They say a polo pony cost upward of $15,000-$35,000 a piece and they have 3-4 in a tournament.
I read a book called “Richistan”(?)
The author mentions that the top end people (those who can afford the lifestyle) have a “household manager” or some such title whose job is to organize everything. You phone him/her up and say “we’ll be at the Hamptons this weekend” and the car is waiting, the cleaning crew has cleaned house #4 that you haven’t visited for months, and the limo is stocked and fueled and waiting. You want to go to the Venice film festival? They make the calls, buy the tickets, book the Lear jet, etc.
Someone like that does not come cheap either.
That used to be called a majordomo.
I always thought that was a synonym for butler or maid, I remember wondering what it meant as the term is used in email programs.
Sometimes it still is. Sometimes the butler is the one in charge of the household, as in the television programme Downton Abbey. Or the title might be “estate manager” or “personal assistant.” A rich person might directly employ half a dozen people. A really rich person might employ a whole lot more. Some set up “family offices” that may well employ over a hundred people to manage the family’s wealth and to do this sort of household management.
So sayeth Terry Pratchett.
The perquisites for one of the expat executives cost over $500k a year. Personal chef. Chauffeur. Charter plane with very flexible availability. Personal trainer. Executive health care plan (don’t ask). Nanny/tutor who is a credentialed teacher in his home country for the children.
And this is not even some CEO of a Global 100 company. There are probably half a dozen at the same or higher level at hundreds of companies, and one or two at thousands of other companies.
Employment offers that require moving to another country are always excessive though, depending on how far away local standards are from the home country the higher the allowances too.
But remember that overseas the cost of “staff” is often much much lower. In India middle class people have maids, cooks, gardeners and so on, and it costs very little because pay rates are so low. The cost of hiring people to do things for you is relatively low, the cost of manufactured goods is relatively high compared to Europe and North America.
My cousin has that job for an extremely wealthy hedge fund manager in Connecticut. She actually went to college for it (there is one program in Colorado that provides the training for that position). She manages the staff for the family, makes sure that all birthdays and anniversaries are taken care of, oversees their multiple homes etc. She makes professional level money for it and she is in charge of up to 40 other staff members during certain parts of the year.
The funny thing is that my cousins parents, my aunt and uncle, are multi-millionaires themselves but my dear cousin still regards them as being of very modest means compared to her employer.
Several years ago, I read something about the divorce between Kirstie Alley and Parker Stevenson. Not finding it right now. But some of the pleadings described a ridiculously over-the-top “jetsetter” lifestyle - homes on both coast, jetting in guests and name entertainers for parties, etc. - for a couple of pretty middle of the road celebrities. IIRC, their income was well under $10 mill a year.
I know that was a long time ago, and housing and other things may have increased tremendously since then, and maybe they were exceeding their means, but it really impressed me that one did not need to be ultra-rich to lead a pretty darned luxurious lifestyle.
Another factor is whether one wishes to really piss their money away, or whether they wish to wisely support a luxurious lifestyle. For example, you can charter a ton of flights for a fraction of maintaining your own Gulfstream and crew…
$25K tuition? I wish my middle school kid’s tuition was $25K…
Well let’s say $100 for wine a day at dinner. At the end of the year, you’ve spent $36,500. That’s pretty close to the average individual income, in the US. For an equally priced meal with your wine, you’re exceeding the average household income, just for your dinners.
Now, technically, there’s nothing that requires that because you have the money that you’re going to spend it on luxurious things. One could just as easily buy a Honda and live in a small house in the countryside, on the cheap.
Depending on the person, a significant amount of their excess money might be going into charity, investing in startups, or tied up in personal investments.
I suspect that there are even levels of consumption among the 1%…
My uncle owns his own moderately-sized construction company outright, and clears somewhere around a million bucks a year from what I’ve heard. That’s enough to put him in the 1% category. However, their lifestyle hasn’t ever been obnoxious. I mean, they have a house that they bought in about 1962 and added on to (having a construction company has its benefits), and renovated a couple of times. They have a second house in Galveston that they renovated, and then re-renovated after Ike. He’s got a couple of jet-skis, a 25 year old fishing boat, an old pool table, a pretty huge TV (60" or so), nice furniture, custom kitchen, etc… He has a yard service, and a maid who comes a time or two a week. (He’s pushing 80 now, and my aunt passed away a few years back) He wears stuff from Macy’s and Target, and drives a Lincoln.
That’s pretty much the same basic lifestyle as most of the upper end of the upper-middle-class people I went to high school with- the same stuff as the middle class, but just the nicest version commonly available, and ALL of it. So while growing up, one family might have had the huge TV, and another may have had the boat or the jetski, and a third might have taken a big family vacation somewhere expensive, the people on that upper-middle/upper-class border had all of them at the same time.
That said, there’s a level above them, where it starts to be more about conspicuous consumption, and less about just “nice stuff”. These are the people who don’t just buy a house in Galveston, but have a bespoke house built on some other beach. Or who don’t just go on a trip to Italy, but own a villa, and stuff like that. They don’t wear off-the-rack suits or dresses, and have shoes custom-made… that kind of thing.
This is because above a certain income amount, there aren’t really any material improvements in terms of quality of life that can be made, and you have enough money to opt for the ridiculous one, so why not? I mean, I suspect if you’re rich enough, the airplane time-share is probably the most cost-effective option unless you travel a LOT, but if you’re rich enough to afford your own plane, why quibble over half a million here or there?
Is she allowed to even name who her employer is?
Thing is, those mega rich people like to do alot of things in secret. Sometimes its just to keep them and their families safe.
I knew someone who worked as a counselor at a summer camp in Minnesota where they had to sign secrecy agreements and all the kids either went by a nickname or only their first names and they were told not to ask about their parents.
Come to think of it, no. I asked her about her job several times and even went to Thanksgiving at her very nice apartment in Stamford, CT that is paid for by her employer. I asked her casually about her employer a few times but she deflected it quite well. All I know is that she is responsible for the staff of a family that has in the many hundreds of million dollars at least and they just want everything to work without much hassle even if that means calling in a private jet at 3 am.They are paying tremendous money for the ultimate concierge service and that is what she has to ensure that they get.
Yes, there’s sports star rich then there’s team owner rich. (As one sports announcer quipped during the NHL hockey strike a few years ago, “when it’s a fight between millionaires and billionaires, who do you think will win?”)
You can only use one swimming pool or jet or ski villa at a time. The trick is to not be bothered by the trivia of obtaining things, or have to wait for anything. That’s what concierge / majordomo service is for.
So there’s a divide between thosw who pull in, say, a million or two a year and it may end in a few years when you retire or when you sell the company, versus those who have a hundred million and it’s going to make them more money until they die.
But what do you want? Let’s not be greedy. Say, $2M a year until I retire. Set aside $1M for savings, for mortgage payments - that $5M condo will likely cost, say, $350,000 a year in mortgage payments, taxes, condo fees, etc. Put aside $500,000 in investments with Bernie for your retirement. Spend the rest on other necessities - the golf club dues, the car payments and insurance, etc.
So you have $1M for lifestyle choices. That’s $20,000 a week. If you decide to go on a full luxury vacation to Venice for the week, let’s say - top end hotels there cost over $1000 a night, pushing two or three times that in prime season. A first class ticket, according to United.com, from JFK to Venice is $10,000 or so for that cute sleeping cabin over the Atlantic. You can easily spend $200 to $300 at a fancy restaurant. A week like that for two could run over $35,000 all told. So you can see that you would still have to be judicious about how you spend your money - you couldn’t do this sort of thing every week. A week skiing in Colorado might be much cheaper. However, blowing $10,000 on ski or scuba equipment you may use several times over the next few years is not a horrible expense.
OTOH, if you had $5M a year income to blow, that’s $100,000 a week, and such expensive trips frequently on a whim become that much more within reach.
I remember reading the autobiography of the fellow who founded Sony. Unlike the western millionaires in the mold of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, he owned very little of the company. (The banks owned most of it) He mentioned he was “send my kids to boarding school in Switzerland” rich, but not “buy a million-dollar diamond for my wife for the heck of it” rich. To him, that was a higher step on the rich ladder.
I heard an awesome job is to be in charge of some rich guys house. Thats all the maintenance (even rich guys toilets back up) plus some security and personal assistant roles. They like to hire ex-military because they know how to run staff and keep secrets. The big perk is they give such a person use of their property sometimes.
Other such aristocrats in Ancient Rome were sometimes so busy they let their slaves have full run of their emptied rural villas.
Which villas could be very grand houses indeed.
A night at The Plaza in their Legacy Suite, which is not their best suite, is $1,350-$3,400/night. Their cheapest room is $675-$1,100.