Rich? You can blow that in a summer on a bad drug habit.
Wealthy? That shit gets handed down generation to generation.
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Anyway, I know a guy who owns 4-5 houses, about a whole block of a pretty big city that he rents out, belongs to a couple of nice golf courses. But, he and his dad built it all through a successful law practice. Just hard-working guys. He doesn’t stay at places that are under $500 a night usually. Might spend $30K to take a family on vacation.
My Dad works for (and is friends with) a guy with many many millions. He sold a few businesses, a couple for more than $10 Mil.
That type of dough isn’t too uncommon. There are vast territories of wealth above guys with that much money.
My parents would go to France and stay at the Hotel Du Cap for 2 months. I once asked dad how much that cost and he said he planned on $1000 a day. Still probably cheaper than the yacht. This house that burned down, and has finally been torn down, is next door to their house. There are 3 or 4 billionaires within a quater mile.
Man, I guess there is more of that out there than I thought there was.
I grew up in a mostly-well-off suburb (I’d say the mean was just ‘well-off’, not ‘rich’). There was one little tucked-away neighborhood, though, which we all referred to as the mansions, as mansions they were. I went to middle school with a girl who lived in one of the biggest houses there*. One Halloween, a group of friends and I were trick-or-treating there: massive hike between houses but damn well worth the haul. Her family, who several of us were vaguely acquainted with, invited us in to warm up a bit, and offered us a brief tour of the house. Including their ballroom, library, and indoor 50-foot-long lap pool, which I realized meant that their house was, by nessecity, more than twice the length of my own. The next year, their other daughter’s soccer team wasn’t happy with the field they were using, so they redid part of their lawn and constructed a full, regulation size soccer field in their backyard.
adam yax - $1000 per night?! I didn’t realize hotels ran that high!
My uncle owns a huge amount of siding and window companies all around the midwest. He’s an avid hunter, so he bought a few thousand acres in Missouri to hunt on. I went down to visit once and my aunt was taking me on a tour of part of their property. We found 2 houses on her property she didn’t even know were there. It was a huge amount of land. He hosts fishing and hunting tournaments there. If you’re a hunter or outdoorsman, you’ve probably seen him on hunting/fishing programs on TV (as an aside, the siding thing worked out for him only recently. 20 years ago, my dad worked for him for free while he tried to start a chain of gas stations. That project failed, so he went with siding/windows. 20 years from dead broke to multimillionaire… it gives me hope).
I work for a smallish insurance company that’s been around close to 100 years. The current President is the 4th generation of the family who started it, and comes from very old money. He’s definitely a multimillionaire and absolutely one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. The company employs about 220 people, and he knows all of us by name and position and most of our families. I’m just a humble web designer here, but he’s come down to me a couple of times to thank me for my work, or compliment some changes I’ve made. In fact, all the wealthy/well off/stinking rich people I know are extremely kind.
I have a friend who I know is quite wealthy. I’m not exactly sure how wealthy, but there is a building on our alma mater’s campus named for his father.
I had a friend for a while when I lived in Austin, back in the 1970s. He lived in the same subdivision I did, which was nice but not high-dollar. He had a 9 to 5 job in middle management at a manufacturing outfit and was basically a working stiff like me.
He was in a wreck one day and his car was totalled. He asked me to give him a ride down to the car dealer on Saturday, whereupon he picks out a new car and pays cash for it. Later on, I found out that he was worth about 40 million clams, inherited. Keep in mind that this was 1975 or so, so that’s about 120-150 million in todays money. Serious clammage.
He lived pretty much on his salary and just let it sit there and grow in the bank.
Oh yeah. Let me introduce you to the Bridge Suite at the Atlantis Hotel, in the Bahamas. It goes for $25,000 a night (more than $1000 per hour). Of course, it does come with its own butler, and when you break it down, the day’s rental is only $5 per square foot (for 5000 square feet). A steal!
Look at the picture at the top of this page. See that bridge between the two big towers? That would be the bridge suite. Homina.
I had a good friend in college, who I’m still in occasional touch with, who was the only child of very rich parents, due to some kind of medical-business-owning. They lived in a house with a name.
Yes, I grew up in Greenwich, CT. A lot of them were addicts, which may surprise some people here. We had a HUGE problem with coke in our high school because with $100/week allowances and little supervision, kids generally get into the worst.
But yeah. I knew kids who got BMWs and Jags and such for 16th birthdays, people with bowling lanes in their house, people who owned small farms in VT for “fun,” people who had swans and peacocks running around their front yard, people with daily bodyguards, and other such nonsense.
I also happen to have a great story about a former co-host of “Live with Regis and ___”'s child who turned and stabbed another child in the face with scissors for no clear reason while in my Mom’s Montessori class. I came home from college and got told. “If the Enquirer calls, you don’t know anything.” :eek:
My Grandma worked at Brunswick Academy in the 1970s, and when the Skakel killing trial happened a few years ago, she had some. uh, choice insights.
The whole really rich thing makes for very weird, very disconnected, and usually very dysfunctional people, in my experience.
Heck, I’m not rich at all and don’t save money very well. $350 night hotels aren’t out of the range of what I’ve done though. I’m living in Bentonville Arkansas…folks here are loaded without seeming like it. I’ve met the CEO’s of both Wal-Mart and IBM…they seem like pretty damn good people. I’d guess that fabulously rich, would mean them. I can’t surmise a clue what could faze a person that has billions but I can tell you that it’s not the penthouses in cities like Vegas and it’s certainly not a vacation to Antigua.
My best guess from what I’ve seen…? They’ve come so far circle that they’re just like you and I…enjoying the normal things in life.
-K
Well, this isn’t in the league of some of these, but the head of the insurance agency I worked for once checked his weekly pay on his speaker phone, and I figured he was making about $1 million a year.
A buddy of mine pointed out the owner (or something) of Ping golf equipment at his wedding. Apparently they were good friends of the family, and when his sister’s car died while on her missions / church trip, she got a call telling her to go to the local car dealership to get her replacement car.
