If money gets you something you want, it’s not “wasted,”. That’s what it’s for. Hookers, blow, or fresh king salmon.
When you have all the money you and your children will ever need, you don’t shop sales. It’s rude to the poor shopkeepers who are trying to provide for their families.
My classmates at different levels included several future million- and billionaires. One of the key differences between them and the wannabes was that it was the wannabes who threw on the bling. The wannabes needed to prove (to whom? To each other, apparently, and to people who like them didn’t recognize quality and needed to look at brand) that they belonged; that they had money, and class, and style. Those whose families had arrived generations before
didn’t need to prove no such shit,
knew that quality isn’t provided by a brand logo but by adequacy to your needs,
saw no need to rub their money in people’s faces,
knew that one of the things you need to do in order to stay rich is watch where your money goes, whether big or small.
The ones with the real money could afford to buy a brand-new, mid-high end car out of their savings account because they’d decided that while public transportation was great for weekdays, having to take the train to go home for the weekend was a draaaaag. Most of us counted pennies before buying a T-shirt, they could buy a whole boutique if they wanted to… well, once they disentangled some investments, or gotten an adequate loan (sometimes the loan is a better idea: they knew how to calculate this). But they didn’t, not without a careful analysis of the boutique’s books, location and potential.
And yes, they noticed grocery prices. They didn’t refrain from buying a favorite cookie because it wasn’t on sale, but they jumped on “oooooh, they’re two for one!” as greedily as those of us who could only afford them when they were two for one. The poor, the middle-class and the truly-rich would inform the rest of the dorm of those sales: the wannabes would raise their noses to the ceiling because “who eats that?” “I do!” (said by a future billionaire and COO of the family’s multinational group, while nibbling on a sample of Spain’s most-popular cookie). It was part of the whole “knowing the value and the cost of things” which had been built into raising high-number generations that would preserve and grow the family’s inheritance, not squander it or worse: piss off the proles to the point where they take up arms (or, these days, courts of justice).
By poor shopkeepers you mean giant corporations, right? Sales often come about due to incentives from manufacturers, which is why several different stores have sales on the same item at the same time. So that knocks it back to poor downtrodden food conglomerates.
I donate some of the money I save from buying things on sale to the local foodbank. That’s a lot more efficient.
“Giant corporations” keep people employed. Yes, it would be nice if more of the profits trickled down to us peons, but sales bring people into the store where I work and that keeps me employed and able to pay the rent.
I once saw a Neil Gaiman interview where he was asked about being rich. He deflected by saying he doesn’t really concern himself with money, but what he does know and enjoy is that he can buy dinner for friends in any restaurant in the world without worrying about the bill.
That’s probably a fair-ish yardstick for wealth - what size of bill for, say, four people you’re happy to treat could you cheerfully pick up without ever once thinking about how it will affect your bank balance? The scale I guess would range from street food at one end of the scale, all the way through the finest of fine dining to ludicrous extravagance along the lines of flying your friends and the chef to a private island. And the stopping point isn’t what you could never afford, but what you could afford while thinking “This is cool, but I won’t be doing it again in a hurry”.
I shop quite often, and had no idea what any of that stuff (“junk”) cost. I’m vaguely aware of how much eggs and milk and Bombay Sapphire cost, but like others, I just buy what I need. Importantly, though, we don’t buy junky, packaged food, but rather fresh or frozen ingredients to make good food.
Although this is frugal and healthy, I’m not trying to make a statement. It just tastes much, much better when you control what goes into a dish. I do tend to avoid “organic” when I can, because that costs more and is mostly just a sham.
I don’t think Bill Gates is eating Totino’s Pizza Rolls and Rice-A-Roni.
I read a story about the singer Madonna making a point of not wanting to pay more for her daughter Lourdes’ swimming lessons then anyone else.
I guess she refused to pay a celebrity mark-up.
In general, people who pay attention to money do well financially; those who try to buy stuff with it that you can’t buy ( love, recognition, status) do poorly.
If they’re buying a new private jet they pay attention to the price tag. They are paying much attention to the things the rest of us buy, they aren’t doing the shopping themselves, they tell someone what they want and may have no idea what it costs except that it’s less than the interest they make every minute.
I’m not rich, commute to work, and recently drove 2k miles over the weekend. I’m not really sure what gas costs. I just go to the most convenient location when I’m low and fill it up. I assume it’s not $8/gallon, but I really don’t know if it’s $2.75 or $4.50 since it doesn’t inform any decision I make ever.
There’s another way that the price might be of more concern to a rich person than to an average guy. Sometimes the rich want not to save money, but to spend it-----they want to pay more. It’s a status symbol.
The prices on famous named-fashion items ( Prada,Christian Dior,etc) are ridiculous for a reason. The only purpose in buying that stuff is to know (and let other people know) that you paid $8000 for a handbag. If it was sold at a reasonable price, nobody would buy it. So in that case, yes, the rich do pay attention to price–but for the opposite reasons the OP intended.
Buffett obviously gets a lot of personal satisfaction from his high profile image as ‘folksy simple billionaire’. Which, though I don’t know the guy (a lot people think they do based on the public persona but 99.9% of them don’t either) has always suggested to me he lives a lot higher on the hog behind the scenes. And why shouldn’t he, really? Or, even if the folksy public image is close to the truth, again he obviously IMO does that in large part for enjoyment of the adulation it brings. And again why shouldn’t he, he can try to sell any public image he wants to. I don’t GAS but other members of the public also seem to enjoy celebrating his folksy simplicity (supposed or real). Everyone wins.
But it doesn’t mean Buffett’s public persona is a good general argument for anything, and it’s often used as one.
Nah. Some people buy that because of the brand and only because of the brand, but it’s the ones who don’t even understand how it became that brand; they will never buy anything that’s well-built because it’s well-built, since they can’t recognize that it is indeed well-built. They will never buy something from a first-collection unless and until they’ve been told that designer is an “up and comer” or seen someone they want to mimic wearing that designer’s brand.
But some people buy some objects from high-level brands because they appreciate the difference in workmanship / specs / results. The one Dior nail polish I had was 5x the price of a normal one; it also lasted 10x as long, and my nails were getting into the same places with either. If I wanted to be able to do my nails once a week every week and have them stay just-so through that time, I’d bother pay for that quality level; since I only do them once in a blue moon I don’t.
I don’t personally know anyone who is super rich, but I think everyone who has commented is correct. I think it just depends on a lot of things.
My grandfather used to be a local delivery truck driver. He used to go to the airport every day and pickup various crates and deliver them to the August Busch estate, (Owner of Anheuser Busch Brewery). Apparently August Busch had a thing for fresh veggies and would have them flown in every day. I am sure that cost him more than sending someone down to the local farmers market, but I’m sure he could afford it.
I’ve also read a story that Steve Jobs didn’t like having license plates on his car. It had something to do with him worrying that people would recognize the plates and would follow him around. He figured out that in his state, you could drive a newly purchased car without permanent plates for up to 6 months; so he would just get a new car every six months so he could drive anonymously.
I think both of those things could only be done where money is no object.
It takes time to compare prices. I have less spare time than spare money, at least on the level of what I might spend at the grocery store.
Because people form habits when young, and I had a very low income when I first ran my own household, I am still in the habit of looking at prices in the grocery store. And I’ve wasted tons of time doing that. It’s probably a destructive habit in terms of optimizing my life overall.
Self-made mega-millionaires often got rich with their hard-nosed negotiation tactics and avid attention to prices. It’s not surprising they retain these characters even when rich.
It is interesting the way different people have different thresholds for what absolute price causes concern. I remember my sister explaining to her daughter that $100 “isn’t much: it’s just twenty $5’s.” I remember thinking “Huh? That’s why $100 is a lot!”
A few year later I was somewhat better off financially and was amused at myself to discover I was using the price of a special tratment at Madame Butterfly’s Parlor as my threshold! “That’s nothing — less than the amount indulged on a massage” … or “How expensive! For that, I could have a massage with money left over!” 
My plan:
Bill Gates responded to the meme that his time is worth so much that he’d actually lose money if he stopped to pick up a $100 bill off the ground. He said he’d still stop and pick it up cause someone might have lost it and it probably represents a significant amount of money to them.
That I know is not necessarily true- I don’t have a chauffeur and I’m not rich, but I don’t know gas prices because my husband fills my tank- because he has calculated exactly how far to drive out of the way depending on the price difference, and I go a convenient station even if it costs more. I couldn’t tell you is gas is closer to $2 or $4 today.
And my husband would still be doing that if we hit the lottery for 100 million.
People keep bringing up private jets and I find it illustrative that Warren Buffet himself weighed in on this topic when his company purchased netjets - basically a rental car company, only for jets.
Instead of ponying up for a jet, you only pay for the time you use. So, Warren Buffet looked at how much private jets cost and decided that he should try to save money on that.
I can’t imagine not doing my own shopping and other errands. I would be miserable in a huge house with servants. I like being independent and doing things for myself. I like being around other people at stores and restaurants.
Money can buy some things I’d enjoy. A vacation home with a dock on the lake would be very nice.
But the price matters. I wouldn’t be comfortable blowing 15 million for a place in the Hamptons.
There’s too many other vacation properties equally nice and under 300k. I’d love to own a restored 68 Mustang. Nice ones are under 100k. I wouldn’t drop a million on a Ferrari.
It comes down to an old fashioned belief in spending money responsibly. It Doesn’t matter if I’m extremely wealthy.There would always be a cap on how much I’d spend on myself.
I’d enjoy being rich and sponsoring various charities. Much like Bill Gates, I’d want to give back to society.