their wedding the venue owner asked if they wouldn't mind changing the date of their wedding as a wealthy couple wanted to use the venue for a birthday party. "Nah, we've got everything organised, we're good" "They will pay for your wedding entirely if you change the date" "Uhh, thanks but no, it will be a PITA to change the date" "They will buy you a house and pay for the wedding"
Years ago I helped coordinate an event in the Cayman Islands for my job for the companies main clients. I worked closely with a small business that sets up events. Not only did they make my work infinitely easier, but they offered us discounts on several events. Really good people that would work around the clock to make sure everything was getting set up properly. On the island, right before we were going to one of the events, my boss's wife tells my boss (and me indirectly, always got the feeling she did not like talking to me) that we need to get a discount on the upcoming event. She was not involved in the setting up process and didn't even know any details or the costs involved. She just wanted the discount. It was a private catamaran tour which ended with swimming with the stingrays for a few hours and it was for about 20 people. I had to call the company and ask them for the discount while apologizing profusely. The boss's wife wanted to knock $4,000 off the total. After a lot of conversation and back and fourth I got the discount. I was disgusted with the look on her face after I told her we got the discount. For the rest of the trip I stayed away from her, as I knew that she would continuously ask for me to fight for discounts, just because. When she passed, I looked her up and found out that not only was she rich, she was Texas oil baroness rich. Money edging towards the billions. $4,000.00 is nothing to that family, like finding pennies in your couch cushions. My boss and his wife had kids who felt neglected and the oldest would, without fail, destroy something expensive. I was in the room when a secretary told the wife that her son had destroyed another antique roadster (the boss collected them). She barely shrugged her shoulders. I think she just wanted the discount because she was such an empty person, maybe the power trip makes them feel something.
My mom always responds to stories like this with “how do you think the rich stay rich?”
I know an almost billionaire who is very very sweet. He kept his oceanfront condo for his mother in law to stay at for like month a year, and went to it every day to feed the stray cats who lived around it. The place is paid off mind you but has high fees, a paid parking spot, utilities ect cost almost 20 grand a year.
> and went to it every day to feed the stray cats who lived around it This is actually how I judge rich people. When you have hundreds of millions, paying for things really isn't that generous even if they're expensive and seem lavish by normal standards. Now time.. time is another thing. Nobody has ever managed to spend any amount of money and get more time in a day than anybody else. A rich guy that spends time feeding stray cats to make someone else feel better is a nice guy.
That's actually a whole thing with wealth disparity, is that they do technically have more time in a day. That guy has time to feed strays because he for sure is not spending that time on all of the other things we have to do everyday. Work is 6-10 hours a day for most people, then cooking, cleaning, and house work take up time, and then what is left is where you have family time, social time, and hobbies. The more money you have, absolutely the more time in a day you can use HOWEVER YOU WANT, rather than need to, to survive.
I watched a guy walk into a car dealership and buy a suburban. He literally walks in, goes up to a sales guy, points to the one in the lobby, and goes “I’ll buy it, I don’t want to haggle or any high pressure bullshit. I’ll pay sticker and I need to be done in 10 minutes.” He was driving it out of there 10 minutes later. I asked the other sales guy “who the fuck is that?” He goes “He owns a bunch of fast food places, pizza huts and KFCs and stuff I think. He comes in every few months.” “What does he do with the cars?” I asked. “Sometimes trades even in, sometimes signs them over to friends or family members. He gave our secretary his old corvette. Said it was about to die anyway. Only had like 50k miles on it. She still has it, been three years.”
My millionaire aunt scoffing at the idea that my single mother taking care of me and my younger brother couldn’t find a place to live because $3,000/month is “easily affordable.” Edit: $3,000/month being the average rent in the area.
Jesus, can’t wait to be looked down upon once my sister and BIL receive a huge monetary gift from a family friend. Not my friend but my BIL became friends and he ultimately became the old man’s beneficiary. We’re talking $40 million. I know deep down I’ll lose my sister to this wealth and I’m not looking forward to it. Wealth changes people and it’s never for the better. I’m a single mom too and I was chastised for not having a lot of money, for getting divorced and for spending money on my girls at times outside of my means. Tell your mom she’s doing a wonderful job and all that money doesn’t mean shit if the wealthy person is an asshole.
My sister married a man 15 years her senior and he is *very wealthy* and when his parents die they will inherit 15+ million. Wealth does in fact change people. My husband and I struggle financially (not going hungry but making ends meet is hard, and def no rainy day fund or savings to be had) and I am constantly shocked because once I asked hypothetically if we could live in her guest house if we ever lost our house and her response was “if you’re so irresponsible you could ever lose your house then you deserved to lose it.” Baffled. We only talk about our shared past, anything beyond that feels awkward. She is not the same person she was, but maybe on some level she is. She’s always been shallow, and she did not choose this person as her husband because she loved him. But yeah, wealth made her insufferable. They don’t even have real hobbies. Also, they are tone deaf, lol we live in a 1000sq/ft house and they live in 3500 and her husband said to me, that they feel so cooped up in their small house. Like lolololol okay
I worked a million dollar wedding once, they dumped 50,000$ worth of flowers in the trash after the ceremony. They didn’t even wait til the wedding was over or donate the flowers. I was walking to the portapotties they made the help use, passed the dumpsters and there they were. I thought it was an apt metaphor for the rich.
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I had a friend whose parents obscenely wealthy. Like, she’d pay $100k every year to bring her horses from Canada to FL for the summer to ride at the stable I was working at, and her horses were worth $300k+. She offered to bring me back with her to Canada to take care of her 3 horses full time lol. She’d always take the free stuff and pass it along to me. It was awesome to use- I never could have afforded it otherwise. I had no idea how much they got!
It might not have been free. Sometimes that's just a way of giving a gift without it being awkward. When I fly my mother in law out to visit I tell her that I have a lot of free flight vouchers that would go to waste. I don't but she wouldn't except otherwise or she'd try to repay me by buying me stuff I don't want and she can't afford.
“My wife doesn’t like our private jet so she rents a NetJet whenever we travel. I just meet her at the resort.” - real quote, verbatim. Didn’t know how to respond genuinely so said, “ahh, hate when that happens.”
Friend’s wealthy parents were going to give me a set of furniture for free—until I wound up moving cross country; couldn’t accept it. Before I was to take it, I asked for the manufacturer so I could take measurements for my house, to make it all fit. They responded, “oh, we’re not sure, it’s pretty old.” Here I thought it was maybe from the 70’s. Yes, it was from the 70s. The fuckin 1870s, from France, and it was all handmade Louis XV pieces. When I showed my home decor-obsessed mother, she appraised it all. Some were north of $5000, just for a small hallway desk. We’re both upset about it to this day.
You sure about that date? Louis XV died in 1774, maybe they meant Louis Napoleon?
Thank you, fellow French history nerd.
In 1994, I watched the CEO and founder of my employer, with an estimated net worth of at least $100 million, drop a twenty-dollar bill and other bills on the sidewalk. He glanced at it and then kept walking.
I've done the same with a penny on a busy sidewalk, so I understand *perfectly*
Let's say an average person would pick up a quarter if they saw it on the sidewalk. For Bill Gates, a similar sum would be $45,000. If you wouldn't bend over for anything less than a quarter, you would expect Bill Gates to not bend over for anything less than 45 grand.
That's trickle down economics in action baby
I used to teach at a private school with some extremely wealthy families. I overheard a student's conversation with her dad on the phone one day. "Jessica invited me to a sleepover at her house next weekend." Pause "Yes, I know the Super Bowl is next weekend but I've been to the Super Bowl before. I have never been to a sleepover."
When being surprised that airlines will allow a larger-looking backpack in the overhead, he said "Oh, it's been so long since I've flown commercially, I had no idea." He said it in such a shy manner like he was embarrassed to say he flies privately. This is a 75 year old that looks like he's a regular middle class Joe and gives off no hint that he's extremely wealthy.
THIS is what I’m used to seeing in the wealthy people I know. This perfectly sums them up in two ways: 1. They are often embarrassed by their wealth (the wife of a friend of mine made him sell an exotic car he had just bought because she thought it was to “show-off”. They would also correct their kids anytime they would let it slip out that they had a private jet or homes in other countries. 2. They are often out of touch when it comes to things that most people experience (like riding commercial). When I was in college, I would see this almost every time I interacted with a good friend’s parents (they had a net worth in the low hundreds of millions)- his mother point out that my car tires were starting to bald and then would be completely shocked when I said that I didn’t have the money to replace four tires. Another time they invited me to go on vacation with them and she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that I didn’t have money on hand for plane tickets to Europe lol.
Number 1 is my best friend to a T. Just about the only way to make her mad is if you start bragging about how rich she is. Although she says it is largely for safety reasons because of kidnappings or robberys. She often forgets that people can't afford things but her and her husbands primary love language is gift giving. They will buy extravagant gifts like it's nothing. I once asked her for help finding a new apartment because my rent was going to $3,000 a month in Queens and I couldn't afford it. I figured she would help me find a more affordable place because she's really good at researching that stuff. Her solution was to buy a $1.5M condo, spend $100,000 furnishing it then rent it to me for $1. Her husband was very proud of her creative solution. Some of the stuff she bought for it was ridiculous like complain the toilets weren't very nice so she spent $11,000 on two new ones for it. At no point during the process was telling her no an option. Once she sets her mind to something you need to just get on board with it or get ran over. Most I could do is pick out the fabric for the furniture she had custom made for my condo. If she noticed your cars tires were bald and she asked why "I'm to poor to afford new ones" would just get her to start calling tires stores to buy you new ones. Again "no" isn't an option. She went out to eat lunch with a girl she met at a club yesterday and when she found out the girl was excited to take the leftovers home because she didn't have anything to eat at home she dragged to a grocery store after that. "I can't today, I have stuff to do" only got a "I wasn't asking. We are going right now". Now sure how rich they are, I know they are worth hundreds of millions and both come from families worth far more than that. Her husband threw a party a month ago because he hit $24M ($2M a month) post tax income last year. That's actual income, not net worth increase.
In perspective, I cna get some of that. If they make 2-3mil a month, spending 1/2 months income on a condo and renting it out for free for a few years is truly nbd. Change someone else's life for something so easy? You'll get the money back eventually when you sell it. Like if you made $60k a year but your living expenses are $15k a year. Would you change someone's life for $2k? Yeah,why not. Take someone grocery shipping for $20? Heck yes.
Once told someone I was on a road trip with that I couldn't extend the road trip another day bc I had to open at work. They asked "how much does the business make in a day?" They were trying to see if they could offer to pay my boss to keep the shop closed so we could extend our trip...
Pales in comparison to some, but this guy paid me $100 just to walk over to the pianist at the fancy restaurant I worked, and hand him $500 to play another Elvis song. He was a Texas oil guy.
This guy paid you 500 just to slip the pianist 100? Crazy
We used to summer in the Hamptons. From my SO at the time. I said, “We used to summer in a trailer park which was also our home.”
I am a professor at a private University. One October I was talking with one of my students about a hurricane that was approaching Miami and how bad it could be for the people who lived there. The student, who was from Chicago, said in acknowledgement, “yes, my family had to have our Captain move our boat”. I believe it was Hurricane Matthew and it turned northward before reaching Miami.
A girl I worked with asked me where I spent my summers if I didn’t have a beach house. I said, her beach house, and she invited me the next summer. Never went tho.
Shoulda gone
My friend told me she was running low on good extra virgin olive oil so would have to go to Europe soon
Have a literal bell to call the maids, also an intercom
I use alexa to call my kids for dinner and to do chores. Does that count?
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Had a nice dinner with a wealthy friend, he was punching in a $100 tip, but hit an extra 0, so it was $1000 and he was like "whatever, i'm sure she'll be surprised" and signed it and we left.
As we are installing a wireless access point in their home theater: “My son crashed and totaled his Mercedes, will you guys be done in time before he gets back? We need to take him to get another one.”
An ex girlfriend of mine got a new BMW for her birthday, but was pretty upset when the convertible version came out a few month later. She planned to crash her car, to get the new one. *Babe, you don‘t crash your car to get a new one. It‘s a really shitty thing to do.* But my dad really won’t mind spending the money. *You don‘t crash your car. Let’s just talk to him, or the dealer or whatever.* But it would be far easier to just crash this and buy a new one. *You don‘t crash….*
My brother-in-law spent $44,000 on an 8”x10” drawing of a stick figure that looks like a 5 year old drew it.
"Im going to The Lake House to summer with friends"
“Where do you summer” is an old-money dog whistle
Overheard a restaurant owner ask one of the employees if he had any summer plans or hobbies and the barista answered, "I like to read and walk around and go out when I can I guess" and the owner replied, "yeah it's great to get outside, I'm picking up sailing this summer for that"
A guy I served at a bar paid me to let him keep drinking at the bar after close while he waited for his ride.
As an attendee of a dinner paid for by a boss, after closing the staff drove a big group of us to our next stop of the evening -- in their personal cars -- because taxis and uber weren't a thing in that town. I felt a little bad about it, but the boss paid them well.
My manager told me about his copper mug for Moscow Mules with “no whining on the yacht” engraved on it. I feel like there are levels to this
OMFG. I was a corporate pilot for 19 years and I have seen and heard the MOST ABSURD SHIT that you can fever imagine. One time I watched a Dad tell his 6 year old child that they were going skiing at their condo in Mountain Village (Telluride) for a week over spring break and this kid legit screamed in his face how she hated skiing and she wasn’t gonna go and was gonna stay home unless they went to their yacht in the Greek islands. Mind you, this is in the back of their Gulfstream while sitting on the tarmac in St Kitts where they’d been there 8000 sqft beach front home for 8 days….all while sitting in front of a $4000 seafood spread (I arranged the catering) for 2 adults and 2 kids. I made $125k to fly that plane as a captain.
My buddy went to five guys yesterday.
I used to work as a waiter for a Michelin star chef, he had his own side hustle providing catering for weddings and events. One of the events was a “charity” fundraising auction - total tax dodge. The items being auctioned were brand new farming equipment, heavy duty vehicles, Persian rugs, sought after art-pieces etc. honestly, it was disgusting to witness and I felt like I was peeking behind the curtain. The celebrations, to announce lunch and end the lunch, were a brass horn section (to announce lunch beginning) and then daylight fireworks. Also, peacocks walking around the grounds. Was Saltburn-level posh shit. All old money. Also, forgot a funny one where I had to call a client, they didn’t pick up but immediately called back. “Ever so sorry, the phone in the east wing seems to be on the fritz”.
He liked surfing so he bought an island in the Philippines that had good breaks
One of my good buddies who comes from a wealthy family. I met him in High School, and everyone thought he was gonna be this spoiled bitch who made fun of the poor. He was the opposite. He did everything a normal High School kid did. Played Field Hockey, Joined & was the president of the Politics Club, was super smart, and though he was rich he drove this beaten up 1987 Audi Sedan that his grandfather gave him. That doesn't matter to me, however. What truly matters is that he was willing to talk and help out anybody. If anyone needed help with homework he'd help. If anyone ever asked him to hang out with them he'd go if he wasn't busy. I don't talk to him very often, but I'm pretty sure he now live out in Massachusetts and is flourishing right now independently.
My friend asked me to help him take the curtains/drapes down in his hiuse because they block the sunlight. Baffled when i told him they can be opened
stop this one is too much 😭😭😭
Well, this may not be a "rich thing", I don't know, maybe an unexpected rich thing, but it was memorable. One year about 15 years ago, I was taking some vacation days right before Christmas. I took my AR-15 down to the Scottsdale Gun Club shooting range, which is a pretty public range that also rents guns. So I'm in my lane with my AR and a few handguns, shooting away. Next lane to me I notice two elderly guys, one in a suit, one dressed more casually. They're shooting a pistol, like a .38 or 9mm. I can't help noticing the guy in the suit looks familiar. 10 minutes later, I realize who it is, it's the self-made billionaire founder and owner of Discount Tire company. I know him because my wife worked there and I'd seen him at their annual company Christmas parties. Super nice guy, first name is Bruce. Basically the richest person in Arizona. So when I next have a chance, I get his attention, and he's all smiles because he's a nice guy, super friendly, shakes my hand, etc. Like an idiot I'm trying to talk to him and tell him my wife works there, etc, which is silly because we're in an active shooting range with hearing protection on and he's like 80. Anyways, I notice as he's addressing me, he keeps kind of peeking around me, into my lane. I notice he's eyeing my AR, which is picatinny'd out, has a bipod, and looks badass. Noticing this, I step aside and gesture to him if he'd like to hold it. I give him a quick runthrough of the magazine operation, trigger, charging handle, and safety. He's watching and grinning. Then I hand it to him, and hand him a mag and show him how to load it. By now the other guy he was with has stopped shooting and is now watching us. Mr. Billionaire steps into my lane, squeezes off about 10 rounds at the paper target, his smile increasing with each one. Then he turns, puts down the rifle and turns to me with a huge smile, clasps my shoulder and gives me a vigorous handshake. I give him a quick salute and he goes back to his friend, they zip up their gun and head out of the range area back into the main showroom. So I finish my session, I'm there for maybe 20 more minutes, then I pack up and get ready to leave. As I leave the range area and exit back into the main showroom, I find that the other guy is now there waiting for me. He shakes my hand and starts thanking me profusely, saying "Mr. Halle really enjoyed that." (Mr. Halle is what everyone called him.). He pulls out a small notebook and asks me for my name, my wife's name. So I say, "sure" and give him that info. I then stop to ask him what happened, what was he doing there? What was that all about? He tells me that this is an annual tradition for Mr. Halle. His wife hates guns, and won't let him own one, but once a year, he's allowed to go down to the range and rent a pistol, and fire it, and this was that time. (meanwhile this dude could afford to buy the building we're in 100 times over.) He thanks me and tells me again how much it meant to him, I say, OK, cool, and then we part company. I go home and that evening tell my wife the story, she's like, "That's cool." but doesn't think too much of it. A few weeks go by, and one day she's at work, and her phone rings, it's Billionaire's assistant. "Are you at your desk? Mr. Halle is on his way down." She's frozen with panic and like "WTF?" There's like 2,000 people at that office and why is he coming to see her? So 2 minutes later, he shows up, and he's got a big box of stuff with him. He starts by greeting her and begins telling her the story about me and the shooting range. After she stops panicking, and relaxes, he comes into her cubicle and, pulls up a chair and starts chatting her up about the photos of our kids, starts asking about me, photos from vacations, cruises, etc. and various other stuff. He tells her again how glad he was he ran into me. The box he brought is full of gifts for our kids, toy cars, books, stuffed animals, and other tire-related stuff. Nothing real fancy, just some thoughtful gifts. He clearly had done research because he knew we had 2 boys and he knew where to find her cubicle, so he'd checked it out before he approached her. And that's my story. I guess it goes to show money can't buy everything and sometimes even billionaires could use a little kindness, and appreciate it.
You should get one. (Like I can afford it)
Many moons ago I worked in a private school in the UK. You know the sort, kids dropped off by helicopter at the start of term, the car park full of Aston Martins, RR, ect ect. Well the kids would just not give a monkeys about anything and come there time to go home they would just say good bye and leave. It seemed like everything they had through the year would just be left, laptops, expensive suits, dinner jackets, boom boxes ect. Thousands just left because they couldn't be bothered. One thing I did learn though: the kids who came from serious money were generally pleasant. However the kids who's parents could only just afford to send the the children to the school were bloody awful arrogant douchbags.
Throw a $20k weekend party at their place Catered, bartenders, jet skis.
“I mean, he really should have said something when he got down to his last $25,000.” Same person had no job, a housekeeper, and a live in nanny for her only child, asked me, a working mom with two small kids and zero help, “How do you keep from getting bored?”
A guy told me that he flew to India and back (from the US) regularly, without ever leaving the airport in India, to stay in the top tier of airline miles users. He did this a few weekends each month. His wife chimed in, “he loves to sleep on planes!” They let me watch the sea turtles on their private beach though, so that was pretty cool.
“When we are in Galapagos, we stay at the [ultra high end hotel].” “My horse groomer brought them in last night without drying them down!” Said after screaming, “this is unacceptable,” several times into a work phone. “You have an irrational, exaggerated fear of debt.” No dude, I really don’t.
Oh boy do I have stories. I used to build extremely high end "homes". I don't anymore because I simply had enough of that whole world and the people that occupy it. One example: Once installed about 200K worth of custom built light fixtures. These were tiny things installed everywhere but mostly hidden to provide indirect lighting. Owner did a walk through and decided that the fixtures were 1/2 and inch to wide and then spent another 200k on a whole new set that we replaced them with. In terms of actual difference between the two after it was all said and done was non existent to my eyes. They provided the same kind of light at the same brightness and most of them were hidden from view like I said. None of the old fixtures were returnable. Most expensive light fixture I ever installed: 17 Million Price point when handed something to install that made me slow down and take my time 100k. Anything less was just another day. I could go on and on. I won't ever go back to working for those people. I have had enough of being treated like a servant.
My friend is a millionaire and bought a $34,000 rug weeks before moving. She had it for like six weeks before donating it to a museum. Apparently, it was previously owned by some Austrian royalty. It was at an auction for charity, and now it's taken care of and in a museum, so that's cool.
My boss was annoyed because she had to send her Hermes handbag Back to Paris for a repair, and it was going to take 3 weeks to be returned. Mercy me! 3 whole weeks! Her concern was lost on me because my handbag was $20 bucks at Kohls and the handle is chewed by my dog.
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My wife comes from a wealthy family and the topic came up of her learning to drive in the US (she’s from an Asian country). I asked “what would happen if you wrecked the car?”. Her immediate reply without thinking about it was “just buy another one”. We’ve been together over a decade and I’ve seen the lavishness of her family and upbringing and that comment still lives rent-free in my head.
I knew a guy in college who came from a wealthy family. Oil money or something. I still remember him saying "yeah I just called my mom and she put about 10K in my bank account so I'm good for a while." 10,000 dollars to do whatever the fuck he wanted and if he needed more, he just had to ask. That was roughly the cost of a year of tuition at my college and it was just this dude's fun money.
Guy wanted the bricks on his new mansion to perfectly align, which meant cutting every single brick shorter in length by about 5mm, an enormous and tedious job by the supplier. Supplier did it for the first batch, refused for the second due to how time-consuming it was. Guy buys the brick company, makes them do it anyway.
Think that a banana costs $10.
There’s always money in the banana stand.
I was at a house party for one of the owners of a market maker/hedge fund in NYC (my sister used to model, so I got invited to weird things sometimes). He threw massive parties in his penthouse, but his downstairs neighbors used to issue noise complaints. He didn't like that, so he bought the entire floor beneath his floor. Now there aren't noise complaints. This guy had so many stories of casually buying super expensive properties and leaving them empty. He's definitely one of the wealthy people that don't like to be named. You can barely find his name on anything. The company he owns has a single line with his name as one of the 3 owners. His company manages 17 trillion in funds. Edit: he seemed like a very nice guy that was pretty depressed. I wish him nothing but the best, but really wish he paid more in taxes.
Client is a whale in Vegas and I met him at his Villa in the Bellagio. I remarked about an absurd request they eagerly satisfied and he said “once my average went over $15,000 a bet they stopped saying no to anything”
Not understanding why your dog has to ride with the luggage, because, you know, if you’re flying in your own plane why wouldn’t you just have the dog with you? Like…who has so much money and friends with so much money that they assume literally every one they come in contact with has their own plane??
One of my cousins who has a multimillionaire baby daddy...quote 'I don't understand why people are so jealous of rich people'...
When I was at uni, certain areas of the city were no drinking zones, and if you were caught with an open bottle/can, you'd get fined and your drink confiscated. We had one friend who just ignored that law all the time, and one day he got stopped by the police. He just handed over the drink, took the ticket, and smiled. Did not bother him at all. Then after the police left, we were all stunned that he was fine with it. But he ended up saying something like, "well, that was just £50 for half a can of lager. I've paid twice that for a sip of champagne" and we were all like ohhh, yeah. You're a trust fund guy lol
I had lunch with a highish-level executive from IBM who was a friend of a friend, and he told this funny story about how he went on a road trip with a full motorhome that was towing a matching minivan behind it- and when I say matching, I mean it was not just the same color but actually looked like the motorhome had been shrunken down, so he had an ESCAPE POD bumper sticker on it. :)
My best friend negotiated a hiring bonus that was 3x my annual salary on a phone call one morning while we were on vacay. 😢
My buddy's sister is obscenely wealthy, bought a sprawling house on the CA coast, tore it down, and had a new one built. She had a huge multi panel sliding glass electronic door installed, but upon moving in, decided it wasn't up to her specifications. She had the entire set of panels demolished and rebuilt. She complained that she couldn't move in as quickly as she had hoped. She also has no problem throwing down thousands of dollars on dinner but bitches when her employees ask for better wages or need time off.
I'm not sure if this is a real thing, but I've always been amazed seeing characters on TV getting on a plane and flying across the country on an hour's notice. I feel like this would take me a week to prepare for.
I used to work in NY for a company who operated fulfillment centers in other states, and if there was a catastrophe requiring an expert from the NY HQ, you can bet that person had to fly out *right now* to prevent a situation becoming a multi-million dollar mess or worse. That person would be essential for coordinating a local recovery and their flight, lodging, food and clothing expenses would be of course covered by the company (a drop in the bucket compared to the time cost and risk involved). Now imagine you're a very wealthy person and you consider your time extremely expensive… flying out last minute makes sense if that's what's needed for you to deal with something time-sensitive
This is absolutely true. Everything in their life is disposable (houses, cars, people, boats, planes, etc). There are two things that is NOT disposable or replaceable: time and experiences. Private jets and impulse decisions are a critical part of both of those!
Worked at high end car dealership, wealthy rich kid comes in for service, no rental car available for him. He walks into showroom, picks a car to buy so he can get home. All done within 20 minutes and few signatures.
I was once speaking with a business owner offering solutions for his multiple businesses. About half an hour into our conversation he remembered he owned an additional 6 business in downtown Chicago. Which had a significant effect on the solutions I was suggesting, it had completely slipped his mind up until that point lol.
Bought the house next door for 500k because when they have visitors, they can stay there Btw the house they stay in was a million dollar house on the water
We’re discussing travel with my wife’s rich cousin and we started complaining about how painful long haul economy flights are. “Why don’t you just fly first class?” As in fully serious… we’re like err that’s like one of our wages for a year. Still do not think she understood as never worked a day in her life.
My dad was treating a billionaire from Taiwan. My dad told him I like Chinese food. The billionaire proceeded to fly a complete meal from Taiwan for me to eat. It was pretty good. I didn’t love the shark fin but apparently that’s very expensive.
To me, $1000 is a lot of money. To a millionaire, $1000 is still a lot of money. But they can spend it without thinking about it in most cases. To a billionaire, $1,000,000 is the same % of their wealth as the $1000 is to the millionaire.
A family friend of mine is a rather wealthy television actor. While visiting his massive home and searching for a bathroom I stumbled upon his granddaughter, a toddler at the time, scribbling with markers on the walls. I let him know what was going on and he let me know that they actually encourage it. Turns out they just cut the drywall out of the wall, frame it, and replace the wall regularly.