Times are tough right now, and for many people, it's hard to know where the money for groceries and bills is going to come from.
But for a limited few, money is truly no object, and it's crazy to realize what they spend money on as a matter of convenience rather than necessity.
Curious, Redditor animetroy asked:
"What are some things that the ultra-wealthy do that the average person couldn't even dream of?"
The Ability To Swap Expenses
"Some ultra-rich people will buy a house for the children to live in while studying at university and then sell the house when the child finishes university, and the appreciation on the house will be used to pay the debt of the university."
- busyhat5
"Yup. I had some friends whose parents bought them a four-bedroom house for undergrad so they'd each have a roommate for the 'experience.'"
"Then they bought them an apartment building in DC for grad and law school so they'd have 'experience managing properties' for their real life."
"Their house cleaners were super nice and understanding about the aftermath of the parties."
- WesbroBptstBarNGril
One For Every Occasion
"Buy multiple homes across different continents."
"Buy ridiculously lengthy yachts/ships but also have them docked in a different continent/planet for their holidays."
- Sea-Shop1219
"One of my good friends is in wealth management and a large part of her team's responsibilities is figuring out just how much taxes wealthy individuals owe to all the different taxing entities where they happen to have property and/or business interests. Her entire office (about 30 people) has a grand total of four clients. And they're busy all year."
- col_buendia
Treat The Seasons Like Verbs
"Oh, to be able to use the seasons as verbs. 'Oh, we winter in the Alps, and then we summer in the Maldives,' etc."
- HiThisIsMichael
"I do that all the time. 'I fall down the stairs after I've been drinking.'"
- SayNoToStim
"Me too! 'I spring out of bed every morning.' Don't get too jealous now!"
- ClarkyCat97
No Need To Worry
"Never worry about money."
"I know it sounds obvious, but I find that everything in my life hinges around the question of 'Can I afford it?'"
"Socializing, renting (or buying, if you're lucky) a house, paying the bills, going on holiday, having a kid, etc. The first question, every time, 'How do I afford to do this?'"
"Not having that constantly nagging at you must be the most amazing feeling."
- TranslatesToScottish
Custom... Everything
"My mom used to work as a housekeeper for an older, very wealthy lady in Manhattan. We're talking new worth $150 million."
"Her cat had a custom-made crystal bowl with Swarovski crystals that cost over $4K."
"Her cat would have its food prepped by a chef. No store-bought food."
"She had her bedsheets laundered every week and replaced every four weeks with new ones. Those were some pricy high-end sheets, too. She made sure the old ones were destroyed/torn up so that none of the servants/housekeepers would take them."
"Even though everything she needed was within a five-minute walk (she wasn't bedridden and in good enough physical shape to move about freely), she was chauffeured everywhere. In a Rolls Royce."
"She went out of the country on trips four to six times per year. Mostly Europe, for two weeks at a time."
"She had private homes in upstate NY, Florida, California, Arizona, Florence (Italy), and Sao Paulo (Brazil). I think there was another one in San Pedro (Spain) or somewhere in that area."
"She had around a few million dollars worth of jewelry. Necklaces and brooches. She never wore earrings."
"Pretty much all her clothing was custom-made."
- Qimmosabe_Man
"This is the part that grinds my gears. God for-f**king-bid the lowly peasant staff gets some nice sheets when she's done with them after four godd**n weeks."
"This is a level of selfishness that goes beyond the word. Literally destroying something still functional/useful when you're done with it, is like something a petulant child does. 'If I can't play with that toy, neither can you!'"
- beefjerky9
"S**t, if you didn't want it going to your staff, at least donate it to somewhere that could use it!"
- Charlie_Brodie
Where Dreams Come True
"Having a personal chef. Many regular people may have a weekly cleaner or something like that, but a personal chef is something normal people couldn't dream of. Imagine having restaurant-quality food prepared and cleaned away for you daily."
"Private health care. In the UK at least private health care is obviously a different league to the NHS, which most people will access and be familiar with. The idea of getting seen very quickly is sadly alien to a lot of people."
"A lot of rich people are asset-rich, so it's not necessarily showy or extravagant. I think there must be a great deal of comfort that no matter what happens you have a huge safety net."
"The joys of compound interest. Being able to have a passive income from savings and investments. They always say the first 100k is the hardest. Once you have that things only get easier from a savings perspective because it just starts generating its own wealth."
"If we're talking crazy money then a private jet or helicopter would be life-changing and hard to imagine. Like, 'Hi honey, I'm just flying off to the caribbean, want to come?'"
- worksucksbro
Benevolence Or Cruelty
"Being so generous that you can turn the life of another person inside out. I think that this is the ultimate omnipotence desire."
- logosfabula
"They can also destroy the life of another person:"
"By depriving them of their income and asserting that the plaintiff will have been bankrupt before the lawsuit finds in favor, or by filing a series of lawsuits in jurisdictions where the cost of lawyers is enough to bankrupt a regular person."
- Defiant-Traffic5801
"I could use a benevolent billionaire right now. It's been a bad year for me."
- Mental_Medium3988
"After a bad day in Vegas, I asked a guy in a cafe who was talking about his winning streak if he'd pay for my lemonade, and he did, and it was one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for me, and I'll remember it forever."
- COCAFLO
Having Access To All The Right Things
"I think it’s important to differentiate millionaire earners like plastic surgeons from true ultra-wealthy 0.01% billionaires."
"Seems like a differentiator for the ultra-wealthy is Access. If Beyoncé is coming it town, ultra-wealthy people don’t go through Ticketmaster, they have someone call the owner of the venue or Beyoncé’s manager directly and get tickets."
"Pothole in the road near your house? Don’t need to complain to your county rep, they have someone call the mayor/governor’s office directly."
- JK_NC
"I've worked for regular wealthy clients who had this kind of access, though. I built a second-floor deck on a regular-a** two million dollar home, and then a hydro inspector came and told me it was too close to the hydro pole."
"The client came out, and when I told him what was happening, he said, 'Hang on, I'll make a call,' and then he came back out and handed me the phone with the VP of the hydro company."
"This guy did not give a f**k about inspections and said impatiently, 'Yeah, what do you want from me?'"
"I was like, 'Uh, the inspector is telling me the deck is too close to the hydro pole,' and he said, 'OK, can we move the pole?'"
"Less than a week later the pole was in a different spot. Sometimes... it's not about billions of dollars. It's just about access."
- HeadFund
"If you asked an average person how they would resolve that same problem with access to a billion dollars, all their solutions would be poor people solutions requiring paying for a fix and not even considering connections and access."
"What a great example. Perfectly illustrates a situation where the ultra-wealthy have a completely different worldview."
- JK_NC
Living The Life
"Buy a mansion. Rip it down and build a new mansion with a slightly different layout."
"I'm in $10m+ homes all the time. The carriage house or groundskeeper's house are nicer than mine."
- Ate_spoke_bea
"How does one break into the 'being a live onsite groundskeeper for an Uber wealthy family that is absent from the property most of the year' racket?"
"Because that seems like a great job for 90% of the year."
- skrilledcheese
"I know a guy who is this, actually gets to fly on the owner’s private jet to check on his other properties as well. When his wife retired the owner hired her as well to pre-condition the houses when he travels. So now if the owner is going to the house in Cabo, the husband and wife will fly (usually private) there a week or so early, make sure the house is perfect, groceries are stocked, car is clean and gassed etc, and then fly out before the owner arrives with their guests."
"The owner has about 8 places. Husband and wife are basically on a never-ending work vacation. The catch, when a project is underway they work hard to make sure everything is moving forward and with that many properties there’s usually one big project a year where these two are full-time project managers and one of them will then be off to take care of the other properties."
"How’d he get the job, he used to wash cars and got to know the owner pretty well to the point the owner had him taking care of all his cars (a few kids at home at the time, so lots of cars) and then he casually started with managing some landscaping project and it kind of grew from there. The owner is a near billionaire and super nice (that’s how I know the story, the owner is my friend) and it’s really turned into a great situation for everyone."
- PolybiusChampion
Just There For The Coffee Scene
"I had the (dis)pleasure of working with royalty once."
"One standout was how he had employed a coffee guy, whose job was just to be driven to a nearby Cafe and come back to hand over a cup of coffee in the morning."
"That's it. Nothing else, the coffee guy would just laze around the mansion for the rest of the day until the next morning again. I really wonder how much he got paid for that."
- KoosPetoors
"He didn't even drive himself? That's insane."
- DapperdanUEM
"Nope, there were BODYGUARDS to drive the guy. He just had to order, not spill, and deliver hot coffee."
- KoosPetoors
The Super Yacht Life
"A crew on a super yacht lived on the boat. The owner often wouldn’t give notice before showing up, but would demand fresh lobster every morning if he did, so the crew prepared fresh lobster every day of the year in case he happened to show up."
- dring157
"God D**N it, I'm SICK of eating FRESH LOBSTER on this f**king super yacht!' - probably me after a month."
- Askmeaboutmy_Beergut
"It's true as f**k. I was a yacht chef, and just sitting around waiting is so lame. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world (and I was, but I had to stay on the boat), but after a couple of months, you start to go nuts from boredom."
- justcougit
When In Doubt, Bring Fruit
"I used to work at a high-end casino. My favorite story that paints this picture: in the ultra-high roller area of the casino, there had been reports that bags of fruit had started showing up in the women's bathrooms. Really strange."
"So they checked the cameras and found that some regulars, a pair of older Asian women who were big spenders ($50k+ / week), had been taking the fruit in there with them. One of the floor managers went and very discreetly asked them why they were leaving fruit in the bathroom."
"They responded that there was an unlucky spirit in there, and that every time they'd go to that bathroom and didn't appease the spirit with offerings of fruit, they had terrible luck at Baccarat."
"So, did the manager ask them to stop? Use another bathroom maybe?"
"Absolutely not. The chance of offending them and losing business was too expensive."
"So instead, the casino HIRED AN EXORCIST to perform an exorcism on the bathroom to banish the bad spirit and have the two ladies feel comfortable enough to stop leaving fruit there."
- Digital_Pink
"Instead of hiring an exorcist, I would have just said, 'Cool, free fruit!'"
- ChiefStrongbones
Forget About Basic Chores
"Never wash clothes. Not only do you not have to wash your clothes because someone else can do it for you, but you never have to wear the same clothing twice. Just get a new shirt every day. You don't go to the store, you have a body double (a person with the same type of body and size as yourself) go and shop for you. The clothes are put into your wardrobe by them."
"Never shop for groceries. Someone restocks your fridge daily. You basically have a fully stocked shop in your gigantic kitchen. But you're nit gonna cook anyway since you have a professional chef on duty 24/7."
"Never clean. Never fix anything on the house or car etc. You never need to do any chores ever. Other people do it for you. They can even raise your kids for you."
- StunningWash5906
Time Is Money
"They wake up richer. (interest on a principle... compounding... not just a couple of dollars but instead think a salary's worth of added interest)"
"The act of sleeping/just existing and waiting is a net positive for the ultra-rich."
"Time is quite literally on their side."
- buttermelonMilkjam
Not The Happiest Experience
"I was the right hand to a Bay Area billionaire for a few years. Here are a few things that stood out:"
"1. The head designer/jeweler of LVMH was staying at his $70 million house. He was there to show him his latest custom jewelry pieces. Many of the pieces he designed for his wife were on loan to the Louvre."
"2. He had a special boat to cut through the bay to reach the Oracle Arena for his courtside Warriors season ticket seats, avoiding the traffic."
"3. His personal chef had worked at two three-Michelin-star restaurants before he hired her."
"4. His butler would hide behind a wall, visible only to him throughout the dinner, to attend to his every need immediately without a word."
"5. He never wore belts because his clothes had no belt loops, as they were all perfectly tailored to him."
"6. To escape the city on weekends, he bought a 40-acre vineyard in the heart of Napa, California."
"7. Most of his wine was $1,000 to $3,000 a bottle, and a lot would be left in the glass. We had plenty of liquor ranging from $20,000 to $40,000 a bottle. Some crazy stuff."
"8. He owned five houses in California, totaling over $250 million, and when he moved to Miami, he bought two houses, each for around $50 million. The art, the details, the furniture were insane. I recall a room covered in leather with ivory inlays, crafted by descendants of those who worked on the Palace of Versailles. The bar resembled a swanky New York bar, and the entire room was hand-carved in Morocco before being reassembled in the US."
"I could go on and on with countless other examples, and to be honest, he wasn’t even that happy."
- BlueRa1n
"There is an aphorism that goes, 'You can't get enough of what you don't really need.'"
- paracog
It's so interesting to think about how money basically makes more money once a person has enough of it.
It's even more wild to think about all of the eccentric things a person might purchase, even on a recurring basis, when they feel like money is no object.
@consequence/X
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
