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5 outrageous spending stories of the ultra-rich: From $50k wine to royal eggs
Reddit users share stories of out-of-touch spending by the ultra-rich, highlighting extravagant spending habits.
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos pays around $1,000 a month in fines instead of trimming the bushes around his Beverly Hills mansion. Bill Gates notoriously paid a $28 daily fine for 13 years to keep his imported Porsche 959 in the United States. These are just a couple of examples of the often baffling ways the ultra-wealthy choose to spend their money. Now, a viral Reddit thread is offering a broader glimpse into the extravagant—and at times incomprehensible—spending habits of High Net Worth Individuals (HNIs).
People who worked for ultra-wealthy individuals opened up about their experiences on Reddit after one person asked: “For those who work for rich people, what’s the most out-of-touch thing you witnessed?”
1. A full-time ‘weather person’
Most of us rely on news channels or media websites to update us about the weather forecast. Not this tech founder. According to one comment under the post, a certain tech founder has a person on the payroll whose only job is to text him about the weather every morning.
“Worked with a tech founder who had a full-time ‘personal weather person.’ Not a weather app. A human being whose job was to text him a personalized weather forecast every morning, including how the weather would affect his specific outdoor plans,” the comment read.
The comment further explained that this unnamed founder was actually a nice person who simply did not have a concept of how much things cost. “The thing is, he was genuinely nice. Never rude, always said please and thank you. He just had absolutely no concept of what things cost relative to their value because money had stopped being real to him about ten years earlier,” the Reddit user explained.
2. A wine bottle for $50,000
Another comment illustrated the deep economic divide that exists between the ultra-rich and their employees. A Reddit user said he once witnessed a tech CEO spend $50,000 on a bottle of wine at an auction. A few days later, he tried to cut the company’s coffee budget.
That was not the only way in which this particular CEO was far removed from reality. “Worked for this tech CEO who spent more on his kids' birthday party than most people make in a year but then complained about having to give the cleaning staff a 2% raise because ‘times are tight’,” the comment explained.
“Watched him drop 50k on a single wine bottle at an auction then turn around and cut the office coffee budget the next week. The disconnect was just wild - like living in two completely different realities,” the worker elaborated.
3. Rotating a house
According to one Reddit user, he worked for a millionaire who did not like the way sunlight entered his mansion. His solution to this tiny problem might leave you stunned. Read on.
“I used to work for a guy who loved his mansion, but hated the way the sunlight came through the windows. So instead of buying curtains or installing more windows, he paid millions to have the entire house lifted off its foundation and rotated. Then tried to pay for it by not giving out raises that year. Luckily the board stepped in and forced him to pay us,” the comment revealed.
4. Eating like royalty
One person related the story of his friend who worked as a chef for the rich. One particular family he worked for hired a chef who had worked for the royal family of England. It resulted in colossal food wastage.
The former royal chef was tasked with teaching this friend some recipes. “This guy taught them how the Queen used to like her eggs. Perfectly boiled to perfection, and it's to be served within 30 seconds of her sitting down. How? He gets 10 pans of boiling water, puts one egg in every 30 secs with its own timer. Then replaces old egg with new egg so he can get the most perfect egg timed to when the queen sits down,” the comment explained.
While this ensured that the Queen of England always got perfectly boiled eggs, the family in question here took things a bit further. “This family now wanted him and the other chefs to cook like this now. Steak, fish, breakfast, almost everything that's possible to be cooked like this. The waste was astronomical,” the comment explained.
5. No neighbours please
One millionaire was so keen on not having any neighbours, he started buying every house on his street. “I worked for an owner once who had a house built, didn’t like it, and then had it rebuilt,” the comment read.
“The house across the street went up for sale, and he bought it so he could his maid could live there and he could park his Ferrari in the garage. Then he began to buy all the rest of the houses around him and demolished them because he didn’t want neighbors.”
You can read more stories about the ultra-rich here.
