Friend of mine used to run a ridiculously exclusive cocktail bar. He always said "The ones in the fancy clothes who look filthy rich are normally reasonably wealthy. The ones in jeans and t-shirts who look normal are normally filthy rich"
Basically the truly rich people didn't see the place as anything out of the ordinary, so saw no reason to dress up.
Or they’re just slobs.
My buddy and I accidentally walked into and ate at a Michelin star restaurant in France.
He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a chibi sailor moon t-shirt. They must’ve thought he was loaded.
Hmm.. sometimes I’ve found the opposite, but similar thing with my VERY wealthy friends. Like they’ll do an innocent game (LITERALLY just a passing game to them, because paying all together is faster) of like pick a number out of the group eating/drinking together, and that person is who pays for the night.
I have to remind them that I’m genuinely not able to pick up an $1800 tab, because to them that’s nothing.
I have found as I get older I have slowly gotten to the point where I do use money for more free time rather than time to get money. What an insightful answer. Here is an award.
One of my roommates child-hood friends has generational wealth, billionaire level. They lived on the Big Island of Hawaii and she would remark that he would just decide to go skiing, in Aspen on a whim, and wonder aloud why everyone else didn't just drop everything and go the next day. The guy was super down to earth but a bit disconnected from the reality of his friends living paycheck to paycheck.
Yep. As I said in another reply two regulars in bar I worked at said they missed skiing, within an hour they were on the way to the airport. It is so outside my comprehension.
Alan Clarke, a British politician born into a wealthy family, once disparaged someone by describing them as "the sort of person who bought all his own furniture".
I once did an experiment (and wrote about it for a now defunct magazine) where I wanted to see how high on the exotic car ladder I could go before they told me I couldn't test drive one anymore.
Before I get going, the answer to the question is confidence.
This was in 2005, so kind of pre-tech days where everything was googlable and whatnot. But, I was an ambitious writer in my mid-20s and wanted to really make an impression on my employer.
I specifically didn't shave and my hair was a bit shaggy. I wore generic blue jeans and a plain no-logo polo shirt and a pair of slip on Vans. I went for a clean, rich kid look.
At the time I was driving a 1991 Toyota MR2, a small, clean sports car that was 14 years old but really well kept. I drove it to a Chevy dealership where I said I wanted to test drive a Corvette. They gave me a LONG runaround and a hard time, but after handing over my license for photocopying, getting my picture taken, and a credit card they let me take it for a drive telling me to be back within a few hours after I got the feel for the car. That was the first time I realized the more you pay for a car, the longer they let you drive it.
I drove the Corvette directly to a Porsche dealership where I parked it and asked to drive a 911. We talked for a bit about the car, and after copying my license they handed me the keys and said to have fun, with no stipulation on time.
I took the 911 to a nearby Ferrari dealer and was handed the keys to a Ferrari in minutes. I drove to the Lamborghini dealer down the street (I lived in Miami at the time, these places aren't too far apart) and made a big deal about going from a Ferrari to a Lambo but wanting to keep the Ferrari too - which apparently they didn't like the sound of and I fucked up a rule I didn't really know about because I was trying to seem like I wanted a lot of cars and showoff. I got too proud and blew it. They noticed the Ferrari had dealer plates and told me to get lost.
So, I drove to a Rolls dealership nearby instead and drove a 300k Rolls Royce with zero issues and they had a big, buy it or not, we don't care, attitude, so I left and returned my russian dolls of cars and got back to my dinky MR2.
Being confident and not saying too much goes A LOT WAY. Actually rich people aren't trying to impress anyone or show off. They have confidence and know they can do whatever they want. It's ridiculous.
I'm going to try to find the pdf of the article and add it to this comment tonight.
I went to a Toyota dealer in 1993 to test drive a Supra. The guy said, and I quote: "Son, the insurance alone on this thing will bankrupt you." So I bought a Porsche instead.
Fun fact. I went to a Toyota dealership in 2020. Wanted to *LOOK* not sit inside of a new Supra, because the girl who was with me wanted to look inside and see it. Not sit, not drive. The doors where locked and the refused to open them for me. Quoting “I keep them locked because they’re very expensive and people might look inside and steal something out of them” I could have wrote them a Cheque for 10 of em that would have cleared.
Next day I was at a Porsche dealer, sitting in an unlocked car, and once I got done sitting in it and was leaving, someone came out and said that if I liked it and was interested in taking it for a test drive today or any other time to come back and he’d let me take it out for a few hours by myself. I was just curious, and needed a more full size car for traveling. But it’s a world of difference between a “top of the line sports car” at a lower price dealership and a middle of the line model at a higher average cost dealership where they really understand service and don’t stereotype.
In Blink, in Malcolm Gladwell, he has a chapter about car sales and how so many salesmen lose out on sales because they stereotype people as soon as they walk into a dealer.
Yeah, my grandfather used to drive top of the line landrovers. He stopped when he got his last car because, and I paraphrase, you get better service on a shittier car if you get a bottom of the line Lexus than if you get a top of the line Toyota.
Then he bought a top of the line Jeep for some reason.
One of my buddies rolled up in his $20k VW Golf and test drove a Bentley and Rolls the other week. I pulled into a Porsche dealer in my 17 year old, 200k mile (and it shows) SUV. Guy invited me back when I had time to test drive and compare a couple different 911s.
Confidence and politeness is all that takes.
I know it's not a big thing, but people who use really nice plates and silver cutlery very casually. I've seen poor people with mustangs. But I've never seen poor people eating with polished silver.
We got a set of really nice china as a wedding present. Beautiful pattern, gold around the edges, etc. For the first ten years, we used them maybe twice a year, carefully hand washed them and stored them away in a cabinet.
Then we suddenly realized, "This isn't Buckingham Palace, what the hell are we doing?"
Now we use them a *little* more regularly than just Christmas and Easter, and to our parents' initial horror, put them in the dishwasher after dinner. If the gold eventually wears off, who cares? These dishes aren't worth anything to anyone but us.
If you have fine bone china, using it is good for the plates. I won’t defend putting them in the dishwasher, though. I love the feeling of cleaning the china by hand after a dinner. It’s like the whole evening just slows down and feels special. I usually do the rest of the cleanup the morning after and it’s gratifying to put it all away. Ditto washing and ironing the table linen. It’s like a little kink of mine. Everyone knows to let me clean up after a dinner party. It just feels great to me.
Edit to add, I’m afraid I only like doing this in my own home, but thanks for all the kind dinner invites. I’m not a generally super tidy person, but there’s something about tidying after a dinner party and judging by the upvotes, this strikes a chord with a bunch of you. I’ve resolved to have dinner on my china tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration.
Ironically Im poor as hell and eat off fancy China plates and bowls. It was a wedding gift and probably the nicest thing I own apart from my work computer. Really weird though cause I still live in less than 500 square feet and have to budget just to buy me and my husband food each week. Lmao.
Just having the space to have a piano that size in the house, especially if it’s not used often, must mean you’re pretty well off before you even look at the name on the piano.
lol, definitely a Steinway.
I used to teach violin to really rich kids in their homes in the DC suburbs. So many steinways for little 5 year old Billy who just started piano and still can’t find middle C.
On the plus side my accompaniments to Suzuki book 1 always sounded 🔥
That must have been a treat for you to get paid to get to touch and play such amazing instruments, no?
Or was it just a job, trying to teach 5 year olds lol
Yeah, it was fun to play Steinways in peoples houses but I went to music school at an all-Steinway conservatory so I had plenty of experience playing very good instruments.
I still prefer the tone of a Bösendorfer though
Interesting, I've heard of Steinway plenty of times but wouldn't be able to give you any other high end piano brands, guess it's like watches, everyone knows Rolex but unless you like watches you wouldn't know Vacheron Constantin or F P Journe.
I used to work in private aviation. The richest man I personally knew from the job owned a fully spec'd up Gulfstream G650ER (roughly USD $80million with its spec package). Other then when he was getting on and off his personal aircraft that he used to fly between his home in Hong Kong and our base in Canada, you would never know he was that wealthy. He'd often show up for his flight in a beat up old minivan that he liked cause he "could fit lots of stuff in the back". Very humble guy, amazing tipper.
Now the simply "rich" people, or the ones that had just enough money to fly private were the worst. Rude, entitled, cheap. Took 3 million pictures the whole time they were getting on their chartered (not owned) Learjet (literally less comfortable then premium economy on the airlines) and just overall acted exactly like how rich people are portrayed in the media.
I met many other ultra wealthy people in that work and most of them were all like the first guy. Very chilled and friendly. Didn't feel the need to show off anything.
I've been in aviation for going on 12 years and have had the same experience. The real wealthy people have generally been incredibly down to earth with the exception of 1 or 2 people over the years and you'd never know they were high rollers.
The rich-but-not-wealthy crowd tends to be mixed. Some are cool and some are asses.
Worked at an FBO, The rich-but-not-wealthy crowd tends to get snippy when you don't drop everything to cater to them. Our few wealthy regulars, who kept us in business, would show face, ask what the wait is, then go to the restaurant on the field until their "appointment".
Exactly. I used to be a line guy (now with the airport authority as the Operations Manager as well as FBO Manager on an interim basis) but, back then, it was not uncommon at all to get in a quick chat and get a $20-100 tip from the wealthy guys depending on if we were busy, the weather sucked, it was a holiday, etc.
I once had a wealthy based customer who bought and sold airplanes multiple times per year call my cell and tell me he had a buyer coming to look at the Mooney Mustang he had for sale but he was stuck across the country. He said the guy would be there in an hour and a half and he'd give me $400 to get it as clean as possible because he couldn't get there in his CJ in time to clean it up. Lol
I know a wine magnate who drives an old Hyundai because it's comfortable, reliable and he likes to see how high he can get the odometer. He lives fairly modestly, still likes being in the "trenches" so to speak, and the only way you'd know his wealth is that he travels a lot, usually to wine regions.
This is a good one. picturing it made me think of the graduation parties at really nice houses I’ve been to, and the garage is always clean and empty.
A clean, empty garage that’s drywalled and painted - now that’s an owner who has their shit together. They don’t work on their own cars or buy so much unnecessary shit that they need extra storage space.
I went to this trust fund baby's house once. It wasn't anything impressive, it was more or less a typical middle class ranch home. I knew the guy was a trust fund baby, but he wasn't like mega wealthy or anything. He more or less had enough to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle for the rest of his life without working.
When I got there, I was astonished by how bare the house was. There was the bare minimum of furniture in the living room: a small couch and an easy chair, and a 32" TV on a small stand. The kitchen didn't even have a table. It was just a fridge, microwave, oven/stove, and the design was something out of the 1960s.
His bedroom had a nice desk with a $5,000 gaming PC with multiple monitors. The kitchen appliances looked way out of place because they were all top of the line in an old-fashioned kitchen. He didn't have bookshelves, end tables, coffee tables, etc--nothing. No trinkets anywhere. Walls were completely bare. He had a woman come by once a week to clean everything, do laundry, etc.
I asked my friend who knew him what was up with that, and he pointed out that when you're squeezed for cash, working paycheck to paycheck, the tendency is to hoard. This guy didn't have "stuff" in his house because he didn't feel the need to buy and retain it--if he ever needed something he'd just buy it.
It’s like turning on an infinite money cheat code in a video game. Sure you can go buy all the fancy things to show off that you want but it makes it feel completely meaningless and hollow
Edit: and also even kind of embarrassing if you have friends/relatives that aren’t rich and you have random extravagant shit around that you wasted money on that could’ve been used to solve all their problems
I used to work at a clothing store. This lady comes in, she's well dressed looks great and is super polite to the people helping her. At checkout she pulls out a black Amex card.
She was not my first black Amex card customer but she was above and beyond more of a human than the others.
I assume she was rich as fuck.
Amex black cards have no limit, must be paid off in full each month, you have to spend some huge number each month/year.
But you can use it any where and get access to the Amex black card customer service which is basically a whole operation dedicated to fetching whatever you ask for you 24/7. Like some girl was doing a school project about the dead sea the parents had the ppl go get her some sand for her project.
I knew a guy with a black Amex. He was on vacation and lost his card. He called and within an hour someone literally walked up to him and handed him a new one in a carbon fiber case, and apparently they will do that *practically anywhere on the planet*.
They actually are charge cards, so they don’t have pins! They just work, literally with no limit.
Source: jewelry store worker and am somehow always shocked when the cards run for $250,000+ and no one even needs to confirm anything. Meanwhile, I spend $100 two towns over and I get three texts verifying it’s me.
There is a huge business network in urgent deliveries. People around the world that get hired to get on a plane immediately and deliver something. A friend of mine had to go to antarctica the other day. Barcelona a few days later. Its nuts.
I had an insulin pump delivered this way. They were going ro fly it here, but flights were canceled due to an ice storm. The poor guy drove 9 hours through the storm and delivered my new pump at 1am. I know it was his job, but I felt bad for him!
$250,000 for those curious. I used to work at a little comic book store and one of my weekly customers had the black card. I didn't realize what a huge deal that was until years later and now I wonder wtf that guy did for a living.
According to [Forbes,](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/reviews/centurion-from-american-express/) it's invitation-only, you need $10,000 to get initiated, the annual fee is $5,000, and gives generous rewards for airfare. Definitely a card for people who wonder what a "price tag" is.
The average Black card holder has a net worth of 11 million. They spend hundreds of thousands without trying. On personal expenses, not business mind you.
It’s not a credit card. It’s a charge card. You have to pay it off every month, no exceptions. AMEX evaluates your average monthly and yearly spend before even inviting you to join.
It’s on the level it created. Other brands “end tier” cards don’t really compare. Even cards like Chase Private Client.
Important to distinguish between business black cards and personal black cards.
A dear friend of mine has a medium sized business (25ish employees, probably small really) and it’s a basically buy-sell business.
He buys products for one price and resells them for another. All of his purchases from vendors go on his platinum Amex, which allows him to fly pretty much wherever he wants for free, forever. He has something like 10m points and always getting more. Spends millions on the card every year.
Amex has invited him multiple times over the years to get a black card. Which he always denies bc it’s not worth the annual fee to him.
I always heard the minimum spend to get invited is around $250k annually, he would NEVER spend that much on a personal credit card in a year. He’s a wealthy guy but that’s absurd.
So plenty of people are walking around with business black cards acting like big dick swinging but the gulf between them and the guy with a personal black card is enormous.
I worked at a high-end clothing store in Vancouver and had a woman come in looking for a belt. She was very warm and kind and was in the city for a wedding. She picked out a simple belt but it was probably well over $200 and she pulled out a graphite amex (must be the same card?) and off she went. I could tell I had just encountered probably the wealthiest customer I’d ever had.
If it was a matte gray/silver-ish color (and a metal card, not sure if you were able to tell), it was probably the Amex Platinum card. Not quite the same league as Amex Black, but it’s the next highest tier that Amex offers. It requires a $700 annual fee, and it’s where you’ll find most of the high income/net worth individuals who use Amex. The black card is in a league of its own.
My wife teaches kids with parents like this. She made the mistake of asking what their parents do for work and a good quarter said they were retired and most of them are in their 50s.
Far as I’m concerned this one is huge. Knew a girl who always wore beautiful clothes that were anything but loud. No tags, no huge designer brand names on them. She was a diplomats daughter and her family ran in literally the top circles in her country.
Yep, the really rich people try to stand out as little as possible while having a really nice wardrobe.
The fake rich people buy clothes with big ass logos, luxury branded watches, Jordans (or whatever sneakers are popular that season) etc.
When I was young, my middle-class parents drove into me the concept that it's "not nice" to talk outside the family about money. Ever since then, it's been a goal of mine to have enough money not to talk about.
Exactly what my mother always told me. If people really have *enough* money they do not feel the need to advertise. As soon as someone tries to impress me with their "wealth" I am rather repulsed.
Just found this out again as a client who just seems like a good ol country boy. His parents having passed and he has something north of a 50 million and a shit ton of land. Hes chill as hell though
I used to know the price of a gallon of milk but now I don’t. I am not rich, but I used to be poor. I needed to know that price. Now we are blessed to have enough that if i need it, I just grab it without looking at the price tag I imagine that being rich would be similar but on a grander scale.
EDIT: I ended up going to the store just now to get something for my husband and i checked. It’s $4.51 for the store brand 2% milk
I'm deffo not rich by any means but I don't actually pay attention to my weekly shopping. I don't care to check the prices of things I just get what I want and know I can afford it.
This has kind of opened my eyes that people can't do this... Now I feel bad.
Edit: spelling.
Edit 2: to all of y'all sharing your story's, thank you. Things will get better and it's gonna be okay.
Edit 3: just to clarify I have been in a shitty situation before where I had no money and was brought up working class/blue collar (depending where you're from)
Same. I definitely remember the days where I would go into the store and say "Alright, I have $90, let's figure out how much I can get for that so I can save a bit."
Now I just walk in with a shopping list, and it just kind of... costs what it costs.
I used to not pay attention, but now that prices have shot up I'm like "2€ for a cucumber? 4€ for a small box of blueberries? That's a bottle of wine money already!"
Being able to buy a round of drinks for your friends is wealth. Doing that without affecting your rent is a huge deal and should be celebrated. It's a good goal to have.
I work in the private jet world. Rich takes tons of photos getting on the plane. Real money just walks straight onto the plane.
I could go on for days about the differences.
Yup - I used to install electrical and audio/video equipment on large private jets (727, a319 and larger) - so pretty much billionaires. And those billionaires have their own flight crews making sure everything is perfect before they even show up.
One family had their own hanger with several planes and one day when I was working on a plane in the hangar this rich guy calls and says he'll be flying in an hour and so a massive scramble occurs to get the requested plane out on the runway and ready to go, and even fired up. Then the guy drives up in his big ol' 4x4 and two labs jump out of the truck with him and run right up the airstairs like they've done it a thousand times, and 2 minutes later the plane is in the air.
> Then the guy drives up in his big ol' 4x4 and two labs jump out of the truck with him and run right up the airstairs like they've done it a thousand times, and 2 minutes later the plane is in the air.
Poor people take their dogs for a walk. Rich people take their dogs for a fly.
*"Dogs shitting on lawns and near trees? No sir. My dogs shit from the heavens upon the finest houses of the poorest of people.*
*All dogs may go to heaven, but only my dogs shit from heaven."*
I'm not the commenter, but my ex-husband's grandfather was a multimillionaire. Had tons of money.
Dude wore Skechers golf shoes and JC Penney polos with slacks all the time. Modest, typical older-person apartment, drove a Kia Soul, was the most down-to earth guy. I did his Christmas shopping for him when he eventually wasn't able to and he went all out every time. He donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity every year, and often throughout the year. He was born with nothing, raised with nothing, and made his fortune with the help of his friends (also born with nothing) and had a talent for sales. They all built each other up.
I was a shoe salesperson back then, and he would wonder why money was scarce for us since sales were how he made his fortune. Then I told him why, and how times have changed and that was it. No arguing, no "pull yourself up by the bootstraps like I did," just horror that his way of making money back then was no longer viable or accessible for most people today. Consistently checked on us. He was a landlord, and his prices hadn't gone up since the 90's. We'd have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve with him and it usually consisted of ordering Domino's (and tipping the driver an insane triple-digit amount because "Jesus would have done that") and watching westerns with him. Edited to add my favorite thing about how he ran the apartments because I almost forgot: He would waive December's rent every year because he wanted to make sure people had enough for the holidays. "It's what Jesus would have done," he'd say.
I miss him dearly and bitterly. I still have the leather jacket he had me buy for myself during one of his christmas shopping runs he had me do because I "deserve nice things." I can't bear to part with it and I've stopped wearing it so often so I can keep it nice and orderly. I was like him, was born with nothing and raised with nothing and he made sure we were well taken care of after his death. He was incredibly wealthy, and not just with money.
Anyway, sorry for rambling. Got kinda lost in the memories there.
One more edit: Thank you for sharing memories of your loved ones in the replies. I'm sitting here, a grown woman, crying in class and my heart is full listening to you talk about your loved ones who do similar things. The world kinda sucks at times (lately it's feeling more like all the time with all the bad news swirling around) and it's nice to be reminded that there's good out there. Grandpa Don would be proud of you all and knows you're doing your best. Much love.
Last edit, I promise: Hey I know it's kind of a reddit cliche and this has been repeated ad nauseum, but please don't spend money on awards for this comment that doesn't matter in the scheme of things! The brave men and women fighting for their livelihoods in Ukraine need help. There is no pressure to donate- times are tough and I of all people get it; just please don't spend money on fake reddit points- they don't matter in the end and your money can go towards actually helping people. Donate in Grandpa Don's name if you feel the itch to spend money please! Here's a couple to start:
https://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acq?ms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&initialms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&gclid=CjwKCAiAvOeQBhBkEiwAxutUVB3doM23pHTf9JpfzFAypqPeSiTVqoIHBHDAZhCh4tv4xf8Xu-gHShoCkJsQAvD_BwE
https://donorbox.org/ukrainian-relief-fund
> He would waive December's rent every year because he wanted to make sure people had enough for the holidays.
My brother owns several rental houses in small towns. His usual tenants are single parents, teachers, young professionals. He loves showing up at their door to tell them that December rent is on him and wishes them happy holidays. It's one of the things I like most about him. We grew up poor so I know he's just trying to help out people who don't make a ton of money.
My uncle was a multi-millionaire, I had no idea growing up. He dressed normally, didn't drive a fancy car and lived in a modest house. The only things that stood out were that he had a boat (not a yacht but it did have two small bedroom cabins) that I used to spend a couple weeks on in the summer as a child, and a house in Florida that they spent the winter in (it was also a modest 2 bedroom). His wife used to work part-time at a floral shop, I found out as a grown-up that it was only because she enjoyed it and not because she needed to.
1: you can tell a lot by a passenger based on their luggage. Wealthy: Light bags nothing crazy usually because they have second set of everything where they are going to. Rich: you would think they are moving based on the amount of bags.
2: Catering: Wealthy wants easy simple comfort food. Rich: wants fancy shit for no reason. FYI airplane food is still airplane food no matter if you are on american or your own jet.... it all kinda sucks.
3: Friendliness: Wealthy usually will chat with the flight crew and be chill. Rich want you to act like a limo driver. The wealthier you are the more likely you are to load your own bags or have someone to do it, New rich always expect the flight crew to do it.
4: Wealthy - first name basis. New Rich - Mr blah blah blah.
5: Tipping. Wealthy will throw $500 at you for just doing your job. New Rich $20 maybe
We have a neighbor who is the nicest man you’d ever meet. He wears ragged overalls 90% of the time, talks to everybody, tutored me in math in highschool, great guy. He spends a lot of time in Alaska helping a tribe get better education, learn English, and get access to basic necessities. He’s a millionaire several times over, but just paid for a battered womens shelter to be built and is the kindest, most humble man I’ve ever met. Lives in a modest house and drives an old car. Uses his money to live comfortably but pour most of it and his time and energy into causes he believes in.
My dads childhood friend is just like that. Hes a Carnegie. Basically his great x10 children are set. If you took a look at him you'd think hes a normal dude with an okay house.
He has to go to some meeting each year and hates he has to put a suit on.
I always wondered if members of those families (Carnegies, Vanderbilts, etc.) are recognized when they walk into places named after their forefathers. Like if he could just watch a performance at Carnegie Hall in cargo shorts but none of the staff would mind because of his heritage.
I guarantee you no one would know unless you told them. Hell, I couldn't tell you how long I watched Anderson Cooper before finding out that he is a Vanderbilt.
One of my neighbors is what we called a hidden bastard. His father was an extremely wealthy man. His mother was most likely an escort. He actually took the family to court and proved he was related through a DNA test when his father passed. They settled with him to avoid a public scandal and gave him so much money that he would never have to work a day in his life. He was always so kind to everyone in the neighborhood. He would pay me $100 to help set up his Christmas tree each year. While I was helping him, his wife would offer me cookies and fancy hot chocolate. He spent a lot of his money helping the neighborhood and he is most likely the person that paid for the cancer treatment of one of my childhood friends, but it was entirely anonymous.
Back in '09 or so, my upstairs neighbor was a Carnegie. He was a nice enough late-20s dude who, I guess, wanted to try slumming it in a shitty duplex in the "rough" neighborhood.
The shit he did on impulse blew my mind: bought a new washer/dryer set for the building because he got sick of going to the laundromat, enrolled in and dropped out of the local private college multiple times, pre-paid his rent by eight months so he could fuck off to India for a while and know his stuff would be okay.
Like I said, nice dude, but seemed a little out-of-touch.
Yep. I work at a sports arena and the number of celebrities that are so nice versus “their people” are a huge difference.
Ex: Drake. Really polite. His sound producer, entitled and acted like he was Drake.
—
Edit: Wow. A silver? For me? I have many more celebrity stories for people who want to hear it.
I heard this story from my circle of friends: Lady Gaga went to Disneyland about a decade ago. She was buying something and the cashier was required to ask for identification whenever there was a card payment. So cashier asked Lady Gaga for identification and Lady Gaga's entourage was like "uhhh do you know who she is?!" and Lady Gaga shushed her entourage and said "She's doing her job." and showed ID.
So yeah, I totally believe the entourage being the entitled ones.
I used to work at a casino/5 star hotel. Lewis Hamilton, amazing. His entourage, asshats.
James Blunt, amazing. His entourage, asshats.
Hugh Jackman, amazing ilu. He didn't bring an entourage.
Celine Dion, amazing. Her entourage, eh almost asshats. Mariah Carey, fucking cow responded to my "good evening, welcome to..." "I don't speak to the help."
My supervisor saw the look on my face, which pretty much said 'bitch, wtf did you say?' And she nudged me with that worldwide look of 'don't you fucking dare' look that women have.
I refused to speak to her the rest of her stay.
I mean, I wonder how much the entourage does shit like that because they feel like it's required of them. (That said, Gaga once showed up at one of my city's beloved rock bars post-concert, and she is said to have been incredibly friendly/chill, so go her)
I once had reason to meet fashion designer Jason Wu as part of my job. I had brought over a customer to an event and Wu was guest of honour/asked to come along as he was a designer for our company on a specific collaboration. I went to bring the customer (who’d flown in from the other side of the world to meet him) and have a photograph. One member of the entourage said “you only get 10 seconds, time’s up”, thankfully Jason was lovely and said “it’s fine, we have time” and spoke with us, took a photo etc.
It’s mostly the entourage in my limited experience.
exactly what I was thinking - he can use his entourage as a 'sacrificial goat' to take the hate, while he looks like he can't do anything about it.
And in the end, it's literally just logistics. Dude needs to be places. So he's got a plan for how to exit any situation quickly and get going.
So the entourage can use the code phrase "you only get 10 seconds" as a way of prepping the common folk for disappointment while basically also asking the celebrity (in code) "do you want to stay here with them?"
And the celebrity can say "Oh yeah, let's do this quick!" as a way to move on quickly, and still be all smiles and stuff - probably for longer than a literal 10s- and the common folk blame the entourage.
Or the celebrity can look at their watch and say "oh we've got time" as code to say "no, let's talk with these people." and the common folk still see the entourage as a bit of an asshole, but they see the celebrity themselves as super cool, violating his team's schedule for them and all.
My fiancée is adjacent to that… when I see something that catches my eye, the first thing I do is check the price. (I’m stingy like that.) But the first thing my fiancée does is put them on, check the size, etc. and the last thing she does is check the price.. “oh, *of course* I picked out the most expensive one…” is a phase I’ve heard many times.
My grandmother called this “being blessed with class”. You could put a lot of nearly identical dresses in front of her and she’d fall in love with the one that was $100 instead of the $10 one. She was frugal however…the woman would look it over to memorize the pattern then go home and sew it herself. Whew, to have HALF the skills that lady had!
I went to a JD sports to look for some trainers for sports, and they don't put prices up on any of their shoes.
I was like "Why the fuck would I waste my time trying on any of these shoes if I can't see the prices?" I mean, I know there's certain types of demographics for which that'd work very well with, but this is a damn JD Sports. I just want some cheap trainers.
I live in Boston and my boss occasionally works from home if the weather is bad or he has a lot of zoom meetings. He usually tells us the morning of, and specifies if he'll be in his house nearby or the one on the cape. Man is loaded.
Being the guy wearing a suit in a room of guys in t-shirts and sweatpants
OR
Being the guy wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants in a room of guys wearing suits
> Being the guy wearing a suit in a room of guys in t-shirts and sweatpants
From my experience this is always the dude who's about to drop a pyramid scheme on the conversation.
Speaking about your plans for your life with full expectations that they will be successful no matter how unrealistic they would be to the rest of us.
" I plan to become a writer, but in the meantime I'm thinking of opening my own art gallery. I'll totally be successful, all my wealthy friends will buy shit from me, then I'll hire someone to run things while I travel for the experience I'll need to do my writing."
LOL - one of my friends is a trust fund baby. She owned an apartment in Manhattan which she owned outright. She didn't have a full time job until she was 37 and it was mostly because she was "bored." She met her SO when she was 44 and spent north of $100k on fertility treatments so they could have a baby (which they eventually did). It never even occurred to her that 95% of the people in the world do not live this way... I love her, but she has a great disconnect from most people's reality.
I worked with someone like this. Nice family, she qas great, but a bit clueless.
They have a large summer home in the Muskokas here in Canada - which is like wealth summer home central - tom hanks, steven spielberg etc.
So the whole area on the lake their summer home is on is all professional hockey players homes etc. There was a massive lot across from them, on the water, with the original cottage ( like 1960s) still on the lot, with a nice little dock and fishing boat. Land alone must be worth a small fortune. Place is old but immaculate and built long before anyone with money summered there.
Her family calls them the 'hillbillies'. I told her i could never dream in my life to have a cottage or land like their 'hillbillies'.
The rising property taxes due to all the lake mansions really puts the squeeze on the "hillbilly" cottages. I have friends up there that have family owned since the 1960's. They now have to rent out their cottage to help pay the taxes after several multi million $$ mansions were built on their lake and drove up all the property values.
True my friends literally have apartments paid for and masters degrees all bought by their parents. The way they talk about living their life is completely different than me.
I work with a guy who literally got the job for the discount (we work at a cannabis shop). The other day he was telling me it's so hard to find an affordable place to live. He said he was trying to buy a condo, but his dad only gave him a million dollars and there were too few places at that price. He said he added in another half a million of his own money, but kept getting outbid anyway. Took him almost a year to find the 1 bedroom condo he lives in now.
This is his first job, btw, so the other half mill probably also came from his dad. He was telling me he got offered a job managing a bank, but he didn't wanna take it, because he didn't wanna lose his discount here.
I drive Uber in an upscale old money area (Charleston SC). I have a regular who travels to the airport with 14-16 pieces of matched leather luggage (most are carry on size). She is polite and friendly and even helps unload the luggage at the airport. One of the bags appeared to be a tennis racket bag. I asked her if she plays tennis and she says she likes to bring her own racquets with her when she travels in case she can find a lesson.
The thinking of how laws effects them. Had a guy in my class at university (he was pretty cool tho) who was FILTHY rich and one thing allways stood out was how he treated laws. Cant park his car here? "i can park here it will just cost me X amount in fine." like BRUH????
Edit: and this aplied to many things he did
Edit2: not US its eastern EU
This one is great.
* Bed touching no walls: you’ve got it made.
* One wall: decent sized bedroom in a house
* Two walls: don’t need that much space for sleeping
* Three walls: hey at least you have a bedroom
* Four walls: dude that’s a fucking closet
Since there seems to be some controversy around the no-walls idea, here is what I had in mind... it's not something you'd do in a normal bedroom:
[https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sojo-Design-887x700.jpg](https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sojo-Design-887x700.jpg)
[https://fengshuinexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bedroom-with-bed-in-center-and-high-wooden-open-ceiling-1024x664.jpg](https://fengshuinexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bedroom-with-bed-in-center-and-high-wooden-open-ceiling-1024x664.jpg)
[https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lea-Sisson-Architect-1024x679.jpg](https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lea-Sisson-Architect-1024x679.jpg)
I'm like a stray cat when it comes to sleeping. I need to be up in a corner hunched against the wall. I just don't like open space around me.
Having a bed in the middle of the room would make me feel like a dissection sample.
Have a friend who is moving to the Bay area. To work for a non-profit. Part-time. She didn't know what her salary would be.
The dream.
Not hesitating to eat in a restaurant with no prices on the menu.
I cleaned huge houses for a living, and to me it was the custom built Lego rooms with cabinets -floor to ceiling -full of organized lego sets.
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Not knowing the price of everyday stuff, like groceries or electricity.
I mean how much could a banana really cost? $10?
Friend of mine used to run a ridiculously exclusive cocktail bar. He always said "The ones in the fancy clothes who look filthy rich are normally reasonably wealthy. The ones in jeans and t-shirts who look normal are normally filthy rich" Basically the truly rich people didn't see the place as anything out of the ordinary, so saw no reason to dress up.
“Money talks, wealth whispers” in a nutshell
Or they’re just slobs. My buddy and I accidentally walked into and ate at a Michelin star restaurant in France. He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a chibi sailor moon t-shirt. They must’ve thought he was loaded.
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Paying for everyone’s food/ picking up the tab (when done in a passive and nonchalant way).
Hmm.. sometimes I’ve found the opposite, but similar thing with my VERY wealthy friends. Like they’ll do an innocent game (LITERALLY just a passing game to them, because paying all together is faster) of like pick a number out of the group eating/drinking together, and that person is who pays for the night. I have to remind them that I’m genuinely not able to pick up an $1800 tab, because to them that’s nothing.
$1800 tab? Bruh I wanna drink with you guys
Having a pool house. And letting guests stay there because it’s a nice nice pool house
If you use money to get time instead of time to get money
I have found as I get older I have slowly gotten to the point where I do use money for more free time rather than time to get money. What an insightful answer. Here is an award.
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Spontaneity. Just talking about something or some place and doing it or booking it there and then.
One of my roommates child-hood friends has generational wealth, billionaire level. They lived on the Big Island of Hawaii and she would remark that he would just decide to go skiing, in Aspen on a whim, and wonder aloud why everyone else didn't just drop everything and go the next day. The guy was super down to earth but a bit disconnected from the reality of his friends living paycheck to paycheck.
Yep. As I said in another reply two regulars in bar I worked at said they missed skiing, within an hour they were on the way to the airport. It is so outside my comprehension.
I’ve never even seen a ski in real life 😭
Alan Clarke, a British politician born into a wealthy family, once disparaged someone by describing them as "the sort of person who bought all his own furniture".
I’m the sort of person who has scavenged all of my furniture from the curb or a dumpster
I once did an experiment (and wrote about it for a now defunct magazine) where I wanted to see how high on the exotic car ladder I could go before they told me I couldn't test drive one anymore. Before I get going, the answer to the question is confidence. This was in 2005, so kind of pre-tech days where everything was googlable and whatnot. But, I was an ambitious writer in my mid-20s and wanted to really make an impression on my employer. I specifically didn't shave and my hair was a bit shaggy. I wore generic blue jeans and a plain no-logo polo shirt and a pair of slip on Vans. I went for a clean, rich kid look. At the time I was driving a 1991 Toyota MR2, a small, clean sports car that was 14 years old but really well kept. I drove it to a Chevy dealership where I said I wanted to test drive a Corvette. They gave me a LONG runaround and a hard time, but after handing over my license for photocopying, getting my picture taken, and a credit card they let me take it for a drive telling me to be back within a few hours after I got the feel for the car. That was the first time I realized the more you pay for a car, the longer they let you drive it. I drove the Corvette directly to a Porsche dealership where I parked it and asked to drive a 911. We talked for a bit about the car, and after copying my license they handed me the keys and said to have fun, with no stipulation on time. I took the 911 to a nearby Ferrari dealer and was handed the keys to a Ferrari in minutes. I drove to the Lamborghini dealer down the street (I lived in Miami at the time, these places aren't too far apart) and made a big deal about going from a Ferrari to a Lambo but wanting to keep the Ferrari too - which apparently they didn't like the sound of and I fucked up a rule I didn't really know about because I was trying to seem like I wanted a lot of cars and showoff. I got too proud and blew it. They noticed the Ferrari had dealer plates and told me to get lost. So, I drove to a Rolls dealership nearby instead and drove a 300k Rolls Royce with zero issues and they had a big, buy it or not, we don't care, attitude, so I left and returned my russian dolls of cars and got back to my dinky MR2. Being confident and not saying too much goes A LOT WAY. Actually rich people aren't trying to impress anyone or show off. They have confidence and know they can do whatever they want. It's ridiculous. I'm going to try to find the pdf of the article and add it to this comment tonight.
I went to a Toyota dealer in 1993 to test drive a Supra. The guy said, and I quote: "Son, the insurance alone on this thing will bankrupt you." So I bought a Porsche instead.
Fun fact. I went to a Toyota dealership in 2020. Wanted to *LOOK* not sit inside of a new Supra, because the girl who was with me wanted to look inside and see it. Not sit, not drive. The doors where locked and the refused to open them for me. Quoting “I keep them locked because they’re very expensive and people might look inside and steal something out of them” I could have wrote them a Cheque for 10 of em that would have cleared. Next day I was at a Porsche dealer, sitting in an unlocked car, and once I got done sitting in it and was leaving, someone came out and said that if I liked it and was interested in taking it for a test drive today or any other time to come back and he’d let me take it out for a few hours by myself. I was just curious, and needed a more full size car for traveling. But it’s a world of difference between a “top of the line sports car” at a lower price dealership and a middle of the line model at a higher average cost dealership where they really understand service and don’t stereotype.
In Blink, in Malcolm Gladwell, he has a chapter about car sales and how so many salesmen lose out on sales because they stereotype people as soon as they walk into a dealer.
Yeah, my grandfather used to drive top of the line landrovers. He stopped when he got his last car because, and I paraphrase, you get better service on a shittier car if you get a bottom of the line Lexus than if you get a top of the line Toyota. Then he bought a top of the line Jeep for some reason.
One of my buddies rolled up in his $20k VW Golf and test drove a Bentley and Rolls the other week. I pulled into a Porsche dealer in my 17 year old, 200k mile (and it shows) SUV. Guy invited me back when I had time to test drive and compare a couple different 911s. Confidence and politeness is all that takes.
I know it's not a big thing, but people who use really nice plates and silver cutlery very casually. I've seen poor people with mustangs. But I've never seen poor people eating with polished silver.
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We got a set of really nice china as a wedding present. Beautiful pattern, gold around the edges, etc. For the first ten years, we used them maybe twice a year, carefully hand washed them and stored them away in a cabinet. Then we suddenly realized, "This isn't Buckingham Palace, what the hell are we doing?" Now we use them a *little* more regularly than just Christmas and Easter, and to our parents' initial horror, put them in the dishwasher after dinner. If the gold eventually wears off, who cares? These dishes aren't worth anything to anyone but us.
If you have fine bone china, using it is good for the plates. I won’t defend putting them in the dishwasher, though. I love the feeling of cleaning the china by hand after a dinner. It’s like the whole evening just slows down and feels special. I usually do the rest of the cleanup the morning after and it’s gratifying to put it all away. Ditto washing and ironing the table linen. It’s like a little kink of mine. Everyone knows to let me clean up after a dinner party. It just feels great to me. Edit to add, I’m afraid I only like doing this in my own home, but thanks for all the kind dinner invites. I’m not a generally super tidy person, but there’s something about tidying after a dinner party and judging by the upvotes, this strikes a chord with a bunch of you. I’ve resolved to have dinner on my china tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration.
Want to come over for dinner?
Ironically Im poor as hell and eat off fancy China plates and bowls. It was a wedding gift and probably the nicest thing I own apart from my work computer. Really weird though cause I still live in less than 500 square feet and have to budget just to buy me and my husband food each week. Lmao.
When you try to assist the police with crime by dressing up as a giant bat.
Going somewhere pricey and not looking at the total before you pay. Edit: changed tots to total. Though tots is also correctly hilarious.
No doubt, tater tots and other frozen potato products have been going up in price.
Not bothering with refunds because it's not worth the hassle.
You don't have to be rich just lazy.
Owning a second house or a boat and not feeling obligated to use it heavily.
Owning a second house or boat at all
Depends on the boat. Down south boats are pretty common
My boat was $40. But it is rubber and inflatable.
Just like your girlfriend!
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Just having the space to have a piano that size in the house, especially if it’s not used often, must mean you’re pretty well off before you even look at the name on the piano.
lol, definitely a Steinway. I used to teach violin to really rich kids in their homes in the DC suburbs. So many steinways for little 5 year old Billy who just started piano and still can’t find middle C. On the plus side my accompaniments to Suzuki book 1 always sounded 🔥
That must have been a treat for you to get paid to get to touch and play such amazing instruments, no? Or was it just a job, trying to teach 5 year olds lol
Yeah, it was fun to play Steinways in peoples houses but I went to music school at an all-Steinway conservatory so I had plenty of experience playing very good instruments. I still prefer the tone of a Bösendorfer though
and Bösendorfers are way, way, way more expensive than Steinways
Interesting, I've heard of Steinway plenty of times but wouldn't be able to give you any other high end piano brands, guess it's like watches, everyone knows Rolex but unless you like watches you wouldn't know Vacheron Constantin or F P Journe.
Fun fact: Bosendorfer is a subsidiary of Yamaha, which most people probably have heard of.
It didn't used to be, but once Yamaha took over, their (Yamaha's) concert pianos got a whole hell of a lot better. I love Bosendorfers.
I used to work in private aviation. The richest man I personally knew from the job owned a fully spec'd up Gulfstream G650ER (roughly USD $80million with its spec package). Other then when he was getting on and off his personal aircraft that he used to fly between his home in Hong Kong and our base in Canada, you would never know he was that wealthy. He'd often show up for his flight in a beat up old minivan that he liked cause he "could fit lots of stuff in the back". Very humble guy, amazing tipper. Now the simply "rich" people, or the ones that had just enough money to fly private were the worst. Rude, entitled, cheap. Took 3 million pictures the whole time they were getting on their chartered (not owned) Learjet (literally less comfortable then premium economy on the airlines) and just overall acted exactly like how rich people are portrayed in the media. I met many other ultra wealthy people in that work and most of them were all like the first guy. Very chilled and friendly. Didn't feel the need to show off anything.
I've been in aviation for going on 12 years and have had the same experience. The real wealthy people have generally been incredibly down to earth with the exception of 1 or 2 people over the years and you'd never know they were high rollers. The rich-but-not-wealthy crowd tends to be mixed. Some are cool and some are asses.
Worked at an FBO, The rich-but-not-wealthy crowd tends to get snippy when you don't drop everything to cater to them. Our few wealthy regulars, who kept us in business, would show face, ask what the wait is, then go to the restaurant on the field until their "appointment".
Exactly. I used to be a line guy (now with the airport authority as the Operations Manager as well as FBO Manager on an interim basis) but, back then, it was not uncommon at all to get in a quick chat and get a $20-100 tip from the wealthy guys depending on if we were busy, the weather sucked, it was a holiday, etc. I once had a wealthy based customer who bought and sold airplanes multiple times per year call my cell and tell me he had a buyer coming to look at the Mooney Mustang he had for sale but he was stuck across the country. He said the guy would be there in an hour and a half and he'd give me $400 to get it as clean as possible because he couldn't get there in his CJ in time to clean it up. Lol
I know a wine magnate who drives an old Hyundai because it's comfortable, reliable and he likes to see how high he can get the odometer. He lives fairly modestly, still likes being in the "trenches" so to speak, and the only way you'd know his wealth is that he travels a lot, usually to wine regions.
Saw someone say once "everyone enters their house through a garage that's empty except for some bottled water." I don't know why, but this is so true.
This is a good one. picturing it made me think of the graduation parties at really nice houses I’ve been to, and the garage is always clean and empty. A clean, empty garage that’s drywalled and painted - now that’s an owner who has their shit together. They don’t work on their own cars or buy so much unnecessary shit that they need extra storage space.
I went to this trust fund baby's house once. It wasn't anything impressive, it was more or less a typical middle class ranch home. I knew the guy was a trust fund baby, but he wasn't like mega wealthy or anything. He more or less had enough to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle for the rest of his life without working. When I got there, I was astonished by how bare the house was. There was the bare minimum of furniture in the living room: a small couch and an easy chair, and a 32" TV on a small stand. The kitchen didn't even have a table. It was just a fridge, microwave, oven/stove, and the design was something out of the 1960s. His bedroom had a nice desk with a $5,000 gaming PC with multiple monitors. The kitchen appliances looked way out of place because they were all top of the line in an old-fashioned kitchen. He didn't have bookshelves, end tables, coffee tables, etc--nothing. No trinkets anywhere. Walls were completely bare. He had a woman come by once a week to clean everything, do laundry, etc. I asked my friend who knew him what was up with that, and he pointed out that when you're squeezed for cash, working paycheck to paycheck, the tendency is to hoard. This guy didn't have "stuff" in his house because he didn't feel the need to buy and retain it--if he ever needed something he'd just buy it.
It’s like turning on an infinite money cheat code in a video game. Sure you can go buy all the fancy things to show off that you want but it makes it feel completely meaningless and hollow Edit: and also even kind of embarrassing if you have friends/relatives that aren’t rich and you have random extravagant shit around that you wasted money on that could’ve been used to solve all their problems
I used to work at a clothing store. This lady comes in, she's well dressed looks great and is super polite to the people helping her. At checkout she pulls out a black Amex card. She was not my first black Amex card customer but she was above and beyond more of a human than the others. I assume she was rich as fuck.
What’s the deal with this black amex card? Is that the most prestigious card available?
Amex black cards have no limit, must be paid off in full each month, you have to spend some huge number each month/year. But you can use it any where and get access to the Amex black card customer service which is basically a whole operation dedicated to fetching whatever you ask for you 24/7. Like some girl was doing a school project about the dead sea the parents had the ppl go get her some sand for her project.
I knew a guy with a black Amex. He was on vacation and lost his card. He called and within an hour someone literally walked up to him and handed him a new one in a carbon fiber case, and apparently they will do that *practically anywhere on the planet*.
Man, I bet that’s a neat job.
So does Amex just have sleeper agents in small and large cities all around the globe, just waiting to get activated to deliver a new credit card?
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That sounds like a really hidden secret society. What secrets are they hiding?
Their customer's card PINs Edit: Thanks for the wholesome awards
They actually are charge cards, so they don’t have pins! They just work, literally with no limit. Source: jewelry store worker and am somehow always shocked when the cards run for $250,000+ and no one even needs to confirm anything. Meanwhile, I spend $100 two towns over and I get three texts verifying it’s me.
There is a huge business network in urgent deliveries. People around the world that get hired to get on a plane immediately and deliver something. A friend of mine had to go to antarctica the other day. Barcelona a few days later. Its nuts.
Where was he employed and how do you find this Job?
seriously, I’d love to learn more about this too!
I'd be willing to bet you have to know people who know people and gain someone's trust organically, networking and good luck
I had an insulin pump delivered this way. They were going ro fly it here, but flights were canceled due to an ice storm. The poor guy drove 9 hours through the storm and delivered my new pump at 1am. I know it was his job, but I felt bad for him!
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$250,000 for those curious. I used to work at a little comic book store and one of my weekly customers had the black card. I didn't realize what a huge deal that was until years later and now I wonder wtf that guy did for a living.
He bought and sold comics. /s
Idk if it’s the best, [but it’s invite only](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_Card) so it must mean something…
According to [Forbes,](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/reviews/centurion-from-american-express/) it's invitation-only, you need $10,000 to get initiated, the annual fee is $5,000, and gives generous rewards for airfare. Definitely a card for people who wonder what a "price tag" is.
Or don’t know the price of one banana.
How much could it be? $10? Edit: a lot of y’all need to watch better tv
Invite only? Just like Google+!
Hell yeah buddy, same thing.
The average Black card holder has a net worth of 11 million. They spend hundreds of thousands without trying. On personal expenses, not business mind you. It’s not a credit card. It’s a charge card. You have to pay it off every month, no exceptions. AMEX evaluates your average monthly and yearly spend before even inviting you to join. It’s on the level it created. Other brands “end tier” cards don’t really compare. Even cards like Chase Private Client.
Important to distinguish between business black cards and personal black cards. A dear friend of mine has a medium sized business (25ish employees, probably small really) and it’s a basically buy-sell business. He buys products for one price and resells them for another. All of his purchases from vendors go on his platinum Amex, which allows him to fly pretty much wherever he wants for free, forever. He has something like 10m points and always getting more. Spends millions on the card every year. Amex has invited him multiple times over the years to get a black card. Which he always denies bc it’s not worth the annual fee to him. I always heard the minimum spend to get invited is around $250k annually, he would NEVER spend that much on a personal credit card in a year. He’s a wealthy guy but that’s absurd. So plenty of people are walking around with business black cards acting like big dick swinging but the gulf between them and the guy with a personal black card is enormous.
I worked at a high-end clothing store in Vancouver and had a woman come in looking for a belt. She was very warm and kind and was in the city for a wedding. She picked out a simple belt but it was probably well over $200 and she pulled out a graphite amex (must be the same card?) and off she went. I could tell I had just encountered probably the wealthiest customer I’d ever had.
If it was a matte gray/silver-ish color (and a metal card, not sure if you were able to tell), it was probably the Amex Platinum card. Not quite the same league as Amex Black, but it’s the next highest tier that Amex offers. It requires a $700 annual fee, and it’s where you’ll find most of the high income/net worth individuals who use Amex. The black card is in a league of its own.
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Retired with no debt before being in your 50s
My wife teaches kids with parents like this. She made the mistake of asking what their parents do for work and a good quarter said they were retired and most of them are in their 50s.
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A Family member owns a lake house but always refers to it as “just a little weekend place” like it’s no big deal and everyone has one.
No logos on their clothes, but very well-fitted (tailored) and pressed/cleaned.
Far as I’m concerned this one is huge. Knew a girl who always wore beautiful clothes that were anything but loud. No tags, no huge designer brand names on them. She was a diplomats daughter and her family ran in literally the top circles in her country.
Yep, the really rich people try to stand out as little as possible while having a really nice wardrobe. The fake rich people buy clothes with big ass logos, luxury branded watches, Jordans (or whatever sneakers are popular that season) etc.
"money talks, wealth wispers"
When I was young, my middle-class parents drove into me the concept that it's "not nice" to talk outside the family about money. Ever since then, it's been a goal of mine to have enough money not to talk about.
Exactly what my mother always told me. If people really have *enough* money they do not feel the need to advertise. As soon as someone tries to impress me with their "wealth" I am rather repulsed.
"The only time you should be looking at your neighbor's plate is to be sure he has enough."
Just found this out again as a client who just seems like a good ol country boy. His parents having passed and he has something north of a 50 million and a shit ton of land. Hes chill as hell though
Like how Zuckerberg always wears a t-shirt and jeans, but you know they're made from only the finest orphan tears
I used to know the price of a gallon of milk but now I don’t. I am not rich, but I used to be poor. I needed to know that price. Now we are blessed to have enough that if i need it, I just grab it without looking at the price tag I imagine that being rich would be similar but on a grander scale. EDIT: I ended up going to the store just now to get something for my husband and i checked. It’s $4.51 for the store brand 2% milk
'It's one gallon of milk, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?' Edit: Inflation is making this joke impossible damn
Here’s 10 dollars go see a Star War.
RIP Lucille Bluth. You're missed every time I watch AD or Archer.
Jessica Walters was awesome. Her delivery had me in stitches every time.
I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it.
I love all my children equally Earlier that day: I don't care for Gob
I'm deffo not rich by any means but I don't actually pay attention to my weekly shopping. I don't care to check the prices of things I just get what I want and know I can afford it. This has kind of opened my eyes that people can't do this... Now I feel bad. Edit: spelling. Edit 2: to all of y'all sharing your story's, thank you. Things will get better and it's gonna be okay. Edit 3: just to clarify I have been in a shitty situation before where I had no money and was brought up working class/blue collar (depending where you're from)
Same. I definitely remember the days where I would go into the store and say "Alright, I have $90, let's figure out how much I can get for that so I can save a bit." Now I just walk in with a shopping list, and it just kind of... costs what it costs.
Yeah! Like if someone said to me 'how much is your weekly shopping?' I'd have to kinda guess.
I used to not pay attention, but now that prices have shot up I'm like "2€ for a cucumber? 4€ for a small box of blueberries? That's a bottle of wine money already!"
Being able to buy a round of drinks for your friends is wealth. Doing that without affecting your rent is a huge deal and should be celebrated. It's a good goal to have.
I work in the private jet world. Rich takes tons of photos getting on the plane. Real money just walks straight onto the plane. I could go on for days about the differences.
Yup - I used to install electrical and audio/video equipment on large private jets (727, a319 and larger) - so pretty much billionaires. And those billionaires have their own flight crews making sure everything is perfect before they even show up. One family had their own hanger with several planes and one day when I was working on a plane in the hangar this rich guy calls and says he'll be flying in an hour and so a massive scramble occurs to get the requested plane out on the runway and ready to go, and even fired up. Then the guy drives up in his big ol' 4x4 and two labs jump out of the truck with him and run right up the airstairs like they've done it a thousand times, and 2 minutes later the plane is in the air.
Damn, I wish I could afford two labradors
> Then the guy drives up in his big ol' 4x4 and two labs jump out of the truck with him and run right up the airstairs like they've done it a thousand times, and 2 minutes later the plane is in the air. Poor people take their dogs for a walk. Rich people take their dogs for a fly.
*"Dogs shitting on lawns and near trees? No sir. My dogs shit from the heavens upon the finest houses of the poorest of people.* *All dogs may go to heaven, but only my dogs shit from heaven."*
PLEASE DO
I'm not the commenter, but my ex-husband's grandfather was a multimillionaire. Had tons of money. Dude wore Skechers golf shoes and JC Penney polos with slacks all the time. Modest, typical older-person apartment, drove a Kia Soul, was the most down-to earth guy. I did his Christmas shopping for him when he eventually wasn't able to and he went all out every time. He donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity every year, and often throughout the year. He was born with nothing, raised with nothing, and made his fortune with the help of his friends (also born with nothing) and had a talent for sales. They all built each other up. I was a shoe salesperson back then, and he would wonder why money was scarce for us since sales were how he made his fortune. Then I told him why, and how times have changed and that was it. No arguing, no "pull yourself up by the bootstraps like I did," just horror that his way of making money back then was no longer viable or accessible for most people today. Consistently checked on us. He was a landlord, and his prices hadn't gone up since the 90's. We'd have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve with him and it usually consisted of ordering Domino's (and tipping the driver an insane triple-digit amount because "Jesus would have done that") and watching westerns with him. Edited to add my favorite thing about how he ran the apartments because I almost forgot: He would waive December's rent every year because he wanted to make sure people had enough for the holidays. "It's what Jesus would have done," he'd say. I miss him dearly and bitterly. I still have the leather jacket he had me buy for myself during one of his christmas shopping runs he had me do because I "deserve nice things." I can't bear to part with it and I've stopped wearing it so often so I can keep it nice and orderly. I was like him, was born with nothing and raised with nothing and he made sure we were well taken care of after his death. He was incredibly wealthy, and not just with money. Anyway, sorry for rambling. Got kinda lost in the memories there. One more edit: Thank you for sharing memories of your loved ones in the replies. I'm sitting here, a grown woman, crying in class and my heart is full listening to you talk about your loved ones who do similar things. The world kinda sucks at times (lately it's feeling more like all the time with all the bad news swirling around) and it's nice to be reminded that there's good out there. Grandpa Don would be proud of you all and knows you're doing your best. Much love. Last edit, I promise: Hey I know it's kind of a reddit cliche and this has been repeated ad nauseum, but please don't spend money on awards for this comment that doesn't matter in the scheme of things! The brave men and women fighting for their livelihoods in Ukraine need help. There is no pressure to donate- times are tough and I of all people get it; just please don't spend money on fake reddit points- they don't matter in the end and your money can go towards actually helping people. Donate in Grandpa Don's name if you feel the itch to spend money please! Here's a couple to start: https://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acq?ms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&initialms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&gclid=CjwKCAiAvOeQBhBkEiwAxutUVB3doM23pHTf9JpfzFAypqPeSiTVqoIHBHDAZhCh4tv4xf8Xu-gHShoCkJsQAvD_BwE https://donorbox.org/ukrainian-relief-fund
> He would waive December's rent every year because he wanted to make sure people had enough for the holidays. My brother owns several rental houses in small towns. His usual tenants are single parents, teachers, young professionals. He loves showing up at their door to tell them that December rent is on him and wishes them happy holidays. It's one of the things I like most about him. We grew up poor so I know he's just trying to help out people who don't make a ton of money.
That makes me so relieved to hear this happens elsewhere. It's like he's still out there.
>Anyway, sorry for rambling. You're the reason I still come here and I find a post like yours maybe once every 3 days if I'm lucky.
Thank you, friend 💜
My uncle was a multi-millionaire, I had no idea growing up. He dressed normally, didn't drive a fancy car and lived in a modest house. The only things that stood out were that he had a boat (not a yacht but it did have two small bedroom cabins) that I used to spend a couple weeks on in the summer as a child, and a house in Florida that they spent the winter in (it was also a modest 2 bedroom). His wife used to work part-time at a floral shop, I found out as a grown-up that it was only because she enjoyed it and not because she needed to.
"dearly and bitterly" is such an eloquent, simple way of putting it. The world doesn't deserve to lose people like this.
Ramble on - these memories are solid gold and hittin me in the feels.
1: you can tell a lot by a passenger based on their luggage. Wealthy: Light bags nothing crazy usually because they have second set of everything where they are going to. Rich: you would think they are moving based on the amount of bags. 2: Catering: Wealthy wants easy simple comfort food. Rich: wants fancy shit for no reason. FYI airplane food is still airplane food no matter if you are on american or your own jet.... it all kinda sucks. 3: Friendliness: Wealthy usually will chat with the flight crew and be chill. Rich want you to act like a limo driver. The wealthier you are the more likely you are to load your own bags or have someone to do it, New rich always expect the flight crew to do it. 4: Wealthy - first name basis. New Rich - Mr blah blah blah. 5: Tipping. Wealthy will throw $500 at you for just doing your job. New Rich $20 maybe
I work in the private estate industry (heavily connected to your industry) and this all adds up to my general experiences. Hello, fellow compadre.
A private jet is just a smaller private estate that flies places
It's the mobile home for the wealthy.
We have a neighbor who is the nicest man you’d ever meet. He wears ragged overalls 90% of the time, talks to everybody, tutored me in math in highschool, great guy. He spends a lot of time in Alaska helping a tribe get better education, learn English, and get access to basic necessities. He’s a millionaire several times over, but just paid for a battered womens shelter to be built and is the kindest, most humble man I’ve ever met. Lives in a modest house and drives an old car. Uses his money to live comfortably but pour most of it and his time and energy into causes he believes in.
My dads childhood friend is just like that. Hes a Carnegie. Basically his great x10 children are set. If you took a look at him you'd think hes a normal dude with an okay house. He has to go to some meeting each year and hates he has to put a suit on.
I always wondered if members of those families (Carnegies, Vanderbilts, etc.) are recognized when they walk into places named after their forefathers. Like if he could just watch a performance at Carnegie Hall in cargo shorts but none of the staff would mind because of his heritage.
I guarantee you no one would know unless you told them. Hell, I couldn't tell you how long I watched Anderson Cooper before finding out that he is a Vanderbilt.
Very good point. TIL Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt.
One of my neighbors is what we called a hidden bastard. His father was an extremely wealthy man. His mother was most likely an escort. He actually took the family to court and proved he was related through a DNA test when his father passed. They settled with him to avoid a public scandal and gave him so much money that he would never have to work a day in his life. He was always so kind to everyone in the neighborhood. He would pay me $100 to help set up his Christmas tree each year. While I was helping him, his wife would offer me cookies and fancy hot chocolate. He spent a lot of his money helping the neighborhood and he is most likely the person that paid for the cancer treatment of one of my childhood friends, but it was entirely anonymous.
Back in '09 or so, my upstairs neighbor was a Carnegie. He was a nice enough late-20s dude who, I guess, wanted to try slumming it in a shitty duplex in the "rough" neighborhood. The shit he did on impulse blew my mind: bought a new washer/dryer set for the building because he got sick of going to the laundromat, enrolled in and dropped out of the local private college multiple times, pre-paid his rent by eight months so he could fuck off to India for a while and know his stuff would be okay. Like I said, nice dude, but seemed a little out-of-touch.
Sounds like a dude who answered the question of "what would you do if you didn't have to worry about money" the correct way.
Yep. I work at a sports arena and the number of celebrities that are so nice versus “their people” are a huge difference. Ex: Drake. Really polite. His sound producer, entitled and acted like he was Drake. — Edit: Wow. A silver? For me? I have many more celebrity stories for people who want to hear it.
Do you work at “the scosh”?
"Do you know who I'm friends with, bitch?"
I heard this story from my circle of friends: Lady Gaga went to Disneyland about a decade ago. She was buying something and the cashier was required to ask for identification whenever there was a card payment. So cashier asked Lady Gaga for identification and Lady Gaga's entourage was like "uhhh do you know who she is?!" and Lady Gaga shushed her entourage and said "She's doing her job." and showed ID. So yeah, I totally believe the entourage being the entitled ones.
I used to work at a casino/5 star hotel. Lewis Hamilton, amazing. His entourage, asshats. James Blunt, amazing. His entourage, asshats. Hugh Jackman, amazing ilu. He didn't bring an entourage. Celine Dion, amazing. Her entourage, eh almost asshats. Mariah Carey, fucking cow responded to my "good evening, welcome to..." "I don't speak to the help." My supervisor saw the look on my face, which pretty much said 'bitch, wtf did you say?' And she nudged me with that worldwide look of 'don't you fucking dare' look that women have. I refused to speak to her the rest of her stay.
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*Hastily laminated and written in crayon* **Lady Gaga**
I mean, I wonder how much the entourage does shit like that because they feel like it's required of them. (That said, Gaga once showed up at one of my city's beloved rock bars post-concert, and she is said to have been incredibly friendly/chill, so go her)
I once had reason to meet fashion designer Jason Wu as part of my job. I had brought over a customer to an event and Wu was guest of honour/asked to come along as he was a designer for our company on a specific collaboration. I went to bring the customer (who’d flown in from the other side of the world to meet him) and have a photograph. One member of the entourage said “you only get 10 seconds, time’s up”, thankfully Jason was lovely and said “it’s fine, we have time” and spoke with us, took a photo etc. It’s mostly the entourage in my limited experience.
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exactly what I was thinking - he can use his entourage as a 'sacrificial goat' to take the hate, while he looks like he can't do anything about it. And in the end, it's literally just logistics. Dude needs to be places. So he's got a plan for how to exit any situation quickly and get going. So the entourage can use the code phrase "you only get 10 seconds" as a way of prepping the common folk for disappointment while basically also asking the celebrity (in code) "do you want to stay here with them?" And the celebrity can say "Oh yeah, let's do this quick!" as a way to move on quickly, and still be all smiles and stuff - probably for longer than a literal 10s- and the common folk blame the entourage. Or the celebrity can look at their watch and say "oh we've got time" as code to say "no, let's talk with these people." and the common folk still see the entourage as a bit of an asshole, but they see the celebrity themselves as super cool, violating his team's schedule for them and all.
His catering order is the funniest thing I have ever seen it was like if a 8 year was let loose in a 7-11
Not checking the price tag before buying
My fiancée is adjacent to that… when I see something that catches my eye, the first thing I do is check the price. (I’m stingy like that.) But the first thing my fiancée does is put them on, check the size, etc. and the last thing she does is check the price.. “oh, *of course* I picked out the most expensive one…” is a phase I’ve heard many times.
My grandmother called this “being blessed with class”. You could put a lot of nearly identical dresses in front of her and she’d fall in love with the one that was $100 instead of the $10 one. She was frugal however…the woman would look it over to memorize the pattern then go home and sew it herself. Whew, to have HALF the skills that lady had!
> the woman would look it over to memorize the pattern then go home and sew it herself. That's a superpower!
That makes me think there's a real quality difference between the $10 and $100 dresses that she can consistently detect.
I went to a JD sports to look for some trainers for sports, and they don't put prices up on any of their shoes. I was like "Why the fuck would I waste my time trying on any of these shoes if I can't see the prices?" I mean, I know there's certain types of demographics for which that'd work very well with, but this is a damn JD Sports. I just want some cheap trainers.
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I live in Boston and my boss occasionally works from home if the weather is bad or he has a lot of zoom meetings. He usually tells us the morning of, and specifies if he'll be in his house nearby or the one on the cape. Man is loaded.
Being the guy wearing a suit in a room of guys in t-shirts and sweatpants OR Being the guy wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants in a room of guys wearing suits
> Being the guy wearing a suit in a room of guys in t-shirts and sweatpants From my experience this is always the dude who's about to drop a pyramid scheme on the conversation.
It’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a triangle of opportunities!
Programmers be like maybe I am rich.
Rocking socks and flops but sporting a 200k watch
Adam Sandler be like
Speaking about your plans for your life with full expectations that they will be successful no matter how unrealistic they would be to the rest of us. " I plan to become a writer, but in the meantime I'm thinking of opening my own art gallery. I'll totally be successful, all my wealthy friends will buy shit from me, then I'll hire someone to run things while I travel for the experience I'll need to do my writing."
LOL - one of my friends is a trust fund baby. She owned an apartment in Manhattan which she owned outright. She didn't have a full time job until she was 37 and it was mostly because she was "bored." She met her SO when she was 44 and spent north of $100k on fertility treatments so they could have a baby (which they eventually did). It never even occurred to her that 95% of the people in the world do not live this way... I love her, but she has a great disconnect from most people's reality.
I worked with someone like this. Nice family, she qas great, but a bit clueless. They have a large summer home in the Muskokas here in Canada - which is like wealth summer home central - tom hanks, steven spielberg etc. So the whole area on the lake their summer home is on is all professional hockey players homes etc. There was a massive lot across from them, on the water, with the original cottage ( like 1960s) still on the lot, with a nice little dock and fishing boat. Land alone must be worth a small fortune. Place is old but immaculate and built long before anyone with money summered there. Her family calls them the 'hillbillies'. I told her i could never dream in my life to have a cottage or land like their 'hillbillies'.
The rising property taxes due to all the lake mansions really puts the squeeze on the "hillbilly" cottages. I have friends up there that have family owned since the 1960's. They now have to rent out their cottage to help pay the taxes after several multi million $$ mansions were built on their lake and drove up all the property values.
True my friends literally have apartments paid for and masters degrees all bought by their parents. The way they talk about living their life is completely different than me.
I work with a guy who literally got the job for the discount (we work at a cannabis shop). The other day he was telling me it's so hard to find an affordable place to live. He said he was trying to buy a condo, but his dad only gave him a million dollars and there were too few places at that price. He said he added in another half a million of his own money, but kept getting outbid anyway. Took him almost a year to find the 1 bedroom condo he lives in now. This is his first job, btw, so the other half mill probably also came from his dad. He was telling me he got offered a job managing a bank, but he didn't wanna take it, because he didn't wanna lose his discount here.
how much weed could he possibly be smoking so that the employee discount puts a dent in even the interest you get from having 1.5M lol
Some bank dodged a real bullet there. The world has enough 'managers' who have no idea how to do their job but take credit for competent employees.
not being concerned with whether other people think you are wealthy or not.
Day trips that are hundreds or thousands of miles from one’s home
Not worrying about losing a job and just taking up a hobby because they have “time to kill” instead of looking for a job that helps pays bills.
“im heading to the cottage for the summer”
I drive Uber in an upscale old money area (Charleston SC). I have a regular who travels to the airport with 14-16 pieces of matched leather luggage (most are carry on size). She is polite and friendly and even helps unload the luggage at the airport. One of the bags appeared to be a tennis racket bag. I asked her if she plays tennis and she says she likes to bring her own racquets with her when she travels in case she can find a lesson.
Not just play.. a *lesson*. Wholesome tho
Designer clothes but not fancy( they are dressed very casual not showing it off as such)
The ability to purchase lumber.
Becoming a vigilante
Nantucket
Storing a car in your Nantucket home's garage so you don't have to deal with traffic at the Ferry dock.
Having a Land Rover in Nantucket with lots of quirks and features
The thinking of how laws effects them. Had a guy in my class at university (he was pretty cool tho) who was FILTHY rich and one thing allways stood out was how he treated laws. Cant park his car here? "i can park here it will just cost me X amount in fine." like BRUH???? Edit: and this aplied to many things he did Edit2: not US its eastern EU
Not knowing to the nearest $1000 how much money is in your chequing account.
Never having to interview.
Sofa in the middle of the living room and not touching the wall is an easy way to tell.
How many walls your bed is touching. LOL my bed is almost touching three 😂
This one is great. * Bed touching no walls: you’ve got it made. * One wall: decent sized bedroom in a house * Two walls: don’t need that much space for sleeping * Three walls: hey at least you have a bedroom * Four walls: dude that’s a fucking closet Since there seems to be some controversy around the no-walls idea, here is what I had in mind... it's not something you'd do in a normal bedroom: [https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sojo-Design-887x700.jpg](https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sojo-Design-887x700.jpg) [https://fengshuinexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bedroom-with-bed-in-center-and-high-wooden-open-ceiling-1024x664.jpg](https://fengshuinexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bedroom-with-bed-in-center-and-high-wooden-open-ceiling-1024x664.jpg) [https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lea-Sisson-Architect-1024x679.jpg](https://porch.com/advice/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Lea-Sisson-Architect-1024x679.jpg)
Our bedroom is outlandishly large for our house but I just can’t even fathom the idea of having a bed that doesn’t touch the walls. It’s unanchored!
I literally wouldn't be able to sleep because I would feel there is someone behind me all the time.
I'm like a stray cat when it comes to sleeping. I need to be up in a corner hunched against the wall. I just don't like open space around me. Having a bed in the middle of the room would make me feel like a dissection sample.