“One Of The Most Mind-Boggling Things I’ve Ever Witnessed”: 80 Things Only Rich People Buy
We knew a guy with a big lot of land with its own vineyard. He bought it with the vineyard and had no plans for it. Someone comes regularly to collect the grapes and turn them into wine. He gets a cut of the sales and doesn’t have to do anything.
The rich moms in my city hire people to get through every “unpleasant” milestone for their children. Did you know there’s companies you can hire to potty train your kids? Or teach them how to ride a bike? There’s even people they will hire to meet with their kids and find a sleep away summer camp to match their kids’ personalities.
In case some of these sound too far-fetched, it’s worth noting that kidnapping and ransom insurance is a sizable industry. While often we think of it as a service for rich families, a common use case is a company buying a policy for valued employees who have to travel to high-risk zones. Interestingly due to moral hazard and risks of fraud, some companies don’t actually tell the employee about the policy.
Interestingly, it’s not actually that expensive on the face of things. Investopedia reports that many policies range from $500 to $2000. This is assuming the person is not a high-profile target and most of these policies have rules that make them void if you travel to high-risk areas. While this isn’t a negligible cost, it’s not nearly as unaffordable as it might seem.
Shadow Jets. The empty private jet that follows your private jet everywhere so that if there’s a delay or maintenance thing you don’t have to wait or resort to flying in a charter. Yes this is a thing. Some ultra rich actually take 3 jets everywhere their jet, their shadow, their cargo plane for cars.
Hiring world famous bands to play full sets for ambience.
Was a waiter at an event where The Killers just casually played their entire back catalogue in the corner.
I worked for a mega-rich person as their dog concierge. My job was to provide everything their dog needed so that when they wanted to pet it or play with it, the dog was ready and they didn’t have to think about it otherwise.
I’ve made hats for a billionaire’s horse, just because they wanted to take cute selfies of their horse in weird hats. I also made hats out of literal reclaimed garbage that I’ve sold for thousands to the 1%. I’m sorta known in those sorta circles for my bizarre hat designs. Plus I treat my celeb & wealthy clients normally, with no b******t. So I got an established clientele base. Edit: I primarily make custom headwear for humans (primarily inspired by surrealism, CAMP, or drag). I’m Fab Hatters if anybody wants to check out some of my work.
Not me but a family member; they had 4 huskies and they hired 4 separate caretakers for each dog. This was in the tech boom way before crypto. They are broke now….
You can get paid well (i.e. up to a million U.S. dollars) to NOT buy a private jet.
If you have ordered one (they can take years to get built), and yours is about to get built, someone can offer you $ for the build slot through slot brokers.
Basically a big-time “line stander”.
I worked in a house once in the fancy parts of Oslo, at the time i was a telecom technician and was called out to fix internet issues.
He had his main connection going into the basement and from there got split up to the rest of his house.
While working in the basement i noticed big tanks with the word VOSS on them, for you guys not familiar with VOSS its a brand of super expensive “natural spring water” and i thought it was only sold on glass bottles in the store.
Suddenly this big a*s tanker truck comes up to the house and i see it says VOSS in the side of it and i see the trucker start pulling a hose out and connecting it to a pipe going into the house.
Of course out of curiosity i go and ask the trucker what he was pumping into the guys house.
Turns out apparently VOSS offers a service where they send a plumber to disconnect the main pipes (except for floor heating, toilet and some other pointless stuff) and set up refillable thanks instead which gets connected to the house for basically everything, shower, washing machines, sinks, dish washer, basically any water that gets in contacts with humans and they have level readers of the tanks and will send a truck automatically when they see the water level going low in the tanks.
Absolutely one of the most mind boggling things i’ve ever witnessed, especially since i live in Norway which probably has one of the worlds cleanest and definitely tastiest waters i’ve ever come across directly from the sink.
Line standers. Sometimes it’s unavoidable—you need to be in long a queue, and when your time comes, you need to be there yourself.
Enter line standers.
They literally just stand in lines for whomever pays them to hold a spot. When the line gets close, they call or text the person and tell them to come on down.
That’s the whole gig.
There’s brands of food that you don’t know exist, because they’re not sold to you. Because they’re not sold to anyone. Rich people have their own drinks, snack foods, candy, et all, that were made *just for them*. It’s actually not even that expensive. For about $15k (starting) you can work with a drink lab who will make you the actual chemical formula for the drink you want, copyright it, and send it to their manufacturing partners, who will send you a pallet of your drink every month. In bottles you designed. With professional labels designed by a marketing team. For literally one customer. They even help you incorporate. Nobody can use that formula, logo, tagline, design, etc. Even though it’ll never be up for sale. It’s a flex. They can hand out bottles of “FizzyBi**ch!” soda to friends and family that you literally cannot get anywhere else.
I’ve now met 3 people in my lifetime (2 wealthy, one not) who paid pretty good money to have prosthetic testicles surgically inserted into their dog’s empty scrotum after having them neutered. Just so the dog doesn’t feel “emasculated.”
Sat next to a guy on a plane who travelled the world creating holiday plans for ultra-wealthy client. He had to go stay at each hotel to test them out and try the activities and everything. He loved travel and organizing anyway, so he just upgraded and got paid for it.
But after a few years it got lonely because you’re always on the move and in new places.
A guy I went to college with was employed for a number of years in Dubai as an automotive caretaker. His whole gig was to wash, drive, and maintain the billionaires collection of super exotic cars, motorcycles and other toys.
There was service which delivered current movies in the theater via a courier on a hard drive, for you to play at home in their proprietary player. I know one went belly up and another one popped up. Not sure if the new one’s lasted given how quickly movies come to digital these days.
I know a family who bought a mansion… For their yacht.
They didn’t like docking their yacht in public.
So they bought it a mansion.
Nobody lives there. It’s just their private port. A couple of times per year they actually board the yacht there. Usually the crew boards there and they meet it somewhere.
I wish I had a house for my boat… Or a boat…
Some celebrities will charge the Uber rich a fee to make an appearance at their parties and pretend to know them. I knew the talent agent who booked Henry Kissinger and Whitney Houston, but only for their “personal appearances”. He mentioned Whitney got 250k to attend a party, stay for a minimum one hour, and in her contract the host must not ask her to sing.
I worked for a billionaire as an oncall handyman style person (not exclusively him, we worked for other people too), for him but predominately it was his teenage daughters who would call us to help with stuff as he was usually overseas.
The were lovely girls but they were completely lost in terms of perspective. They would frequently call us up to do stuff like mount a giant tv screen, just for one night then fix everything so there was no evidence they had done it. I got called to capture a harmless spider for her which was in their patio area. So many other things, the list was endless.
I just read about a service that would help your kid get into elite colleges for $120k per year. Examples of advice they gave included nuggets like “get at least 1560 on your SAT” and “start a blog so you can say you’re passionate about environmentalism,” so all I can say is I respect the hustle.
Bespoke eye glasses that are completely custom crafted to suit your face and comfort level.
It actually sounds amazing as a person who wears very strong prescription glasses that get kind of heavy ( even with thinned lenses). However aside from the cost, I change scripts too often to be worthwhile.
Yard vacuuming service.
The billionaire owners of the company I worked for hired the most expensive landscapers in town to vacuum the yard on the day they let go an entire department of the company a few years ago.
So as people literally bawling their eyes out carried their s**t out to their cars, they had to walk past the people literally vacuuming the lawn.
Electrician based in Noosa, Australia.
Elevators (or multiple) in 2 or 3 story houses.
F*****g elevators.
Yes, I know this is a common piece of equipment but in a house is wild.
Not my story but I hitchhiked with friends once & we met a driver who works for a company that makes impossible stuff possible for rich ppl.
Example he gave was planning a wedding – client wanted an old church in a park with very limited access (like natural conservation stuff) – then they wanted a priest from Argentinia, cause that’s where the bride came from. Then the church needed to be consecrated bc the priest wouldn’t do it in a non consecrated church. Then they wanted their guests to arrive by train, which not also had them renovate old rails in the park, but also public transportation was paid (a lot) for rescheduling their normal plan, so the special trains could use the rails… and so on… it always ended with the guy we hitchhiked with imitating a phone call with different people
: sir, I’m sorry it’s not possible
Our dude: no, you didn’t understand – how much does it cost?
: sir, we really can’t…
Our dude: yes, yes, but how much would it cost?
To the point where the person on the other end realized they could name any price & would just get it…
It was fascinating. Yet I hate every last piece of it. 😀
I am an architect and I have designed a couple of prime properties. They all had a WC, which was bigger than a normal family bathroom and could only be accessed from outside (no door from inside the house). This was to be used by the gardeners and/or delivery drivers. They also have a chef’s or dirty kitchen. This is a second kitchen (usually with no windows) where all the actual cooking is done. The other kitchen is functional, but just to show off, not to be used.
Many very rich people have large houses in foreign countries they visit once in a while when they feel like it or are on a business trip in the area. While they‘re away there is a whole staff taking care of the property throughout the year, keeping it clean for the off chance of the owner visiting. I once worked as a gardener in one of those properties. I was briefed that everything has to be perfect everyday. There was no margin for error. This was checked by a foreman every single day. I worked there for three years. The owner never visited.
My partner’s brother is a tennis coach and one of his clients is getting taught to cook by a Michelin star chef just for fun. I think he said it was £20K.
Used to work as a roadie for a labour hire company (we’d get hired to move heavy things during set up/pack down for large festivals and concerts). One time i was part of a crew hired to set up for a bank ceo’s annual christmas party (one of the big 4 australian banks), we built a whole goddamn temporary restaurant on his tennis court. Floating wooden floors, timber framed ‘tent’, the lot. With enough money you can have the party you want.
I know a guy who belongs to a charter air club, it’s only for people who live in our county and who have second homes in a specific gated community in another state. They can bring their dogs on the plane too.
Earbuds that are custom molded to your ear for greater comfort and excellent noise isolation. Not that expensive actually, but still rather unheard of. I believe Etymotic are one brand that does them.
I know someone who hired an interior decorator to decorate their daughter’s freshman college dorm room.
I used to be a corporate pilot. The guy said he hated owning a jet, but it was worth it because Delta quit letting him smoke on the plane in the 90s. I always thought that was funny. He was actually a super nice guy. His wife was the sweet “everybody’s grandmother” type. She was always bringing me chocolates or donuts from her favorite shop.
I do criminal defence, had a client who told me it was very important that he avoid a criminal record for a minor offence (a stupid fight) so that he could travel.
He was paid by a rich guy to fly to locations in advance and try out restaurants so that the rich guy (who was a picky eater) would know where he might like to eat and what dishes. So he’d walk into restaurants in strange cities, order eight dishes and eat a couple bites of everything, and then do this at another dozen restaurants.
I was actually getting pretty pissed off with the file, because the rich guy was super particular about who could do this for him, and had his personal assistant calling me every other day demanding an update (with client consent). The pissed off went away when I told them I’d need to charge extra if they were going to keep riding me like that–and they just sent a “now you can’t complain” amount of money without blinking an eye.
Dude was making more money (not counting free air travel) than I was.
I know someone that has born and mothered babies for a rich guy. I think he has several of these unofficial wives in different countries.
Until I met my wife, I didn’t know that rich people pay others to shop for fashion goods abroad. They get to travel, all expenses paid, to basically spend other people’s money at some of the most prestigious fashion brands.
A concierge who moves absent residents’ local cars to higher ground when hurricanes strike for rich snow birds.
I know a family that had a high-functioning autistic child, and in order to help them function better in a normal classroom, they hired a specialist who befriended their child and escorted them around and advised him all day about which of his responses were good, and what responses would have been better.
My horse had a passport, acupuncturist, and massage therapist. The horse world is so crazy yall it’s unimaginable sometimes.
Hiring former Olympians to coach youth sports.
A rich friend of mine was telling me how his daughter’s mogul team fees went up $2,000 because they landed a new coach who won a medal at the Olympics. That’s on top of the old fees, and membership at the private ski resort, a resort that you need to own a chalet to be a member.
Pretty sweet job for the coach. He’s probably making $75,000 a year to work weekends for 3-4 months a year.
His sons baseball is even crazier.
He plays for an academy team. They have an indoor diamond, state of the art weight room, dieticians, statisticians, movement experts that 3-D map the kids, and pretty much anything you might expect an MLB team to have. He’s been with the academy since he was 8.
My uncle was a corporate pilot for most of his career. When he was a few years shy of retirement, the company axed their in house pilots and everything related to them as a cost savings. However, one of the owners(I think, might have just been a rich guy) hired him and one of the other pilots to be his personal on call crew for his personal jet.
For the next few years, he would fly for him pretty regularly to various places that were usually fairly exotic. Most of the flights were actually for the rich guys adult son and his family. The son was a “professional” sailboat racer… of some sort and my uncle would fly him to some tropical island and then get put up in a nice hotel with the copilot for a couple weeks with all expenses paid and he’d just hang out while this dude raced boats. It paid well enough he was able to retire earlier than expected.
I’m sure many people expect some rich people to have private pilots but the job always sounded ridiculously laid back and lucrative for bringing some guy to the Bahamas/wherever to play with his boats… which I’m sure had even more staff.
Ultra-wealthy families have a family office that takes care of everything across the globe. At the bottom end this may be a single full time person who supervises part-timers and contractors. The larger offices have multiple full-time staff who handle finances, real estate management, travel, social obligations, charitable giving, etc. There are actually trade association conferences for the people who work in this field. Wild, isn’t it?
Me!
I am a house manager/personal assistant. The fact that my client pays me $60 an hour to fold her husband’s underwear, cut vegetables, and handle maintenance is crazy. Obviously, I do do some other things as well, but yeah, me!
I work for lovely people and get paid well.
Probably not a big shock, but I met a girl once who was a personal assistant. She was one of a team of three for a very rich couple. When she said personal assistant I assumed it was at a business, but no. It was all just personal stuff. They organised every aspect of the couple’s day-to-day life.
If you were “friends” of the couple, you even called one of these staff to invite them around to your house for a friendly casual dinner, as any group of friends might. But they went through the staff to book it. Wild.
I once did some work for a couple who own a yacht building company. In their master bathroom there was a closet with seven shelves, one for each day of the week. On each shelf there was a pair of pajamas and a matching set of towels and a washcloth for each of them. It was something my middle class self would never have thought of.This was years ago and I have never forgotten it. A small example of having exactly what you want, perfectly organized by someone else.
An uncle of mine is pretty rich, not super loaded but solidly upper middle class. Back in the very early 2000s he was due for a colonoscopy, and his doctor’s office offered the option of buying a recording of the procedure on DVD. My uncle was just as confused about this as I assume everyone reading this comment is. Apart from possibly being of some use as a record of the procedure, the only possible explanation for this situation is just because DVDs were still new and cutting edge at the time and it was just a novelty thing.
The owner of the company has three assistants, one of whom is a man who mostly runs the owner’s errands and hauls his dogs around for him. He’s got 3 bottles of the medicated shampoo one of the dogs needs for when they go get bathed (and groomed if they need it) every Tuesday. (Sometimes the dogs really need the bath after being on the ranch all weekend).
I’ve also heard stories of the owner’s favorite dog (seriously…the man has companies named after the dog) being flown to or from the ranch alone on the plane.
When they sell a house they get someone in to remove all personal effects and furnish it. I see so many comments online complaining about how a home for sale looks like a hotel or bland and that they couldn’t live that way but people don’t realise that it isn’t how the owners actually lived – it has purposely been made like that for the selling process.
When you see rich old retired people zooming around in golfcarts in their gated communities, often those carts are not owned by the retirees. They are leased and maintained by companies set up explicitly for that service.
I worked for a guy who flew in, housed, covered all expenses and paid salary to a dude who exclusively restores vintage teak yacht decks. He’s super in demand too, schedule filled for multiple years.
Someone I know works for a guy who had his three hounds sent to Ireland to be trained over a period of months, then sent back.
I don’t know if this counts, but a buddy of mine used to work for a ‘books by the foot’ company. People would order a certain length of random books to fill certain lengths of shelves in their libraries. He figured the purchasers were borderline illiterate rich people, so he would always sneak in as many books on Hitler n s**t as possible to f**k with them.
I used to work in private aviation and one of our plane owners has a ranch with its own runway. She also has a separate plane she uses only to fly to the ranch because the runway is too short for her main plane to land on.
The plane’s pilot has to stay on the ranch while she’s there in case anyone needs to fly in or out so there is a separate apartment just for the pilot.
Total furniture revamps in the ‘entertaining’ sections of large houses.
A friend of the family was an antique dealer in a fairly well-off area. One of his services was that he would kit out the entertainment and guest sections of houses with a complete set of new furniture… from specific historical periods and locations. As in, apparently Louis XIII was “in” this season, so he’d haul out a houseful of Louis XIII furniture to someone’s place and set it all up to look amazing. And then he’d take whatever they had sitting around from last season (because it was no longer in fashion), and haul that back to his shop, where it would go into circulation in some kind of back-room antique-dealers’ shuffle. Either it was sold off piecemeal to people who didn’t know what was fashionable in historical furniture this week, or it went to other areas where the fashion was different (this was largely pre-Web), or it went into long-term preservation/storage until the fashions rolled around again.
All so that people with more money than sense could spend gobsmacking amounts on a regular basis to have the ‘correct’ fashionable type of historical furniture in case they had guests or did entertaining of other more-money-than-sense people.
VIP airport greeters. Essentially a personal escort with access that will get you to the front of the check in and security lines, even immigration upon landing. They can also meet you on the tarmac and drive you to your connecting flight.
This is something I thought most people knew about but you would be surprised how many angry people we encounter everytime our greeter gets our travel party to the front of the line. Little do they know it’s a service that anyone can purchase when booked ahead of time.
(I’m not rich but work for and travel with rich people)
Don’t know if this qualifies as a product or service, but the ability to destroy places of historical significance.
I visited my boss’s mansion in Beverly Hills. There were several marble steps in her backyard leading nowhere. She casually explained that they were part of a grand staircase leading up to Buster Keaton’s villa, which fell into disrepair and was just recently restored.
AFAIK the last owner of the enormous estate chopped up the property into tiny parcels, with mansion after mansion sitting practically on top of one another.
Activism manager.
An A-list actor I worked with had one of these.
They worked with Disney so had to be cautious around their radical political beliefs. So they had a person who managed how they engaged with activism.
Worked for a family that was ungodly well off. Matriarch had a woman whose only purpose was to help her get dressed and manage this woman’s “closet.” Her office was in the closet. there had to be millions of dollars of clothing in there, so understandable.
Light switcher for Shabbat.
Generating electricity (turning lights on & off) is prohibited during Shabbat. My friend spent Friday-Saturday doing this every week when we were in college. I remember them saying they were paid pretty decently too
i saw this on instagram but at LAX they have private suites you can rent out at the airport, you go through private TSA security, hang out in this fancy hotel room stocked with amenities and then are driven to the tarmac. and this is for commercial flights! it costs $3k a visit plus you have to be a yearly member.
My mom used to work at property owned by a family of billionaires. The family had a version of Monopoly (as in, the board game) themed after the family and their businesses.
Boot caddy. Someone to do the buckles up on your ski boots in the morning.
There’s a person that Celebs would hire when they go to events to ensure no one is taking pics of them from the wrong angle. Like let’s say Kylie Jenner’s face doesn’t look good from the side, they’d hire a person to at least try to ensure a photographer won’t see that side of them.
For wealthy people with property around the country (and the world), they often pay an accountant or assistant to track the time they spend in each location so they can travel as needed to reduce their tax liability as much as possible.
for 12 years i was the personal driver for a coo of states bank, everytime they visited scotland i was hired for the day/week as their driver, 24 hours a day, should they call for the car or walk out the hotel, i was there with the merc warmed up and fueled for any trip in the uk. If there was any mechanical problems with the car there was a helicopter on standby the pick everyone up and deliver them to the destination.
I once drove gourmet food delivery and visited an estate with groves of olive trees, several worker houses, and a massive mansion a mile off the main road.
Once I got there I delivered a single box. Within the box was a specific kind of hot sauce we offered.
I reflected a lot on the sort of person who gets a delivery service to bring them a bottle of hot sauce.
Was walking around this weekend at an exclusive resort in Hilton Head, SC. There’s a big security gate and you can only get through if you are a resident or if you are staying at one of the associated hotels.
Inside the development, there’s shops and restaurants that rely solely on the residents, not the general public. They’re a little upscale, but nothing you wouldn’t see at any nice beach town — ice cream parlors, bakeries, places selling local art.
People walking around with their exclusive clothes, eating their inaccessible ice cream cones.
My auntie was a private vet in Dubai for a very rich family. Her job was basically to keep the 10 horses alive. Paid her 1.3 million a year + a villa and a G-Class.
Most of them own the same normal stuff you’d find in a middle class home, just more of them.
They usually have the top tier cable/internet plans and subscribe to all the streaming services.
They have very very expensive dogs and entertainment equipment.
They live in excellent neighborhoods and have several luxury cars (one is usually a Lexus, of all things)
They have a cleaning team come in several times a week.
Like mentioned above, it’s really just like a middle class home, but a little bit more and little bit nicer.
This is my experience working for wealthy actors, producers, and directors.
My Brother works in a company that provides provisions to Super yachts. Mega rich people has 75 meters support yatches yo their 150 meter mega yatch so they can keep the jet skis and helicopters and savages which bring provisions far away ..
Car park savers.
In India where you have lots of cheap labour, the middle classes without their own parking facility sometimes pay people to reserve a car place where you rely on street parking.
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We knew a guy with a big lot of land with its own vineyard. He bought it with the vineyard and had no plans for it. Someone comes regularly to collect the grapes and turn them into wine. He gets a cut of the sales and doesn’t have to do anything.
The rich moms in my city hire people to get through every “unpleasant” milestone for their children. Did you know there’s companies you can hire to potty train your kids? Or teach them how to ride a bike? There’s even people they will hire to meet with their kids and find a sleep away summer camp to match their kids’ personalities.
In case some of these sound too far-fetched, it’s worth noting that kidnapping and ransom insurance is a sizable industry. While often we think of it as a service for rich families, a common use case is a company buying a policy for valued employees who have to travel to high-risk zones. Interestingly due to moral hazard and risks of fraud, some companies don’t actually tell the employee about the policy.
Interestingly, it’s not actually that expensive on the face of things. Investopedia reports that many policies range from $500 to $2000. This is assuming the person is not a high-profile target and most of these policies have rules that make them void if you travel to high-risk areas. While this isn’t a negligible cost, it’s not nearly as unaffordable as it might seem.
Shadow Jets. The empty private jet that follows your private jet everywhere so that if there's a delay or maintenance thing you don't have to wait or resort to flying in a charter. Yes this is a thing. Some ultra rich actually take 3 jets everywhere their jet, their shadow, their cargo plane for cars.
Hiring world famous bands to play full sets for ambience.
Was a waiter at an event where The Killers just casually played their entire back catalogue in the corner.
I worked for a mega-rich person as their dog concierge. My job was to provide everything their dog needed so that when they wanted to pet it or play with it, the dog was ready and they didn’t have to think about it otherwise.
I’ve made hats for a billionaire’s horse, just because they wanted to take cute selfies of their horse in weird hats. I also made hats out of literal reclaimed garbage that I’ve sold for thousands to the 1%. I’m sorta known in those sorta circles for my bizarre hat designs. Plus I treat my celeb & wealthy clients normally, with no b******t. So I got an established clientele base. Edit: I primarily make custom headwear for humans (primarily inspired by surrealism, CAMP, or drag). I’m Fab Hatters if anybody wants to check out some of my work.
Not me but a family member; they had 4 huskies and they hired 4 separate caretakers for each dog. This was in the tech boom way before crypto. They are broke now….
You can get paid well (i.e. up to a million U.S. dollars) to NOT buy a private jet.
If you have ordered one (they can take years to get built), and yours is about to get built, someone can offer you $ for the build slot through slot brokers.
Basically a big-time "line stander".
I worked in a house once in the fancy parts of Oslo, at the time i was a telecom technician and was called out to fix internet issues.
He had his main connection going into the basement and from there got split up to the rest of his house.
While working in the basement i noticed big tanks with the word VOSS on them, for you guys not familiar with VOSS its a brand of super expensive "natural spring water" and i thought it was only sold on glass bottles in the store.
Suddenly this big a*s tanker truck comes up to the house and i see it says VOSS in the side of it and i see the trucker start pulling a hose out and connecting it to a pipe going into the house.
Of course out of curiosity i go and ask the trucker what he was pumping into the guys house.
Turns out apparently VOSS offers a service where they send a plumber to disconnect the main pipes (except for floor heating, toilet and some other pointless stuff) and set up refillable thanks instead which gets connected to the house for basically everything, shower, washing machines, sinks, dish washer, basically any water that gets in contacts with humans and they have level readers of the tanks and will send a truck automatically when they see the water level going low in the tanks.
Absolutely one of the most mind boggling things i've ever witnessed, especially since i live in Norway which probably has one of the worlds cleanest and definitely tastiest waters i've ever come across directly from the sink.
Line standers. Sometimes it’s unavoidable—you need to be in long a queue, and when your time comes, you need to be there yourself.
Enter line standers.
They literally just stand in lines for whomever pays them to hold a spot. When the line gets close, they call or text the person and tell them to come on down.
That’s the whole gig.
There's brands of food that you don't know exist, because they're not sold to you. Because they're not sold to anyone. Rich people have their own drinks, snack foods, candy, et all, that were made *just for them*. It's actually not even that expensive. For about $15k (starting) you can work with a drink lab who will make you the actual chemical formula for the drink you want, copyright it, and send it to their manufacturing partners, who will send you a pallet of your drink every month. In bottles you designed. With professional labels designed by a marketing team. For literally one customer. They even help you incorporate. Nobody can use that formula, logo, tagline, design, etc. Even though it'll never be up for sale. It's a flex. They can hand out bottles of "FizzyBi**ch!" soda to friends and family that you literally cannot get anywhere else.
I’ve now met 3 people in my lifetime (2 wealthy, one not) who paid pretty good money to have prosthetic testicles surgically inserted into their dog’s empty scrotum after having them neutered. Just so the dog doesn’t feel “emasculated.”
Sat next to a guy on a plane who travelled the world creating holiday plans for ultra-wealthy client. He had to go stay at each hotel to test them out and try the activities and everything. He loved travel and organizing anyway, so he just upgraded and got paid for it.
But after a few years it got lonely because you’re always on the move and in new places.
A guy I went to college with was employed for a number of years in Dubai as an automotive caretaker. His whole gig was to wash, drive, and maintain the billionaires collection of super exotic cars, motorcycles and other toys.
There was service which delivered current movies in the theater via a courier on a hard drive, for you to play at home in their proprietary player. I know one went belly up and another one popped up. Not sure if the new one's lasted given how quickly movies come to digital these days.
I know a family who bought a mansion… For their yacht.
They didn’t like docking their yacht in public.
So they bought it a mansion.
Nobody lives there. It’s just their private port. A couple of times per year they actually board the yacht there. Usually the crew boards there and they meet it somewhere.
I wish I had a house for my boat… Or a boat…
Some celebrities will charge the Uber rich a fee to make an appearance at their parties and pretend to know them. I knew the talent agent who booked Henry Kissinger and Whitney Houston, but only for their “personal appearances”. He mentioned Whitney got 250k to attend a party, stay for a minimum one hour, and in her contract the host must not ask her to sing.
I worked for a billionaire as an oncall handyman style person (not exclusively him, we worked for other people too), for him but predominately it was his teenage daughters who would call us to help with stuff as he was usually overseas.
The were lovely girls but they were completely lost in terms of perspective. They would frequently call us up to do stuff like mount a giant tv screen, just for one night then fix everything so there was no evidence they had done it. I got called to capture a harmless spider for her which was in their patio area. So many other things, the list was endless.
I just read about a service that would help your kid get into elite colleges for $120k per year. Examples of advice they gave included nuggets like “get at least 1560 on your SAT” and “start a blog so you can say you’re passionate about environmentalism,” so all I can say is I respect the hustle.
Bespoke eye glasses that are completely custom crafted to suit your face and comfort level.
It actually sounds amazing as a person who wears very strong prescription glasses that get kind of heavy ( even with thinned lenses). However aside from the cost, I change scripts too often to be worthwhile.
Yard vacuuming service.
The billionaire owners of the company I worked for hired the most expensive landscapers in town to vacuum the yard on the day they let go an entire department of the company a few years ago.
So as people literally bawling their eyes out carried their s**t out to their cars, they had to walk past the people literally vacuuming the lawn.
Electrician based in Noosa, Australia.
Elevators (or multiple) in 2 or 3 story houses.
F*****g elevators.
Yes, I know this is a common piece of equipment but in a house is wild.
Not my story but I hitchhiked with friends once & we met a driver who works for a company that makes impossible stuff possible for rich ppl.
Example he gave was planning a wedding - client wanted an old church in a park with very limited access (like natural conservation stuff) - then they wanted a priest from Argentinia, cause that’s where the bride came from. Then the church needed to be consecrated bc the priest wouldn’t do it in a non consecrated church. Then they wanted their guests to arrive by train, which not also had them renovate old rails in the park, but also public transportation was paid (a lot) for rescheduling their normal plan, so the special trains could use the rails… and so on… it always ended with the guy we hitchhiked with imitating a phone call with different people
: sir, I’m sorry it’s not possible
Our dude: no, you didn’t understand - how much does it cost?
: sir, we really can’t…
Our dude: yes, yes, but how much would it cost?
To the point where the person on the other end realized they could name any price & would just get it…
It was fascinating. Yet I hate every last piece of it. 😀
I am an architect and I have designed a couple of prime properties. They all had a WC, which was bigger than a normal family bathroom and could only be accessed from outside (no door from inside the house). This was to be used by the gardeners and/or delivery drivers. They also have a chef's or dirty kitchen. This is a second kitchen (usually with no windows) where all the actual cooking is done. The other kitchen is functional, but just to show off, not to be used.
Many very rich people have large houses in foreign countries they visit once in a while when they feel like it or are on a business trip in the area. While they‘re away there is a whole staff taking care of the property throughout the year, keeping it clean for the off chance of the owner visiting. I once worked as a gardener in one of those properties. I was briefed that everything has to be perfect everyday. There was no margin for error. This was checked by a foreman every single day. I worked there for three years. The owner never visited.
My partner's brother is a tennis coach and one of his clients is getting taught to cook by a Michelin star chef just for fun. I think he said it was £20K.
Used to work as a roadie for a labour hire company (we’d get hired to move heavy things during set up/pack down for large festivals and concerts). One time i was part of a crew hired to set up for a bank ceo’s annual christmas party (one of the big 4 australian banks), we built a whole goddamn temporary restaurant on his tennis court. Floating wooden floors, timber framed ‘tent’, the lot. With enough money you can have the party you want.
I know a guy who belongs to a charter air club, it’s only for people who live in our county and who have second homes in a specific gated community in another state. They can bring their dogs on the plane too.
Earbuds that are custom molded to your ear for greater comfort and excellent noise isolation. Not that expensive actually, but still rather unheard of. I believe Etymotic are one brand that does them.
I know someone who hired an interior decorator to decorate their daughter’s freshman college dorm room.
I used to be a corporate pilot. The guy said he hated owning a jet, but it was worth it because Delta quit letting him smoke on the plane in the 90s. I always thought that was funny. He was actually a super nice guy. His wife was the sweet “everybody’s grandmother” type. She was always bringing me chocolates or donuts from her favorite shop.
I do criminal defence, had a client who told me it was very important that he avoid a criminal record for a minor offence (a stupid fight) so that he could travel.
He was paid by a rich guy to fly to locations in advance and try out restaurants so that the rich guy (who was a picky eater) would know where he might like to eat and what dishes. So he'd walk into restaurants in strange cities, order eight dishes and eat a couple bites of everything, and then do this at another dozen restaurants.
I was actually getting pretty pissed off with the file, because the rich guy was super particular about who could do this for him, and had his personal assistant calling me every other day demanding an update (with client consent). The pissed off went away when I told them I'd need to charge extra if they were going to keep riding me like that--and they just sent a "now you can't complain" amount of money without blinking an eye.
Dude was making more money (not counting free air travel) than I was.
I know someone that has born and mothered babies for a rich guy. I think he has several of these unofficial wives in different countries.
Until I met my wife, I didn’t know that rich people pay others to shop for fashion goods abroad. They get to travel, all expenses paid, to basically spend other people’s money at some of the most prestigious fashion brands.
A concierge who moves absent residents' local cars to higher ground when hurricanes strike for rich snow birds.
I know a family that had a high-functioning autistic child, and in order to help them function better in a normal classroom, they hired a specialist who befriended their child and escorted them around and advised him all day about which of his responses were good, and what responses would have been better.
My horse had a passport, acupuncturist, and massage therapist. The horse world is so crazy yall it's unimaginable sometimes.
Hiring former Olympians to coach youth sports.
A rich friend of mine was telling me how his daughter's mogul team fees went up $2,000 because they landed a new coach who won a medal at the Olympics. That's on top of the old fees, and membership at the private ski resort, a resort that you need to own a chalet to be a member.
Pretty sweet job for the coach. He's probably making $75,000 a year to work weekends for 3-4 months a year.
His sons baseball is even crazier.
He plays for an academy team. They have an indoor diamond, state of the art weight room, dieticians, statisticians, movement experts that 3-D map the kids, and pretty much anything you might expect an MLB team to have. He's been with the academy since he was 8.
My uncle was a corporate pilot for most of his career. When he was a few years shy of retirement, the company axed their in house pilots and everything related to them as a cost savings. However, one of the owners(I think, might have just been a rich guy) hired him and one of the other pilots to be his personal on call crew for his personal jet.
For the next few years, he would fly for him pretty regularly to various places that were usually fairly exotic. Most of the flights were actually for the rich guys adult son and his family. The son was a "professional" sailboat racer... of some sort and my uncle would fly him to some tropical island and then get put up in a nice hotel with the copilot for a couple weeks with all expenses paid and he'd just hang out while this dude raced boats. It paid well enough he was able to retire earlier than expected.
I'm sure many people expect some rich people to have private pilots but the job always sounded ridiculously laid back and lucrative for bringing some guy to the Bahamas/wherever to play with his boats... which I'm sure had even more staff.
Ultra-wealthy families have a family office that takes care of everything across the globe. At the bottom end this may be a single full time person who supervises part-timers and contractors. The larger offices have multiple full-time staff who handle finances, real estate management, travel, social obligations, charitable giving, etc. There are actually trade association conferences for the people who work in this field. Wild, isn’t it?
Me!
I am a house manager/personal assistant. The fact that my client pays me $60 an hour to fold her husband's underwear, cut vegetables, and handle maintenance is crazy. Obviously, I do do some other things as well, but yeah, me!
I work for lovely people and get paid well.
Probably not a big shock, but I met a girl once who was a personal assistant. She was one of a team of three for a very rich couple. When she said personal assistant I assumed it was at a business, but no. It was all just personal stuff. They organised every aspect of the couple’s day-to-day life.
If you were “friends” of the couple, you even called one of these staff to invite them around to your house for a friendly casual dinner, as any group of friends might. But they went through the staff to book it. Wild.
I once did some work for a couple who own a yacht building company. In their master bathroom there was a closet with seven shelves, one for each day of the week. On each shelf there was a pair of pajamas and a matching set of towels and a washcloth for each of them. It was something my middle class self would never have thought of.This was years ago and I have never forgotten it. A small example of having exactly what you want, perfectly organized by someone else.
An uncle of mine is pretty rich, not super loaded but solidly upper middle class. Back in the very early 2000s he was due for a colonoscopy, and his doctor's office offered the option of buying a recording of the procedure on DVD. My uncle was just as confused about this as I assume everyone reading this comment is. Apart from possibly being of some use as a record of the procedure, the only possible explanation for this situation is just because DVDs were still new and cutting edge at the time and it was just a novelty thing.
The owner of the company has three assistants, one of whom is a man who mostly runs the owner’s errands and hauls his dogs around for him. He’s got 3 bottles of the medicated shampoo one of the dogs needs for when they go get bathed (and groomed if they need it) every Tuesday. (Sometimes the dogs really need the bath after being on the ranch all weekend).
I’ve also heard stories of the owner’s favorite dog (seriously…the man has companies named after the dog) being flown to or from the ranch alone on the plane.
When they sell a house they get someone in to remove all personal effects and furnish it. I see so many comments online complaining about how a home for sale looks like a hotel or bland and that they couldn't live that way but people don't realise that it isn't how the owners actually lived - it has purposely been made like that for the selling process.
When you see rich old retired people zooming around in golfcarts in their gated communities, often those carts are not owned by the retirees. They are leased and maintained by companies set up explicitly for that service.
I worked for a guy who flew in, housed, covered all expenses and paid salary to a dude who exclusively restores vintage teak yacht decks. He’s super in demand too, schedule filled for multiple years.
Someone I know works for a guy who had his three hounds sent to Ireland to be trained over a period of months, then sent back.
I don’t know if this counts, but a buddy of mine used to work for a ‘books by the foot’ company. People would order a certain length of random books to fill certain lengths of shelves in their libraries. He figured the purchasers were borderline illiterate rich people, so he would always sneak in as many books on Hitler n s**t as possible to f**k with them.
I used to work in private aviation and one of our plane owners has a ranch with its own runway. She also has a separate plane she uses only to fly to the ranch because the runway is too short for her main plane to land on.
The plane’s pilot has to stay on the ranch while she’s there in case anyone needs to fly in or out so there is a separate apartment just for the pilot.
Total furniture revamps in the 'entertaining' sections of large houses.
A friend of the family was an antique dealer in a fairly well-off area. One of his services was that he would kit out the entertainment and guest sections of houses with a complete set of new furniture... from specific historical periods and locations. As in, apparently Louis XIII was "in" this season, so he'd haul out a houseful of Louis XIII furniture to someone's place and set it all up to look amazing. And then he'd take whatever they had sitting around from last season (because it was no longer in fashion), and haul that back to his shop, where it would go into circulation in some kind of back-room antique-dealers' shuffle. Either it was sold off piecemeal to people who didn't know what was fashionable in historical furniture this week, or it went to other areas where the fashion was different (this was largely pre-Web), or it went into long-term preservation/storage until the fashions rolled around again.
All so that people with more money than sense could spend gobsmacking amounts on a regular basis to have the 'correct' fashionable type of historical furniture in case they had guests or did entertaining of other more-money-than-sense people.
VIP airport greeters. Essentially a personal escort with access that will get you to the front of the check in and security lines, even immigration upon landing. They can also meet you on the tarmac and drive you to your connecting flight.
This is something I thought most people knew about but you would be surprised how many angry people we encounter everytime our greeter gets our travel party to the front of the line. Little do they know it’s a service that anyone can purchase when booked ahead of time.
(I’m not rich but work for and travel with rich people)
Don’t know if this qualifies as a product or service, but the ability to destroy places of historical significance.
I visited my boss’s mansion in Beverly Hills. There were several marble steps in her backyard leading nowhere. She casually explained that they were part of a grand staircase leading up to Buster Keaton’s villa, which fell into disrepair and was just recently restored.
AFAIK the last owner of the enormous estate chopped up the property into tiny parcels, with mansion after mansion sitting practically on top of one another.
Activism manager.
An A-list actor I worked with had one of these.
They worked with Disney so had to be cautious around their radical political beliefs. So they had a person who managed how they engaged with activism.
Worked for a family that was ungodly well off. Matriarch had a woman whose only purpose was to help her get dressed and manage this woman's "closet." Her office was in the closet. there had to be millions of dollars of clothing in there, so understandable.
Light switcher for Shabbat.
Generating electricity (turning lights on & off) is prohibited during Shabbat. My friend spent Friday-Saturday doing this every week when we were in college. I remember them saying they were paid pretty decently too
i saw this on instagram but at LAX they have private suites you can rent out at the airport, you go through private TSA security, hang out in this fancy hotel room stocked with amenities and then are driven to the tarmac. and this is for commercial flights! it costs $3k a visit plus you have to be a yearly member.
My mom used to work at property owned by a family of billionaires. The family had a version of Monopoly (as in, the board game) themed after the family and their businesses.
Boot caddy. Someone to do the buckles up on your ski boots in the morning.
There’s a person that Celebs would hire when they go to events to ensure no one is taking pics of them from the wrong angle. Like let’s say Kylie Jenner’s face doesn’t look good from the side, they’d hire a person to at least try to ensure a photographer won’t see that side of them.
For wealthy people with property around the country (and the world), they often pay an accountant or assistant to track the time they spend in each location so they can travel as needed to reduce their tax liability as much as possible.
for 12 years i was the personal driver for a coo of states bank, everytime they visited scotland i was hired for the day/week as their driver, 24 hours a day, should they call for the car or walk out the hotel, i was there with the merc warmed up and fueled for any trip in the uk. If there was any mechanical problems with the car there was a helicopter on standby the pick everyone up and deliver them to the destination.
I once drove gourmet food delivery and visited an estate with groves of olive trees, several worker houses, and a massive mansion a mile off the main road.
Once I got there I delivered a single box. Within the box was a specific kind of hot sauce we offered.
I reflected a lot on the sort of person who gets a delivery service to bring them a bottle of hot sauce.
Was walking around this weekend at an exclusive resort in Hilton Head, SC. There's a big security gate and you can only get through if you are a resident or if you are staying at one of the associated hotels.
Inside the development, there's shops and restaurants that rely solely on the residents, not the general public. They're a little upscale, but nothing you wouldn't see at any nice beach town -- ice cream parlors, bakeries, places selling local art.
People walking around with their exclusive clothes, eating their inaccessible ice cream cones.
My auntie was a private vet in Dubai for a very rich family. Her job was basically to keep the 10 horses alive. Paid her 1.3 million a year + a villa and a G-Class.
Most of them own the same normal stuff you'd find in a middle class home, just more of them.
They usually have the top tier cable/internet plans and subscribe to all the streaming services.
They have very very expensive dogs and entertainment equipment.
They live in excellent neighborhoods and have several luxury cars (one is usually a Lexus, of all things)
They have a cleaning team come in several times a week.
Like mentioned above, it's really just like a middle class home, but a little bit more and little bit nicer.
This is my experience working for wealthy actors, producers, and directors.
My Brother works in a company that provides provisions to Super yachts. Mega rich people has 75 meters support yatches yo their 150 meter mega yatch so they can keep the jet skis and helicopters and savages which bring provisions far away ..
Car park savers.
In India where you have lots of cheap labour, the middle classes without their own parking facility sometimes pay people to reserve a car place where you rely on street parking.
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