3. "You can rent celebrities for your private events. Not just musicians, but bona fide actors. This super rich guy in Bel-Air used to host his kid's birthday party in late October, so they went all out for a Halloween-themed party. Everyone at the kid's school was invited, plus their own friends. Each year, they'd hire some fantastic athlete to appear at the event; one year, it was Tony Hawk, another year, it was some Olympic gold medal gymnastics winners. The one that threw me was when they hired Demi Moore, Anthony Kiedis, and Benicio del Toro to be 'guests' at the party to hang out and pretend they were friends with the kid.
"Mind you, this was a KID'S Halloween party, set outside in a huge, massive garden — spread out over tennis courts and lawns with games, buffets, dessert tables, taco stands, omelette stands, BBQ, pizza, burgers, etc. No booze, no one allowed inside. All the event staff were dressed in Halloween costumes; it was VERY cool. But it was sad to see Kiedis and del Toro sitting together commiserating. You could see the 'f**k, the things we do for a paycheck' look on their faces. They were at a KID'S party. Demi was very nice — she brought her little doggies."
4. "Really wealthy people have specialized household staff. When someone is truly mega-rich, running their household takes the same complexity as running a small to midsize company, and management is skilled and compensated accordingly. Don't think 'butler' — think 'head of operations at a luxury hotel.'
"The staff that household managers oversee can be really specialized as well. For example, Larry Ellison has his own personal curator to oversee his collection of art. They do things like: advise on the purchase and sale of art in his collection, oversee storage and display of art housed on his property, oversee process of lending art for storage and display at museums, etc. The curator will often have their own staff to conduct actual conservation work, art transport, art installation, etc. So, if you've already got an in-house crew of seven people focused on your art collection alone, imagine how big your entire household staff is! That's why you've got a household manager."
5. "A while back, some guy on here was talking about his experience working as a sort of personal manager for a billionaire and how things are just wildly different for them. The specific example he used was how things work when they want to go on a trip and give any notice at all to their employees. What happens is that an advanced team gets sent a few days earlier to scope out the rented/bought location and report back exact dimensions for closet space, drawer space, etc. People back at the house go through the clothing, jewelry, etc., and draw up a priority list, which is sent to the advanced team. The advanced team then spends the next two days purchasing the list of items. Entire wardrobes, jewelry sets, makeup kits, bathing supplies, etc. Anything they cannot get (not enough time, or is one-of-a-kind, like the family heirloom watch the rich dude wears every now and then) is relayed to the house team.
"The family's schedule is arranged such that the moment the family leaves the house on the day of travel, a whole team of people rushes through and packs up all the remaining items (only after the family leaves, you wouldn't want to deny them access to their items for even a few seconds), which are then sent ahead of time to the airport while the family has a lunch or something somewhere. Upon landing, their luggage takes one route (direct), and the family takes a similarly indirect route (unless otherwise directed) so that by the time they get to the location, all of their items are not just unpacked but in their proper organized locations and ready for use without any of the advanced team ever being visible to the family."
8. "Wealthy people can rent entire floors of hotels or multiple floors. Entire restaurants. Chefs from literally any restaurant in the world to cook for them, wherever they are. I saw all of those things done by a prince of Saudi Arabia: We estimated it cost him $50,000 just for the one private meal in our restaurant, given that he...
"1) Had the top four floors of our hotel booked (for the hundreds of staff to take care of him, his wife, and his two kids (plus, likely some mistresses if I'm being honest). As someone in this part of the world, being rich = the number of people who work for you.
2) He paid $30K just to close our restaurant for one meal.
3) Flew his favorite chef from New York to Orlando to cook for him on his private jet, and then back again. Of course, it was likely the OTHER private jet he had just for his staff, not for himself or his family.
4) Made food for our entire staff, all the kitchen staff, all the federal, state, and local security and him, and his wife and his kids.
I had a buddy who taught ski lessons to another Saudi prince's little kid and had some nearly unbelievable yet similar details during his interactions with them. That kid had an entire team around him or probably 10 staff, plus vehicles, snowmobiles, a helicopter, and so on. I later met a guy who worked on an ultra-luxury 300-foot yacht and served Bill Gates and his wife, among other super-rich people. Their primary job was to operate without interacting with them, or at least as little as possible. This shows you, in some sense, that having people around you doing stuff you need to be done but doing it invisibly is another perk of being rich."
11. "You think your Platinum Card is cutting it? Please! Centurion is the way to go. It'll cost $10,000 just to get one (initial fee to join and the first annual fee), but you get EVERYTHING. The Crystal Method are playing a local venue, and you want to go backstage and shoot the sh*t with Scott Kirkland because you're interested in donating to his favorite causes (because you've always admired the guy, his political opinions, and his music)? That can be arranged. Want a table at Schwa in Chicago, é in Vegas, Schloss Schauenstein in Fürstenau, or Aragawa in Tokyo? They'll get you in tomorrow. Need a full itinerary planned for a week in Paris? Need that new iPhone on day one but don't want to stand in line? Want to stay at the most luxurious place in Ibiza for the days Pete Tong is at the Blue Marlin? They do this in their sleep.
"It's a butler and concierge and local expert and best friend that knows a guy you'll never meet. All just a call away."
19. "Some rich people will land their 747s in small airports. I grew up around Lexington, Kentucky. The region is huge on horses, particularly thoroughbred horses. The entire city is surrounded by horse farms, and these farms breed some of the best racing horses in the world. The rich and famous will often come here to buy thoroughbreds to add to their breeding stock. One such person is a sheik from Dubai (I think) who owns his own private 747. Now, the local airport isn't rated for 747s, and it's not legal to land one there unless it's an emergency. The sheik doesn't care, though, and lands his 747 there anyway.
"The airport fines him every time he does this, which he is totally fine with paying. I've been told that many of the upgrades to the airport over the years were almost entirely funded with money from those fines."
20. "My dad barely qualifies as a millionaire in the loosest sense. He has told me that there is a certain threshold of wealth where you can just become reliably wealthier and wealthier without a big limit. It goes like this: He has a friend from Berkeley who worked on Wall Street in the '80s and left with about $1M in his bank account by age 35. He used half of that money to start his own business which a solar product that was greatly needed by other businesses in the area. After about four years of that, he bought an apartment complex for some side income. After seven years, the apartment complex has paid for itself, and he spends the profit that year on becoming a majority shareholder in another small business in the area.
"After making money on that, he start another small business — this time only loosely run by him with a separate CEO to run the company. Using previously accumulated money, he buys a golf course, and now, he is technically unemployed, but the dude makes between $3-4 million a year off of his passive income."
27. "For most people, a car is a depreciating asset; from the moment you buy it, it starts to go down in value. For ultra wealthy car collectors, they are able to access limited edition cars that go up in value immediately. For example, McLaren only made 375 'P1's that they sold for $1-1.5M — they are now worth easily over $3M.
"The challenge is, it takes more than just money to get one of these. With only a few hundred models to allocate, and with them immediately earning their owners a profit, the manufacturer will look at a number of criteria to decide who gets one — including how many models of their 'regular' cars you have purchased. If you are offered a Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta for $2.2M, you probably own 5+ other Ferraris, and you just bought a pair of matching Portofinos for your twins who are going off to college."
