Ever wonder what it would be like to be filthy rich? Just have money to literally poo poo away? As I do not have loads of money, it makes me a little frustrated that some people are so dumb with theirs. Take a gander at these 24 stories about people with unlimited bank accounts who aren’t afraid to show it.
1. Don’t mind if I do
During college I worked at a place selling very high end patio furniture in the richest DC suburb. One day a Washington Redskin comes in and buys a custom patio furniture set for his deck and pool area, total cost for 10 pieces was over $24,000. He paid cash and I set up delivery for 6 weeks later because the furniture had to be made at the manufacturer. Three weeks later he was cut by the team. I called when the order came in and he said ‘Oh, I’m in the Caribbean now, think I’m selling that house, think I’m going to retire…you like the furniture?’ Me: ‘Yeah.’ Him, ‘You can have it, thanks for being a fan.’ 14 years later and I still have that furniture and the fanciest patio setup in my middle class neighborhood!
2. Strawberries
I work for a wealthy man and he once had me fly on a private jet to the other side of the country to pick up 6 perfect heirloom strawberries that cost 100$ per six pack. They were placed in Chinese silk hand molded box so each strawberry wouldn’t be jostled during the trip.
He ate 3 and gave me the rest for my trouble… My lips parted as I slowly brought the impossibly red berry to my mouth. It’s scent was too powerful for something that small and the aroma filled my head until nothing else remained. Gingerly placing my teeth on the seed covered tip I took the smallest of bites. The explosion of flavor was overpowering and each time my teeth broke the flesh of that perfect berry an impossible amount of juice gushed out. As I sat there slack jawed with juice crippling down my chin my employer looked at me in disgust and said ‘you can go home now.’ Not gunna lie. It was the most amazing strawberry experience I have ever had. They probably cost him 25k all said and done between flights and my wage.
3. A violin, for those who don’t know
One of my dad’s friends from high school is unbelievably rich and a collector. He owns a legitimate Stradivarius. Eventually, he decided he wanted to learn how to actually play it, so he signed up for lessons and brought a Stradivarius with him down to the local music shop to meet his instructor and have his first lesson.
I can only imagine the look on his instructor’s face…
4. It’s broken, so….
My boss was a military liaison in Dubai and told me a story about a guy he became friends with there.
One night they are driving back from a night of debauchery in this guy’s brand new Ferrari and it breaks down. He pulls over to the side of the road gets out and starts walking while calling his people to come get him/bring him another car. He doesn’t mention anything about the broken Ferrari so my boss asks him about it. His response was ‘what about it? It’s broken. I’ll just buy another.’
5. Lifestyles of the rich and the famous
I used to be a nanny to celebrities and high profile New York financial families. Some highlights:
-The CEO and his model wife of a famous athletic wear company paid for an entire wardrobe for me to keep at their home because they didn’t want ‘outside clothes’ contaminating their house or infant. I was to take my street clothes into the bathroom near the entrance, take them off, change into my ‘house’ clothing, and then only change back after I was finished with the baby for the day and was getting ready to leave. They also had a safe of cash that I was to use exclusively for my meals, drinks and take out food, and then leave the receipts in the safe.
-The famous fashion designer who paid for a wardrobe for me to wear in the house that was entirely black and white…….so I would match the home decor. Didn’t matter what brands of clothing, but everything had to be pure black or white, no patterns or other colors. This included accessories, sneakers and socks.
-The family who flew me to Antigua from Manhattan for a long weekend to watch their three kids because the parents wanted to ‘relax.’ They had a private island compound near a famous male celebrity, and the island only was accessible by private plane or private yacht.
-The CEO of a international firm that was married with four children and each child had their own nanny (I was the nanny to the infant), and the couple paid for apartments in Paris and Manhattan for each of us nannies. The family spend 6 months in Paris and 6 months in New York every year.
-The 20-something year old gentleman from a millionaire family who owned a penthouse on Park Avenue, and I was hired to work as his housekeeper after he broke his leg in a skiing accident and needed help with daily upkeep and cleaning. When his clothes needed to be washed or the dishes cleaned, instead of me cleaning them, I was instructed to throw them away and take the credit cards and just buy new ones. I was yelled at because I didn’t spend ENOUGH on the dishes.
-Working birthday parties for young children of the elite, I’ve seen entire hotels, stadiums, professional sports training facilities like equestrian and gymnastics places completely rented for an entire day just for a toddler party.
-A depressing one: Was interviewed for a nanny position for two sweet twin girls about eight years old. The previous nanny interviewed me, and I was puzzled and asked where the parents were. The parents lived in Europe, the twins lived in a mansion in New York. As the nanny I would have access to all bank accounts and credit cards, and basically raise them in the mansion and take them to school, appointments, sports, etc. I would have my own black AmEx (this was around 2004), and my own floor of the home. I would call the parents in Europe if there were any major issues. This is how the girls had been living for years. No idea if they ever saw their parents.
6. 3rd time’s the charm
I had an obscenely wealthy kid in my graduating class. His parents bought him a brand new Range Rover on his 16th birthday and he crashed it into a school bus. They got him a new one and he crashed it road racing. They got him a new one and he got a DUI and finally the police took away his license
7. “Only”
I had a client who bought a $175,000 watch for his 17 year old son as a graduation present. Son didn’t want it so he gave it to his other son who was 10 years old.
A different client went into our store with his mistress to buy his wife a $50,000 bag….mistress wanted one, too. Said no and told her she’s only allowed the $8,000 bag.
8. I hope you got commission off that one
So, this is obscene, but not really in a hugely bad way. Many moons ago I worked at a cable company. This guy calls in because his internet sucks. Sadly, there was about nothing we could do about it as his home was out in the boonies. We could only get him internet through a wireless tower, and those things will have connection hiccups if a butterfly passes by. He asks us how much it’d cost to run a wired line to his house. At first, we assumed he was either:
a) stupid
or b) crazyTurns out he was serious. We got a contract put together in a few days and he paid for a new line to his place, which let us run connections to a few other houses in the area. I can’t remember if it was a 7 figure or 6 figure deal, but that stuff wasn’t cheap.
9. Should have kept it
I met the CEO of the company I work for and I complimented his watch. The first thing he did is take it off a day let me wear it. Come to find out after doing a little research, the watch he was wearing is a Patek Philippe that cost 1.75 million. That watch alone cost more than every asset in my family for the past 4 generations.
10. Record sales day
I work in a shoe store. I once had a customer walk in and say ‘give me one pair of every men’s shoe in a size 10.’ He didn’t want to try them on or look at them, he just needed some shoes for each of his houses.
I work on commission so it was a huge sale for me. But wow, man. That was about 140 pairs of shoes.
11. No sense whatsoever
I work for a luxury home builder. Very big, very expensive houses. We are building a home for this guy & he calls freaking out at me because AT&T would only provide him with 9 DVRs when he needs 11. They would provide him with more, but he would need to open a second account to do so. I don’t know why, I guess they had some kind of weird limit at the time. I’m the CTO of the homebuilder, so he expected me to get AT&T to change this policy so he could have a TV with DVR in every bathroom as well as the normal TV-viewing rooms. I obviously couldn’t do this, so he cancelled his contract with us thru his lawyer & never spoke to us again. His deposit was non-refundable, in fact we had already spent most of the money on the initial part of the build. So he walked away from over $100,000 we wouldn’t give him back without ever saying a word to us. It was no biggie to him I guess. It also made NO SENSE.
12. That’s a lot of bars
A party at the CEO’s house for Halloween. Insanity. I thought I was going to get kicked out of the neighborhood because I was only driving a 30k car, not a 300k car. Anything you can think of, he had at this party – staff with signature cocktails at the door, a fully staffed bar for liquor, a fully staffed bar for wine, an entire table made of ice with ice shot glasses and ten different vodkas. He was wearing a costume made of leather that his wife commissioned for him, handmade in France. The 400 yard bridge to his private lake was strung up with extra lights, and the dock had a separate bar for those who wanted to sit on the lake.
13. Star treatment
I went to a birthday party in 3rd grade. Every girl in the 3rd grade was invited. So 80 girls were picked up in limos, taken to build a bear where we could choose any bear, then we all got manicures and pedicures, we went to Red Robin for dinner, and limoed back to her mansion for a sleepover.
I will never attend a party that fancy ever again.
14. I’m so stealing this idea for my own daughter
I live in oil country and my daughter had quite the experience going to a birthday party in kindergarten. The little girl’s family had rented a dance studio, had bathrobes made for each little girl with their names embroidered on it, sleep masks, slippers and a spa bag consisting of a bunch of nail polishes and bath bombs. Estheticians were hired to provide a spa experience for twenty-five little girls and the parents were given bottles of wine as ‘treat bags for mommies’ as we came to pick up our kids. My daughter’s party at the arcade with pizza looked ghetto in comparison, lol.
15. This is a missed opportunity to get other stuff, right?
Lived in the international dorms in college. First week of school move in happens and you get to meet a bunch of people. One of the people I met was this girl from Singapore. She’s pretty cool and whatnot, but after a few weeks she realizes that to get around she needs a car, as public transport BLOWS. So, naturally, she calls her parents to tell them that she needs a car. No biggie.
She tells them that she needs a Mercedes S class. hmm, okay. Nice. But remember, she’s from Singapore. If you know anything about Singapore it’s that cars cost anywhere from 6-9x what they do in the US. Casually, her parents wire her enough money to get an S class….. in Singapore.
Girl gets $650,000 wired to her account, not knowing that it cost 6x less here. She goes to the dealership then comes back in an hour with no car. I asked her what happened, and she says ‘oh, it’s getting delivered.’ Sure enough, 2 days later a brand new car shows up, except it’s no S class. It’s a Lamborghini Murcielago. Touche, well played.
I later find out she doesn’t know how to drive, so she hired a chauffeur to drive her around. She would sit in the passenger side of her own lambo and be driven places. What made it more hilarious was that the chauffeur would actually wear a black jacket and hat.
16. hmmmmmm
I was helping an owner rent his apartment, which is an investment property. It’s a 2,500 sq ft condo with 4 balconies and 360 degree views of midtown east in Manhattan asking for $15,000/month.
Rented it for 6 months upfront with option to renew to someone who has ties to oil families in the Middle East. The person never moved in.
17. “She just nods” lol
I dated a gal in Manhattan, didn’t know until about six months in that her dad was extremely wealthy. We went to his UES apartment one night, first thing I see in the foyer is a cool painting, look closer and see it is a Picasso, say ‘wait, is this…?’ And she just nods. It was the cheapest painting in the place.
18. 2 rich roomies
I’ve had 2 roommates who were obscenely rich.
The first one was from a rich Russian family. As in, went to an elite boarding school with ambassador and actor kids and some elite equestrian program.
Parents hired people to help her move into our apartment. She spent money so lavishly, it was incredible. Buying whatever caught her eye and losing interest. She had this incredible brand name clothing and shoe collection that took up the entirety of our shared closet space.
It was great. I got to eat her food, she would buy alcohol to try it and I would finish it off. She’d let me borrow her clothes. She was really a nice girl, just obscenely rich. She eventually dropped out halfway cause she couldn’t handle the stress of school (not being catered to by professors) so I got to live in a single the rest of the year (she was still paying for it and never bothered to find another sub!).
Next roommate was rich girl heir to some prestigious hospital or medical group in China. She had a spending budget of like $500 a week, which she would spend on sneakers/shoes. Our apartment had a bi-weekly maid service organized by her parents to clean up for us. All her clothes were taken weekly to be steam cleaned. She also spent a lot of money on alcohol that I was more than happy to finish off for her.
They had set up some weekly food delivery with a gourmet hipster food company, and I basically never had to shop for food that year. I got to eat fancy pasta, cheeses, pâté, pastries, avocados all the time, and heirloom versions of vegetables. Also a lot of quinoa and weird grains.
She was also a great roommate. Didn’t have much in common and we fell out of touch when we graduated. But I did have 2 years of mooching off rich elites when I was in college.
19. Where else would they play?
Family I know bought the $3 million house next door so they could knock it down for a tennis court.
20. Expensive shoes
I was driving for Uber in a college town and picked up a group from one of the richer frat houses to take them to a club. The girls were discussing how one of their friends was upset and went on a huge shoe shopping spree where each pair cost roughly $2,000 except for one. This one pair costed $7,000. One of the girls casually expresses that ‘$7,000 is really not a bad price to pay for shoes, they should’ve just been a little bit prettier. I would’ve paid $5,000 for them.’
Why they called an Uber instead of a limo, I don’t know.
21. The wrong color
My junior year of college, I was the unofficial tutor of an English major. Her dad owned a chain of banks. She didn’t want Dad to know that she was basically illiterate, but she had already filled out the paperwork to let Dad view her grades online. He was constantly on her to improve, but he would also be able to see tutoring logs, so she came up with our ‘unofficial’ arrangement. I tutored her- extensively. I basically taught to read. And in exchange, she bought me clothes and liquor and things that her Dad wouldn’t notice on his card as being usual, but I could pawn them for cash if I needed.
That’s not the crazy part.
For Christmas, she told her parents that her car was ‘old’. It was a top of the line Mercedes, with a custom interior and it was less than twelve months old.
Her parents told her no, that there was nothing wrong with her car and she could keep it, ‘at least until she graduated.’ She was distraught that she might have to keep the, ‘piece of junk’ for at least another four years, so she hatched a plan.
She refused to drive. If she had to be driven somewhere, she made one of her ‘peasant’ friends drive her and took pictures to show her parents how much she was suffering. Although I refused to give her a ride, she apparently staged photos with my beaten up Ford that was two decades old and held together by duct tape and good luck. In the photos, she was doing that fake Instagram-crying where the mascara and eyeliner run perfectly together and it’s clearly an art shot that in no way indicates that someone is upset. Yeah.
Her parents caved, and on Christmas morning the students that remained on campus were treated to the sight of a sleek Lamborghini with a huge red velvet bow delivered to her dorm. Campus security surrounded the whole affair to keep us poor people from touching it.
She came to the door, yawning and stretching dramatically like she had just been woken up (with perfect curls and makeup) and takes one step out the door towards her gift. Then shrieks like she’s been shot straight through, whirls around, slams the door behind her, and screams into her phone loud enough for the crowd to hear, ‘It’s the wrong color!’
On New Years, her new car arrived, in the proper color.
22. Big spender
We owned a karaoke service in Las Vegas. Got a call one day at 730pm from a party planner we often worked with.
They wanted us to be at the Venetian in 1.5 hours for a 4 hour event. ‘Price is not an issue.’
We gave them a decent last minute deal ($2000).
Turns out this was for a private gambling club. They had a special room with the big table games set up.
Minimum buy in just to attend was $500,000 actual cash on hand and another $500,000 line of credit.
Minimum bet was $5000 with no max. Most bets were $20k or more (a stack of 20 $1000 chips.
I forgot to mention, there was also a $1,000,000 membership fee (one time, lifetime) to get invited to these kinds of events.
The smallest chip in the room was $100, and that’s what they used for tipping.
I made over $3000 in tips that night, plus my pay of $2000. In 4 hours.
Rumor was that one guy lost $3.5 million. In 4 hours.
23. Bank baller
Went to college on an athletic scholarship at an expensive private catholic university (I went to school on the GI Bill or I would have never been able to afford it). I was on the lacrosse team and during a party at the on-campus apartments one of the captains starting stabbing his refrigerator with a K-Bar. I was outside smoking and a I asked him why he did that knowing full well he would have to replace it. His exact words were, ‘I’m not paying for anything. My dad is a baller at Bank of America.’ He and I did not get along.
24. Ummm. ok.
In summer of 1988 I was 16 and I went on a family trip to visit relatives in Cali, Colombia. One night, they took us on a drive around town to see the city at night. On the tour, we passed a six or seven story office tower under construction in a residential neighborhood that my cousin told me was to be the future home of one of the city’s largest narcotraficantes, or drug kingpins. While the house was under construction, he’d had another large mansion built directly across the street so he could keep an eye on the building’s progress from his home.
Essentially, he built a mansion to live in while he watched his bigger mansion being built.
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