The referenced reply is dull. It's very pretentious but just reiterates common knowledge, it doesn't convey any useful information.
For example I wish someone told me about the existence of Miele kitchen equipment before I accidentally rented an apartment of a well-to-do woman. She renovated it for herself but then rented out when circumstances changed.
Similarly it took me a long time to realize just how much better the veneer wood furniture and doors are compared to laminated chipwood. Price is 3-4 times higher but it lasts 5-10 times longer and is much more pleasant to use. Unfortunately you need years to notice such long-term differences, unless someone tells you.
And I'm basically learning to be lower-middle class here. I'm sure there are similar things to know in higher stratas and I'm unlikely to live long enough to find out naturally even if I happen to get the money somehow.
You were a fast collegiate-level runner, became a wealthy financial adviser, who now has three sons who are doing well in high school long distance running.
What do you do? You convince one of your old running buddies, who now coaches elite runners, to coach your son. The son sets the national high school indoor record for the 800m.
Son decides to go pro after graduating high school.
Then Covid19 hits. Access to outdoor 400 tracks is limited. What do you do?
You build an 8 lane 400m track with running surface to match the quality at the site of the Word/US track and field championships. Cost: ~$4M
You hire the best coaches for your kids. Coach needs a place to stay nearby - no problem, buy a townhouse for him to stay at. etc.
It’s funny how emotional responses questions like this become on part of the people answering everything but the question. If some one asks in a sports forum what the best exercises are that pro tennis players do that novices don’t know about you wouldn’t expect the majority of answers being in the line of “Tennis players never experience true love! If all you have is tennis you’ll be depressed!”
I really like this post since it shows how very little there is for the wealthy to buy other than status goods.
The life of the rich, other than status, is very much like the life of upper middle class. The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes.
We have very few items for the rich to buy. Honestly, it is a problem it breaks incentives and it drives the rich more towards status goods which help no one since they are zero sum.
We should have expensive products which actually improve lives.
Buying "things" really is the level 0 of wealth. What matters is that you don't have to sell your time for money, that alone changes your entire existence. Then you have access to better healthcare, education, seeing your kids grow, &c.
That's why a lot of poor people who unlock large amount of money go broke quite fast, they still think like poor people
I'd say it really depends on the mentality of the very rich person
The very wealthy are going to fly private. Upper middle class could swing this on a case-to-case basis, but not regularly and especially if not if they frequently travel
Other than that, the main difference is the very wealthy having a mentality of getting people to "take care of problems" to a much larger extent. For example, routine tasks like cleaning. An upper MC person might have a weekly cleaner at best. But they still have to load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, etc. A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper.
The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. Like having "a lawyer" who they go to for and have known for years. There seems to be much more of a sense of personal relationships / loyalty. Almost like the old feudal oaths.
The answer is out-of-topic because the question ask what is something that ordinary people do not know.They go on a tangent about perspective and power over society, but nothing listed was a thing that I do not know.
like
>Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back.
Funnily, my parents always call back within 60 seconds even midnight, while a certain someone get disowned by their kids.
>For a donation of $100k+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him.
For a donation of 16k you can have a 1 on 1 zoom call with Keanu Reeves. He advertised this pretty well, so "ordinary people" should know this.
At this point, all the riches and riches are on SNS flexing their wealth, I don't think there is anything left that ordinary people just couldn't browse SNS and see what can you buy with those money.
Signalling Status plays a big role in group formation/group maintenance/social cohesion etc.
The larger groups grow, the more complex the group dynamics get, keeping groups of people together and preventing them from disintegrating is one of the most complex problem we face, given all the differences in culture, religion, language, class, personalities, ambitions, values, needs, intelligence, skill, education level, interests etc etc
A short cut frequently used (cause its easy) is using Leisure and Luxury (see Theory of the Leisure Class).
"So you like what I wear, where I stay, what I eat, who my friends are, what toys I have and want to be like me or hang out with me then do what I say". This works pretty well. In fact Veblen's prediction in Theory of the Leisure Class was that since Tech has a tendency to eliminate waste, tech would eventually eliminate the need for a Leisure/Status signalling Class that keeps large groups from unraveling.
But social cohesion of large groups is such a complex problem, society even today requires all kinds of Status Signalling to keep the groups together.
If you find ways to keep groups together without status signalling you are onto something special.
I thought this article would tell me about things that wealthy people buy that those of us who aren’t as rich would never even think about. But in the end, it mostly talked about things that are somewhat obvious like how wealth brings access, influence, and luxury. It was interesting, but not as surprising or revealing as I expected. I guess it’s something we can all imagine to some extent, even if we haven’t experienced it firsthand.
Grew up poor, made it a little in life - could maybe retire now. The things I and the people I grew up with don't know how to do at all can be shocking. People who grew up similarly and ended up in middle class seem to be similar unless they put real time into it:
- how to buy stocks, what ETFs are, what a 401(k) is, etc.
- hiring people to clean your house, do yard work, etc.
- traveling out of the country, or in many cases, how to take a plane to a part of the country that's too far to drive
- how financing works, ranges from personal credit cards to mortgages, and thus what TCO means. The number of people I grew up with who were fine with 12% on a car loan and what that meant to the final cost of the car is flabbergasting
- how to buy high-quality (expensive) stuff vs brand recognition (expensive) stuff
some anecdotes:
- a friend of mine recently did retire after 30 years in the government, wanted to buy stocks, had no idea what a brokerage was
- another guy I know, an airline pilot who grew up in a broken home and ended up with a business degree, figured out how to buy stocks, but didn't know what index funds were or that they exist outside of his 401(k)
- perfectly middle class people who will spend all weekend cleaning their house and doing yard work, and hate it, who thought hiring a cleaning person and lawn mowing guy would be too expensive ($35k-50k/yr)
- a lot of people I know are afraid to travel to non-English speaking countries even if they've been outside of the U.S., they can't fathom that you can get by in most places with English, a translate app, and pointing and smiling. Even tourist friendly places with plenty of English signage and English speaking help like France or Japan are unfathomably exotic
I find this super interesting and something I've thought about a bit in the past. All of these things combined are relatively simple. You could give a decent breakdown of each bullet point within an hour each, with room to dive in deeper if needed. Now with the internet and all the great resources out there, the access is there for most people (in a place like the US) to learn about these.
I think the main problem now is that these are "unknown unknowns". People don't even know to know what a 401k or similar is and thus don't know that there's something to dive deeper into there. That missing piece is very hard to solve.
I've had it myself where I run into something in my career, for example, where I'm introduced to a concept I wasn't aware of that I now use to underpin serious decision making about something like application architecture. Had I never had the opportunity to initially find out about a problem/solution, it would've made it notably harder to get better.
All the things you lists are things I personally associate with familial education. Most of those things were taught to my by my family, having grown up in a middle class home. If my parents hadn't had the opportunity to learn about those, neither would I. It's a familial/potentially class (depending on the situation) based learning opportunity, purely based on the education your family was able to receive (whether formal or not).
School is also a place to inject these concepts (personal finance specifically), and I did have a great experience with the personal finance elective at my high school when I was in 9th grade.
Tangentially, I don't think that's a perfect solution (but still important) because teenagers will absolutely ignore/tune in the info out. When people say they wish that had learned how to do their taxes in high school, I agree in principle and I do think it should be taught, but I also believe most teenagers (at least around me growing up) wouldn't have payed any attention. It doesn't mean we shouldn't teach it, but educating a teen is hard.
> how to buy stocks, what ETFs are, what a 401(k) is, etc.
I've seen this before, and I remain incredulous.
We learned about stocks in 4th grade and did a mock exercise picking stocks and tracking their performance over a few weeks. We did calculations on mortgage interest and investment returns in middle school math class. Every news source has a finance section and talks about stocks regularly. There are advertisements for brokerages on every TV commercial break and everywhere else ads are found. Every company I've ever worked for had a mandatory training about the 401k as part of employee onboarding and usually ongoing mentions at least once a year. There are a zillion personal finance websites, podcasts, blogs and youtube channels.
It seems like if an alien landed in the US or a time traveler arrived here, they'd learn about ETFs and 401ks within the first 24 hours whether they wanted to or not.
People have to be actively, intentionally avoiding learning these things or actively tuning it out or forgetting, because they're dead simple and information about them is incredibly easy to find.
The real cost of hiring people to do stuff for your house is it's actually hella expensive to get licensed and bonded legal employees with references that attest they aren't thieves, and if you don't eventually they steal your shit or they get hurt and sue you for a billion dollars.
I could easily hire people to do it, but I sweat bullets everytime I am guilt tripped into letting a neighbor kid mow the lawn because I know if he gets hurt I'll lose everything (renter's/ homeowners insurance usually doesn't cover unlicensed contractors).
Through some odd circumstances I found myself receiving a lot of catalogs and sales solicitations for a reasonably wealthy person. Most of the stuff was what you'd exoect-- expensive furnishings, clothing, home goods.
The two that were most interesting were the travel-related (guided trips in exotic locales w/ profiles and resumes of the local guides), and oddly specific and highly-focused catalogs (gardening, specific types of home goods). The one that really stands out was a catalog with hundreds of different brushes-- each with a very specific purpose (and many with carrying cases and other accessories). I had no idea there were so many different brushes.
Wealthy people usually get concierge services. You go to a museum as a regular folk, it’s overcrowded and there’s like 20 other people looking at the same art piece you’re looking, trying to get a better shot from it. You visit as a wealthy individual, you get a private tour after hours with a dozen others when the museum is empty with a trained guide who can answer any questions you may have. You can view any art piece at your own pace from every angle you like. This goes on for pretty much every public service out there.
You know how a person on 'average' income might sometimes browse retail sites as displacement activity, while waiting for something/someone or a side-quest etc?
They don't have time to read - say - a lengthy biography about a Civil War general but they can purchase their diary or letters - people who are interested in wealth preservation, especially across generations, are trained to disdain the ephemeral. They like primary documents and depending on their age/interests, cool stuff like first edition comic books or vintage niche Chanel clutch bags.
As impulsive or indulgent as it may seem - eg: I just saw a counterfeit version of Dante's Le Terze De Rime on there for $159,000 USD - the purchase are all investments and as such treated as a tax deductible by your team of accountants. If you purchase a bottle of Romanee St Vivant as an investment but (whoops) drink it - that $16,000 is a business loss. Or maybe a trust fund loss.
And once you start spending at a certain level on sites like those and others, there are extremely nice people who would like nothing more than to invite you to private showings, arrange a private briefing to bring you up to speed with whatever topic you'd like to learn more about or help you select the right gift with which to blow the mind of a business rival or someone you're courting.
I thought that reddit piece was weird. Why would the ultra-wealthy mess around with 'masstige' kitchenware appliances? They wouldn't even have a brand on their dishwasher - it would be commissioned by an architect or interior designer quietly maintained at regular intervals by an appliance engineer who has been either supplied-by your core op-secs team or thoroughly checked out by them etc etc.
> They wouldn't even have a brand on their dishwasher - it would be commissioned by an architect or interior designer quietly maintained at regular intervals by an appliance engineer
I'm not sure that I buy this. It's not simple to make a bespoke appliance like a dishwasher that's better than a very high end mass produced one. Where did you get the idea that this happens from?
> They wouldn't even have a brand on their dishwasher - it would be commissioned by an architect or interior designer quietly maintained at regular intervals by an appliance engineer who has been either supplied-by your core op-secs team or thoroughly checked out by them etc etc.
I _absolutely_ do not buy that very rich people have custom dishwashers. Like, _why_? There's no way it could be as good as a mass-produced unit; you benefit from massive economies of scale on the design, there, along with lessons learned from previous models.
> They don't have time to read - say - a lengthy biography
If theres one thing all the wealthy people in my life have it is in fact _time_, which in turn means that they take their leisure activities really, really seriously.
"Contemplate the objects of this people's praise, survey their standards, ponder their ideas and judgments, and then tell me whether it is not most evident, from their very notion of the desirable and the excellent, that greatness, and goodness, and sanctity, and sublimity, and truth are unknown to them; and that they not only do not pursue, but do not even admire, those high attributes of the Divine Nature. This is what I am insisting on, not what they actually do or what they are, but what they revere, what they adore, what their gods are. Their god is mammon; I do not mean to say that all seek to be wealthy, but that all bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. They measure happiness by wealth; and by wealth they measure respectability. Numbers, I say, there are who never dream that they shall ever be rich themselves, but who still at the sight of wealth feel an involuntary reverence and awe, just as if a rich man must be a good man. They like to be noticed by some particular rich man; they like on some occasion to have spoken with him; they like to know those who know him, to be intimate with his dependants, to have entered his house, nay, to know him by sight. Not, I repeat, that it ever comes into their mind that the like wealth will one day be theirs; not that they see the wealth, for the man who has it may dress, and live, and look like other men; not that they expect to gain some benefit from it: no, theirs is a disinterested homage, it is a homage resulting from an honest, genuine, hearty admiration of wealth for its own sake, such as that pure love which holy men feel for the Maker of all; it is a homage resulting from a profound faith in wealth, from the intimate sentiment of their hearts, that, however a man may look,—poor, mean, starved, decrepit, vulgar; or again, though he may be ignorant, or diseased, or feeble-minded, though he have the character of being a tyrant or a profligate, yet, if he be rich, he differs from all others; if he be rich, he has a gift, a spell, an omnipotence;—that with wealth he may do all things."[0]
There is a reason that money specifically, and not sex or knowledge or socializing or other good things that can get out of hand, is worshiped as a god by so many.
Brings to mind the famous Joseph Heller quote: "At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'"
The other responses are correct, but they left out one important thing. People like to feel important. People like to go places other people can't. People get off on exclusivity. If you have an empty field no one will care. You put a big wall up and signs saying keep out all of a sudden people will risk their life climbing the wall just to get to that empty field. It's human nature.
Most likely for lobbying purposes. You might want to support or block a bill, resolve an issue that affects you, or push for legal changes or permits that benefit your business. It's about influencing decisions that have a direct impact on your interests. And it doesn't even need to be business related; sometimes it's just like calling the building manager when something is annoying you and you're bored.
The other answers are practical (e.g. lobbying) but I’ll give a less practical angle: proximity to uniqueness and power.
There are only 100 U.S. senators at a time. In contrast, Forbes estimates there are about 900 billionaires in the U.S. alone this year.
And it is extremely difficult to become a Senator. Many very rich people have tried and failed to win election to the U.S. Senate. It’s not as straight forward as success in business. Politics is somewhat like magic. It’s extremely difficult to predict what is going to attract votes when. A lot of very confident rich people have been humbled this way.
Politicians are also demonstrably popular in ways the very rich are not. You only become a Senator if hundreds of thousands, to millions, of individual citizens vote for you (depending on the state). Congress overall is unpopular, but individual politicians are fairly popular to their own constituencies. Again, this is not something you can just buy, and many very rich people are thirsty for this kind of public validation.
Finally, Senators have real power, at least collectively. If enough Senators agree on something, the police will make you do it. Rich people want to shape those decisions if they can, yes, but many also like the feeling of being “close” to that kind of power. Since most will never have it themselves.
The above goes for the president even more. And for many state governors too.
Generally for the influence it can give them. If you don’t like how something is happening if your city/state/country, talking to those people can give you the power to get it changed.
Having friends in high places can also help if you happen to run into legal issues. Though there is growing scrutiny around this.
Having worked at a few 100~1000 person companies run by billionaires, this tracks.
Most of the difference in lifestyle is the quantity and quality of housing they can afford, and having people to take care of problems for them. But they ALL universally have messed up personal lives with multiple messy divorces, embarrassing affairs, NYPost Page Six appearances, etc.
The one thing you'd think it gives them is freedom, but they all pretty much end up working til they die so I don't know. I'm not sure if the money breaks something in their brain, or their broken brain is what leads them to chase the money. Likely some of both!
There's some level where you can afford 2-3 nice residences, flying private, and not lose your damn mind. I've seen some of the billionaire's lieutenants achieve this balance. Basically being able to be fabulously rich but anonymous. Like the Bill Murray quote about people who want to be rich & famous should try just being rich first.
I think these guys I've seen are probably in the bucket the reddit OP marks "Net worth of $30mm-$100mm". Adjust that upwards for inflation and also to account for many of these people being in VHCOL areas so maybe it's like $50-200mm.
But I'm curious what the answer would look like if every strata in it was not "things you can buy" but "things you can do with the money" ... if the "IMPACT" section was delineated at each level.
One of the things I envy the most about my rich friends is their capacity to be generous. They can materialize their compassion on a regular basis without having to balance their budget.
I'd like to see what that looks like at each of these wealth levels.
(One funny thing I noticed is that I have multiple friends with virtual personal assistants now, at middle class levels of weath/entrepreneurship... definitely not a rich man's thing anymore.)
I think much of human history (not just recent US history, but that's a prominent example on folks' minds these days) proves that the biggest differentiator that the wealthy can buy is complete immunity from any sort of legal consequences.
Even if you don't already live in a high-corruption society, you can either spend some of your wealth introducing that corruption (which pays dividends), or you can just go somewhere else that's already high-corruption and bribe your way into immediate permanent residence.
Live in a democracy? Just buy public opinion by leveraging your wealth into a highly-profitable propaganda network, which will also give you an appealing platform for opportunist would-be government officials, who will then owe you, making your bribes cheaper. Maybe you can even just directly blackmail or entrap them along the way, so you don't even have to pay.
Live in an autocracy? Buy enough weaponry and PMCs to insulate yourself or even rival the government itself, or just buy the autocrat's favor directly.
Live in an oligarchy? Psh, your work is already done. Just use the system as it's designed: to be exploited by your vast wealth.
Sam Bankman-Fried believed this, and it turned out not to be that simple. But it's very noticeable how the US is trying to set up a system of protected Party insiders.
I saw that Reddit post a while back. It’s interesting, but I wonder how much it really applies to all of the super wealthy. There are certainly billionaires and centimillionaires who reject that lifestyle out of hand (I know I certainly would). The average person doesn’t know their name and they prefer it that way. Even the local billionaire near where I lived for a while was pretty modest, all considered (his kids not so much). I was surprised to see him and his family sit down next to mine at a restaurant one day. Could overhear him talking about the local farmers market and commenting about the tomatoes of the season haha
That particular Reddit comment [2015-01-13] overlaps with a recent Graham Stephan video that explains what life is like at each order of magnitude of net worth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAPhN6o3e3o (19m57s) [2025-04-28]
[+] [-] alexey-salmin|9 months ago|reply
For example I wish someone told me about the existence of Miele kitchen equipment before I accidentally rented an apartment of a well-to-do woman. She renovated it for herself but then rented out when circumstances changed.
Similarly it took me a long time to realize just how much better the veneer wood furniture and doors are compared to laminated chipwood. Price is 3-4 times higher but it lasts 5-10 times longer and is much more pleasant to use. Unfortunately you need years to notice such long-term differences, unless someone tells you.
And I'm basically learning to be lower-middle class here. I'm sure there are similar things to know in higher stratas and I'm unlikely to live long enough to find out naturally even if I happen to get the money somehow.
[+] [-] canucker2016|9 months ago|reply
What do you do? You convince one of your old running buddies, who now coaches elite runners, to coach your son. The son sets the national high school indoor record for the 800m.
Son decides to go pro after graduating high school.
Then Covid19 hits. Access to outdoor 400 tracks is limited. What do you do?
You build an 8 lane 400m track with running surface to match the quality at the site of the Word/US track and field championships. Cost: ~$4M
You hire the best coaches for your kids. Coach needs a place to stay nearby - no problem, buy a townhouse for him to stay at. etc.
see https://www.letsrun.com/news/2025/05/how-josh-hoey-went-from...
[+] [-] dehrmann|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] awongh|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] florbnit|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] HardCodedBias|9 months ago|reply
The life of the rich, other than status, is very much like the life of upper middle class. The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes.
We have very few items for the rich to buy. Honestly, it is a problem it breaks incentives and it drives the rich more towards status goods which help no one since they are zero sum.
We should have expensive products which actually improve lives.
[+] [-] lm28469|9 months ago|reply
That's why a lot of poor people who unlock large amount of money go broke quite fast, they still think like poor people
[+] [-] SJC_Hacker|9 months ago|reply
The very wealthy are going to fly private. Upper middle class could swing this on a case-to-case basis, but not regularly and especially if not if they frequently travel
Other than that, the main difference is the very wealthy having a mentality of getting people to "take care of problems" to a much larger extent. For example, routine tasks like cleaning. An upper MC person might have a weekly cleaner at best. But they still have to load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, etc. A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper.
The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. Like having "a lawyer" who they go to for and have known for years. There seems to be much more of a sense of personal relationships / loyalty. Almost like the old feudal oaths.
[+] [-] 124123124|9 months ago|reply
like
>Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back.
Funnily, my parents always call back within 60 seconds even midnight, while a certain someone get disowned by their kids.
>For a donation of $100k+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him.
For a donation of 16k you can have a 1 on 1 zoom call with Keanu Reeves. He advertised this pretty well, so "ordinary people" should know this.
At this point, all the riches and riches are on SNS flexing their wealth, I don't think there is anything left that ordinary people just couldn't browse SNS and see what can you buy with those money.
[+] [-] lwo32k|9 months ago|reply
Signalling Status plays a big role in group formation/group maintenance/social cohesion etc.
The larger groups grow, the more complex the group dynamics get, keeping groups of people together and preventing them from disintegrating is one of the most complex problem we face, given all the differences in culture, religion, language, class, personalities, ambitions, values, needs, intelligence, skill, education level, interests etc etc
A short cut frequently used (cause its easy) is using Leisure and Luxury (see Theory of the Leisure Class).
"So you like what I wear, where I stay, what I eat, who my friends are, what toys I have and want to be like me or hang out with me then do what I say". This works pretty well. In fact Veblen's prediction in Theory of the Leisure Class was that since Tech has a tendency to eliminate waste, tech would eventually eliminate the need for a Leisure/Status signalling Class that keeps large groups from unraveling.
But social cohesion of large groups is such a complex problem, society even today requires all kinds of Status Signalling to keep the groups together.
If you find ways to keep groups together without status signalling you are onto something special.
[+] [-] Elaris|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] InfiniteLoup|9 months ago|reply
In case you want to look those up, I know for sure that FaceGym masks were popular with the affluent demographic for a while.
[+] [-] bane|9 months ago|reply
- how to buy stocks, what ETFs are, what a 401(k) is, etc.
- hiring people to clean your house, do yard work, etc.
- traveling out of the country, or in many cases, how to take a plane to a part of the country that's too far to drive
- how financing works, ranges from personal credit cards to mortgages, and thus what TCO means. The number of people I grew up with who were fine with 12% on a car loan and what that meant to the final cost of the car is flabbergasting
- how to buy high-quality (expensive) stuff vs brand recognition (expensive) stuff
some anecdotes:
- a friend of mine recently did retire after 30 years in the government, wanted to buy stocks, had no idea what a brokerage was
- another guy I know, an airline pilot who grew up in a broken home and ended up with a business degree, figured out how to buy stocks, but didn't know what index funds were or that they exist outside of his 401(k)
- perfectly middle class people who will spend all weekend cleaning their house and doing yard work, and hate it, who thought hiring a cleaning person and lawn mowing guy would be too expensive ($35k-50k/yr)
- a lot of people I know are afraid to travel to non-English speaking countries even if they've been outside of the U.S., they can't fathom that you can get by in most places with English, a translate app, and pointing and smiling. Even tourist friendly places with plenty of English signage and English speaking help like France or Japan are unfathomably exotic
[+] [-] jjice|9 months ago|reply
I think the main problem now is that these are "unknown unknowns". People don't even know to know what a 401k or similar is and thus don't know that there's something to dive deeper into there. That missing piece is very hard to solve.
I've had it myself where I run into something in my career, for example, where I'm introduced to a concept I wasn't aware of that I now use to underpin serious decision making about something like application architecture. Had I never had the opportunity to initially find out about a problem/solution, it would've made it notably harder to get better.
All the things you lists are things I personally associate with familial education. Most of those things were taught to my by my family, having grown up in a middle class home. If my parents hadn't had the opportunity to learn about those, neither would I. It's a familial/potentially class (depending on the situation) based learning opportunity, purely based on the education your family was able to receive (whether formal or not).
School is also a place to inject these concepts (personal finance specifically), and I did have a great experience with the personal finance elective at my high school when I was in 9th grade.
Tangentially, I don't think that's a perfect solution (but still important) because teenagers will absolutely ignore/tune in the info out. When people say they wish that had learned how to do their taxes in high school, I agree in principle and I do think it should be taught, but I also believe most teenagers (at least around me growing up) wouldn't have payed any attention. It doesn't mean we shouldn't teach it, but educating a teen is hard.
[+] [-] marcuskane2|9 months ago|reply
I've seen this before, and I remain incredulous.
We learned about stocks in 4th grade and did a mock exercise picking stocks and tracking their performance over a few weeks. We did calculations on mortgage interest and investment returns in middle school math class. Every news source has a finance section and talks about stocks regularly. There are advertisements for brokerages on every TV commercial break and everywhere else ads are found. Every company I've ever worked for had a mandatory training about the 401k as part of employee onboarding and usually ongoing mentions at least once a year. There are a zillion personal finance websites, podcasts, blogs and youtube channels.
It seems like if an alien landed in the US or a time traveler arrived here, they'd learn about ETFs and 401ks within the first 24 hours whether they wanted to or not.
People have to be actively, intentionally avoiding learning these things or actively tuning it out or forgetting, because they're dead simple and information about them is incredibly easy to find.
[+] [-] ty6853|9 months ago|reply
I could easily hire people to do it, but I sweat bullets everytime I am guilt tripped into letting a neighbor kid mow the lawn because I know if he gets hurt I'll lose everything (renter's/ homeowners insurance usually doesn't cover unlicensed contractors).
[+] [-] flerchin|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|9 months ago|reply
The two that were most interesting were the travel-related (guided trips in exotic locales w/ profiles and resumes of the local guides), and oddly specific and highly-focused catalogs (gardening, specific types of home goods). The one that really stands out was a catalog with hundreds of different brushes-- each with a very specific purpose (and many with carrying cases and other accessories). I had no idea there were so many different brushes.
[+] [-] elorant|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] notsydonia|9 months ago|reply
Ultra-wealthy people also do that but they're trawling through Sothebys or Christies - eg: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&-manuscripts/b...
They don't have time to read - say - a lengthy biography about a Civil War general but they can purchase their diary or letters - people who are interested in wealth preservation, especially across generations, are trained to disdain the ephemeral. They like primary documents and depending on their age/interests, cool stuff like first edition comic books or vintage niche Chanel clutch bags.
As impulsive or indulgent as it may seem - eg: I just saw a counterfeit version of Dante's Le Terze De Rime on there for $159,000 USD - the purchase are all investments and as such treated as a tax deductible by your team of accountants. If you purchase a bottle of Romanee St Vivant as an investment but (whoops) drink it - that $16,000 is a business loss. Or maybe a trust fund loss.
And once you start spending at a certain level on sites like those and others, there are extremely nice people who would like nothing more than to invite you to private showings, arrange a private briefing to bring you up to speed with whatever topic you'd like to learn more about or help you select the right gift with which to blow the mind of a business rival or someone you're courting.
I thought that reddit piece was weird. Why would the ultra-wealthy mess around with 'masstige' kitchenware appliances? They wouldn't even have a brand on their dishwasher - it would be commissioned by an architect or interior designer quietly maintained at regular intervals by an appliance engineer who has been either supplied-by your core op-secs team or thoroughly checked out by them etc etc.
[+] [-] esperent|9 months ago|reply
I'm not sure that I buy this. It's not simple to make a bespoke appliance like a dishwasher that's better than a very high end mass produced one. Where did you get the idea that this happens from?
[+] [-] rsynnott|9 months ago|reply
I _absolutely_ do not buy that very rich people have custom dishwashers. Like, _why_? There's no way it could be as good as a mass-produced unit; you benefit from massive economies of scale on the design, there, along with lessons learned from previous models.
[+] [-] fergie|9 months ago|reply
If theres one thing all the wealthy people in my life have it is in fact _time_, which in turn means that they take their leisure activities really, really seriously.
[+] [-] geye1234|9 months ago|reply
"Contemplate the objects of this people's praise, survey their standards, ponder their ideas and judgments, and then tell me whether it is not most evident, from their very notion of the desirable and the excellent, that greatness, and goodness, and sanctity, and sublimity, and truth are unknown to them; and that they not only do not pursue, but do not even admire, those high attributes of the Divine Nature. This is what I am insisting on, not what they actually do or what they are, but what they revere, what they adore, what their gods are. Their god is mammon; I do not mean to say that all seek to be wealthy, but that all bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. They measure happiness by wealth; and by wealth they measure respectability. Numbers, I say, there are who never dream that they shall ever be rich themselves, but who still at the sight of wealth feel an involuntary reverence and awe, just as if a rich man must be a good man. They like to be noticed by some particular rich man; they like on some occasion to have spoken with him; they like to know those who know him, to be intimate with his dependants, to have entered his house, nay, to know him by sight. Not, I repeat, that it ever comes into their mind that the like wealth will one day be theirs; not that they see the wealth, for the man who has it may dress, and live, and look like other men; not that they expect to gain some benefit from it: no, theirs is a disinterested homage, it is a homage resulting from an honest, genuine, hearty admiration of wealth for its own sake, such as that pure love which holy men feel for the Maker of all; it is a homage resulting from a profound faith in wealth, from the intimate sentiment of their hearts, that, however a man may look,—poor, mean, starved, decrepit, vulgar; or again, though he may be ignorant, or diseased, or feeble-minded, though he have the character of being a tyrant or a profligate, yet, if he be rich, he differs from all others; if he be rich, he has a gift, a spell, an omnipotence;—that with wealth he may do all things."[0]
There is a reason that money specifically, and not sex or knowledge or socializing or other good things that can get out of hand, is worshiped as a god by so many.
[0] https://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse5.htm...
[+] [-] dctoedt|9 months ago|reply
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10651136-at-a-party-given-b...
[+] [-] ccppurcell|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] LandR|9 months ago|reply
I mostly can't because I have to work and getting 4-8 weeks off at a time is impossible.
[+] [-] amelius|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] o0o0o|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingtoilet|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mikedelfino|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|9 months ago|reply
There are only 100 U.S. senators at a time. In contrast, Forbes estimates there are about 900 billionaires in the U.S. alone this year.
And it is extremely difficult to become a Senator. Many very rich people have tried and failed to win election to the U.S. Senate. It’s not as straight forward as success in business. Politics is somewhat like magic. It’s extremely difficult to predict what is going to attract votes when. A lot of very confident rich people have been humbled this way.
Politicians are also demonstrably popular in ways the very rich are not. You only become a Senator if hundreds of thousands, to millions, of individual citizens vote for you (depending on the state). Congress overall is unpopular, but individual politicians are fairly popular to their own constituencies. Again, this is not something you can just buy, and many very rich people are thirsty for this kind of public validation.
Finally, Senators have real power, at least collectively. If enough Senators agree on something, the police will make you do it. Rich people want to shape those decisions if they can, yes, but many also like the feeling of being “close” to that kind of power. Since most will never have it themselves.
The above goes for the president even more. And for many state governors too.
[+] [-] al_borland|9 months ago|reply
Having friends in high places can also help if you happen to run into legal issues. Though there is growing scrutiny around this.
[+] [-] sumedh|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] steveBK123|9 months ago|reply
Most of the difference in lifestyle is the quantity and quality of housing they can afford, and having people to take care of problems for them. But they ALL universally have messed up personal lives with multiple messy divorces, embarrassing affairs, NYPost Page Six appearances, etc.
The one thing you'd think it gives them is freedom, but they all pretty much end up working til they die so I don't know. I'm not sure if the money breaks something in their brain, or their broken brain is what leads them to chase the money. Likely some of both!
There's some level where you can afford 2-3 nice residences, flying private, and not lose your damn mind. I've seen some of the billionaire's lieutenants achieve this balance. Basically being able to be fabulously rich but anonymous. Like the Bill Murray quote about people who want to be rich & famous should try just being rich first.
I think these guys I've seen are probably in the bucket the reddit OP marks "Net worth of $30mm-$100mm". Adjust that upwards for inflation and also to account for many of these people being in VHCOL areas so maybe it's like $50-200mm.
[+] [-] ofcourseyoudo|9 months ago|reply
But I'm curious what the answer would look like if every strata in it was not "things you can buy" but "things you can do with the money" ... if the "IMPACT" section was delineated at each level.
One of the things I envy the most about my rich friends is their capacity to be generous. They can materialize their compassion on a regular basis without having to balance their budget.
I'd like to see what that looks like at each of these wealth levels.
(One funny thing I noticed is that I have multiple friends with virtual personal assistants now, at middle class levels of weath/entrepreneurship... definitely not a rich man's thing anymore.)
[+] [-] Havoc|9 months ago|reply
To me that suggests rich people buy privacy and the only info available is some random reddit comment
[+] [-] kazinator|9 months ago|reply
The top comment mentions some things wealthy people buy, but nothing ordinary people don't know about.
[+] [-] unknown|9 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] ubertaco|9 months ago|reply
Even if you don't already live in a high-corruption society, you can either spend some of your wealth introducing that corruption (which pays dividends), or you can just go somewhere else that's already high-corruption and bribe your way into immediate permanent residence.
Live in a democracy? Just buy public opinion by leveraging your wealth into a highly-profitable propaganda network, which will also give you an appealing platform for opportunist would-be government officials, who will then owe you, making your bribes cheaper. Maybe you can even just directly blackmail or entrap them along the way, so you don't even have to pay.
Live in an autocracy? Buy enough weaponry and PMCs to insulate yourself or even rival the government itself, or just buy the autocrat's favor directly.
Live in an oligarchy? Psh, your work is already done. Just use the system as it's designed: to be exploited by your vast wealth.
[+] [-] pjc50|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway713|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|9 months ago|reply