What's Your Experience of Multi-Millionaires?

[Jambalaya]

And millionaire is hardly wealthy in todays economy-lol. $2M is quite different than $100M.

Correct, but the thread title says "multi-millionaires". I'm meaning to talk about people who are very wealthy indeed - one of my friends flies first-class absolutely everywhere he and his wife go, and they are forever going to very exotic places. He just ordered a new Porsche, and actually has a garage in which to park it at his Upper East Side home.

Interesting thoughts from every responder - thank you. I expect the wealthy people I know would probably be somewhat stand-offish whatever their financial status.

Someone wrote about the very wealthy seeming "harried" and being here, there and everywhere. That is certainly true about all four of the ones I know.

 

[Dancing Fire]

To consider as very wealthy in the US one would need to have a net worth of > $500 million.

 

[madelise]

My neighbor parks his Ferrari California and big range rover on the street. We don't live in a millionaire neighborhood but do live where it snows a lot. So the Ferrari gets plowed in under mounds of snow and salt in the winter.

It’s just so bizarre to me. My neighborhood is like 60% multi-family houses with multiple generations living in a house or a ton of younger roommates. It really isn’t that nice of an area. I wouldn’t park my car on the street just bc no one knows how to drive and I’m afraid of it being scratched.... or... even it just getting dirtier faster from sitting outside in SF’s constant fog collecting dust...

 

[madelise]

I mean... I guess people buy expensive diamonds to never clean them either so people buying exotic cars to leave on a public street shouldn’t be that bizarre to me lol. I just don’t get it.

 

[AV_]

@missy Scott is also writing about himself...

 

[Elizabeth35]

What is your threshold for multi-millionaire---$5M or more like $50M-$100M? Most of the wealthy people I know are probably $5-10M. Obviously I'm guessing!

Personally, I don't view flying first class or having a Porsche as automatic wealth indicators.
If people are really wealthy they fly private (and we have acquaintances who have 2 planes). The wealthy people I know drive understated cars---Honda, Toyota, occasional Audi or Benz. Some buy used cars, especially for their kids. But I realize this all varies wildly by the person.
And having $200M is vastly different than $5M, and being a billionaire puts someone into another stratosphere.

I'm sure some wealthy people are rude or ill-mannered, just as some poor people are. But I have not seen a direct correlation between wealth and rude behavior. Maybe I'm just lucky and hang out with nice people

.

 

[missy]

@missy Scott is also writing about himself...

Yes. Like so many geniuses his life was not easy. It was chaotic and filled with angst and suffering. As he himself wrote he had "a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life".

He was a creative genius and I wish his life had been happier but I wonder if that had been the case if we would have his amazing novels. Probably not.
IMO he was one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century.

 

[missy]

What is your threshold for multi-millionaire---$5M or more like $50M-$100M? Most of the wealthy people I know are probably $5-10M. Obviously I'm guessing!

Personally, I don't view flying first class or having a Porsche as automatic wealth indicators.
If people are really wealthy they fly private (and we have acquaintances who have 2 planes). The wealthy people I know drive understated cars---Honda, Toyota, occasional Audi or Benz. Some buy used cars, especially for their kids. But I realize this all varies wildly by the person.
And having $200M is vastly different than $5M, and being a billionaire puts someone into another stratosphere.

I'm sure some wealthy people are rude or ill-mannered, just as some poor people are. But I have not seen a direct correlation between wealth and rude behavior. Maybe I'm just lucky and hang out with nice people

.

It depends where one lives IMO. For example if one has 5 million dollars but lives in San Francisco or NYC they are really not wealthy IMO. Well off perhaps but not wealthy.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-rich-people-earn-in-biggest-city-every-state-2018-4

"Rich" is defined by some Americans as having an average of $2.4 million, according to a Charles Schwab survey. But how much money you need to earn to be considered "rich" by the government's standards depends on the city you live in.

https://www.secretentourage.com/motivation/how-to-differentiate-rich-vs-wealthy/

To me being wealthy means you have more than enough money that you will never ever run out of money and you no longer have to even think of money. That means wealthy to me. Where money is no longer a consideration in any of your decisions.

 

[AV_]

Yes.

There are various accounts of such sensitivity to promise; I'd rather "Think, play, reapet." - not that I have had.

 

[Jambalaya]

Elizabeth, you don't think that flying first class is a wealth indicator? I'm not talking about domestic flights. One friend just paid $20,000 for a first-class return fare with BA from New York to London, which is only a six-hour flight. He also flies first-class to Sydney, India, etc. which are obviously much more than six hours. Your standards for what constitutes wealth are impressively high!

 

[Ally T]

It depends where one lives IMO. For example if one has 5 million dollars but lives in San Francisco or NYC they are really not wealthy IMO. Well off perhaps but not wealthy.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-rich-people-earn-in-biggest-city-every-state-2018-4




https://www.secretentourage.com/motivation/how-to-differentiate-rich-vs-wealthy/

To me being wealthy means you have more than enough money that you will never ever run out of money and you no longer have to even think of money. That means wealthy to me. Where money is no longer a consideration in any of your decisions.

This is what my ex was like. He said he stopped counting when his bank balance hit $20 million NZD. He was in his 30’s at the time & things continued to flourish for him & his property empire (he was in his early 50’s when we got together many years back). There was never, ever any thought needed on purchases, cars, first class flights for me constantly back & forth to the UK to visit family etc. So you can see why asking me for my small collection of what was probably no more than $30k worth of jewellery back really peed me off & summed up his control to a T. I sold it all for WAY less & put the money into the deposit for my marital home.

 

[Calliecake]

Elizabeth, you don't think that flying first class is a wealth indicator? I'm not talking about domestic flights. One friend just paid $20,000 for a first-class return fare with BA from New York to London, which is only a six-hour flight. He also flies first-class to Sydney, India, etc. which are obviously much more than six hours. Your standards for what constitutes wealth are impressively high!

I don’t consider flying first class a wealth indicator. The person flying may be traveling for business or have millions of frequent flier miles. My husband traveled internationally for business for many years. You rack up the miles when you make frequent international trips.

 

[Calliecake]

It’s funny how much money you consider wealthy varies as you age. What I considered wealthy when I was young is completely different from what I consider wealthy today.

 

[Matata]

The wealthy people I know drive understated cars---Honda, Toyota, occasional Audi or Benz. Some buy used cars, especially for their kids. But I realize this all varies wildly by the person.

Kim Novack, Jim Belushi, and Patrick Duffy are a few of the Hollywood types living near me and they are down-to-earth folks living on farms, driving mud-spattered trucks, and if you see them in the grocery store, they're likely to be in working farm clothes with their boots covered in the excrement of various farm animals. Usually where I live, it's new money people who are the flashiest or those who wish to appear as though they have money. Barely 82,000 in my town and we have high ratio of quirky people.

 

[whitewave]

[QUOTE="missy, post: 4525310, member: 31817"

https://www.secretentourage.com/motivation/how-to-differentiate-rich-vs-wealthy/

To me being wealthy means you have more than enough money that you will never ever run out of money and you no longer have to even think of money. That means wealthy to me. Where money is no longer a consideration in any of your decisions.[/QUOTE]

I don’t know if I agree with this.

I tend to believe wealthy people remain wealthy because they care about and watch their money. A person would have to be a billionaire to live without regard to money, no matter the bad decisions they make. That person is going to end up broke sooner or later.

 

[whitewave]

Elizabeth, you don't think that flying first class is a wealth indicator? I'm not talking about domestic flights. One friend just paid $20,000 for a first-class return fare with BA from New York to London, which is only a six-hour flight. He also flies first-class to Sydney, India, etc. which are obviously much more than six hours. Your standards for what constitutes wealth are impressively high!

But he is also getting mega points for those tickets too, so perhaps some of those flights are million medallion rewards.

 

[missy]

https://www.secretentourage.com/motivation/how-to-differentiate-rich-vs-wealthy/

To me being wealthy means you have more than enough money that you will never ever run out of money and you no longer have to even think of money. That means wealthy to me. Where money is no longer a consideration in any of your decisions.

I don’t know if I agree with this.

I tend to believe wealthy people remain wealthy because they care about and watch their money. A person would have to be a billionaire to live without regard to money, no matter the bad decisions they make. That person is going to end up broke sooner or later.

It's not so much about agreeing with me as I am sharing my opinion and thoughts on what *I* think being wealthy means.

And when one is wealthy by my definition it means one has enough money that they can buy whatever their heart desires without thinking about it. Without worrying about having enough money. Money is no longer their concern. Because they have so much of it. And doing this does not mean one is not making smart financial decisions all the while. Wealthy people are generally smart about money and invest wisely.

 

[Elizabeth35]

I don’t consider flying first class a wealth indicator. The person flying may be traveling for business or have millions of frequent flier miles. My husband traveled internationally for business for many years. You rack up the miles when you make frequent international trips.

Exactly. We fly first class most of the time and for international flights we use miles. Domestic we usually pay for, which then helps us build miles for the international flights! Would I spend $20K for tickets--nope.
I know a woman who does not save a dime but she always pays to fly first class.
I know multi-millionaires who NEVER pay to fly first class. So I don't use that as any type of barometer.

 

[Jambalaya]

But aren't you saying that you can't assume someone ISN'T wealthy by NOT flying first-class? In that sense, a LACK of first-class flights isn't an indicator that someone's NOT rich. Agree with that. (Caps just for emphasis since this is a little convoluted.) And biz travel/points etc. - yep.

But my definition of flying first-class, for our discussion purposes here, isn't about collecting points or the company picking the tab up, etc.

My definition of first-class is true luxury transcontinental first-class, not just a bit of extra legroom and a menu on a domestic flight. What I meant was flat-bed international flights, and that I know one of my friends drops 20k on a medium-haul flight without thinking about it. Actually, sometimes he has an enclosed suite when he visits India. That's what I'm talking about when I say first-class flying. And someone who can drop $20k on a medium-haul flight, as I know he did, is wealthy by my standards, especially when you consider the home on the Upper East Side and all the rest of it. The kind of travel is normal for him, and he does it constantly. That's wealthy to the vast majority of people. In his case, first-class travel is definitely a wealth indicator.

Not really sure how this thread came to be about splitting definitions of wealth and first-class flying into ever smaller parameters, but I just meant that I had noticed 3 out of the 4 very wealthy people I know were more reserved and don't engage as much as "normal" people I know. I was just idly wondering if that was other peoples' experience, too. And as I said, I know 4 people isn't exactly a huge survey!

 

[jaysonsmom]

I mentioned in my posts above that there are a couple of billionaire executives in my company I have traveled with on international business trips. They do not fly on private jets, nor do they fly first class. They are on a commercial airlines like the rest of us, and usually fly business class, not first class.

When I landed at LAX with one of the execs, I was expecting a limo to come pick him up, but he was waiting at SAME shuttle stop to take him to the long term parking where I parked! He commended me for parking at same long term parking because it was the cheapest in the area. I even tipped the shuttle driver for both of us because he didn't have small bills, and he thanked me and told me to expense the tip. Needless to say I won major brownie points for being a frugal traveler, even if things are on company dime when I travel. He won major respect from me as well, knowing that our company is not used to pamper management who are already getting paid a ton!

 

[chemgirl]

I think the only one I know is my boss. He’s a little eccentric (tried to cook hot dogs in the break room toaster). Nice guy though. It was hilarious hearing him go on and on about Walmart. He wanted a picture frame and someone suggested just stopping in on his way home. He came back the next morning with harmonicas for everyone because “they were only a dollar; can you believe it?” Tried to pay for $15 worth of burgers from the local place around the corner with a $100 bill and when they couldn’t make change told them to keep it. They totally thought it was fake.

His son started working with us and he is beyond helpful. I asked him a question yesterday and he literally jumped out of his chair to try and help. Definitely not a spoiled rich kid.

Probably not typical examples.

 

[seaurchin]

I have known a few richy-rich people and I think their basic personality is whatever it would be otherwise.

I have had friends who were much wealthier and much poorer than myself and I feel like both present an additional hurdle to friendship, though not necessarily a "fatal" one.

It's just a little harder to connect when you have very different ideas of what basic things entail, like going out to dinner or shopping, let alone on a trip together. Even discussions of everyday things like home furnishings or jewelry can get awkward. Also, some of the unspoken social rules differ.

 

[lilmosun]

I have known a few richy-rich people and I think their basic personality is whatever it would be otherwise.

I have had friends who were much wealthier and much poorer than myself and I feel like both present an additional hurdle to friendship, though not necessarily a "fatal" one.

It's just a little harder to connect when you have very different ideas of what basic things entail, like going out to dinner or shopping, let alone on a trip together. Even discussions of everyday things like home furnishings or jewelry can get awkward. Also, some of the unspoken social rules differ.

Same here...we tend to travel in different social circles and lifestyles but the ones I've become friends with were met through some common interest where I only realized their wealth over time and conversations/events (different upbringing, house stays, the time when one sent a limo to drive me hundreds of miles when a flight was cancelled, etc..). I know people who are in the same or lower income bracket that I wouldn't be friends with (vice versa). We are all of product of a lot of influences, not just money, that give us common ground or not.

 

[whitewave]

One of my closest and dearest friends has a net worth of which I cannot guess. They have a beautiful house, with a music room as they are all musical. Our sons have been friends since age 3.

Finally when they were around 10/11 her son let it slip that they had to go out west flying commercial since their plane was getting remodeled. (They go every years to SoCal for 2 weeks to visit the SoCal office and the rest of the family.)

I was like, “um, excuse me, did you say you have a plane.” Lol.

When I asked my friend about it at lunch, kinda ribbing her about it, she just said that it never came up in conversation and that it’s a company plane, so they don’t consider it their personal plane, etc. I also didn’t realize until that point that they own a conglomerate company.

They are just very down to earth and the kind of family where it doesn’t matter. I love her son like he is my own and I sure wish he and my daughter would fall in love, NOT for the money but for the musical talent. I have always wanted to have a musical family, but none of my kids really have any interest in that area, except one son does a decent job with guitar.

But they consider each other bother and sister since they grew up together, so that won’t happen. Boo.

They live large but never flaunt it. She doesn’t post much on social media. She is I would say one of my 3 closest friends and one of the kind of women who really gets me. We are brainy women who aren’t concerned about fashion, etc. Intellectual equals.




But I would say I have several close low multi millionaire friends, mostly because multi millionaire would be 2+ million and many of our friends are professionals married to professionals (like doctors married to each other making like 600+k a year combined, so it’s only a matter of time before they hit 2 million in assests). Plus we live in a low expense area.

Everyone is different in their spending habits, etc, and how showy they are or are not.

 

[KaeKae]

While in college, I was a bank teller. I can't say just how wealthy this one customer was, and while he was nice enough, he was also...um...frugal. I remember he came in for a counter check to buy a car. This was the late 80s, and he was getting a $30+K dollar car, paying with a check. And he had it made it out to himself, so that he could save the $3 fee I would have had to charge, if we'd made it out to the dealer.
I'm not criticizing him, it was a moment I realized that wealthy people can worry about the little things, just like I do.

 

[Polished]

I remember being asked to attend a trivia game by a mega rich friend of ours. It was a fund raiser for an animal charity, RSPCA here in Australia. At the table was an even more wealthy couple who were also heavily into animal charities. My husband is a serious trivia buff and the man kept looking at my DH with a mixture of amazement and amusement that he knew so many of the answers to the questions. However whenever my DH didn't know an answer he bought it and at the end of the night (unknown to us) bought our win. When we received our prize (bottles of wine, skin creams etc) he donated this back to the charity. All justified by it going to a worthy cause. However this isn't how trivia works. It wasn't fair to the team who would have won without his actions. They were people who we regularly play trivia with and they had formed a very strong team. I have to admit it was pretty funny to see their faces when it was announced we'd won but frankly it was corrupt. My friend, who had invited us to the trivia, later apologized to us that we weren't allowed to keep the prizes. She'd been upset by it.

That was the end of them until a few years later they had separated and the wife had moved into a house around the corner from us. We recognized each other, discovered we both had golden retrievers that needed walking and we began chatting. She was the loveliest woman, we never once talked about money, spouses or separations and divorce. She was finding herself and ended up returning to her home town in a lovely area of Australia.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

We certainly have friends and relatives in the low millions category, and in the south, that goes a long way. I went to a private girls college, and I had the opportunity to get to know people from all kinds of backgrounds, some very wealthy, as in their fathers owned a large business and they had debutante balls which I had the opportunity to attend. People like my in-laws were children of the depression and worked hard, lived frugally, and ended up with a very nice set of investments and assets. It has amazed me how frugally they have lived until the very end (they are about 90+ now). Personalities are varied just like in any economic class. Money doesn't necessarily bring happiness.

As far as I know, there are no $10 million plus people in my close social or family circles. However there are definitely some in the area where I live.

 

[tjkswift]

We have friends and relatives in the low millions up to st least 100 million, maybe more IDK. Most are first generation, primarily business owners and/or real estate owners. The males that are more serious tend to be the ones that did not grow up in wealth. The ones that tend to be more light hearted seem to be the ones that grew up in the wealthier environments and/or are not first generation money. One thing I have noticed about them is that the men tend to look older than they are, and I'm not talking about a few years. An example, we were invited to a 50th bday party for one and I seriously thought there was a typo on the invitation and that it was his 60th, and honestly couldn't believe he was only 60 but indeed, he was only turning 50. I've noticed that the females tend to present a snooty demeanor more often than the males, and I've more often noticed that this attitude tends to be from the females that were raised in less wealthy environments, and those that married into money. Other thoughts are that some are very spendy & flashy, some are generous, some are thrifty, some are tightwads, just as our other friends & family that aren't as well off. These are just my thoughts and observations on those that I'm in close contact with here in the midwest US.

 

[stracci2000]

I just remembered another multi-millionaire that I used to know.
In the 1980's I worked in an art studio. We had a client who headed a scientific research company. This guy owned a Caribbean island!
One of our artists did a watercolor of the island and we printed it on his personal stationary letterhead.
He wore the same thing everyday.
He had such a tiny office, that when you opened the door, it hit the secretary's desk.
And he wanted us to forge and re-print free drink coupons from the airline.

 

[arkieb1]

One very wealth guy who is now dead who was a close friend and mentor to my husband, used to do things for the community like for example if a family had a sick child or someone's house burnt down he took care of them. He volunteered for Rotary and cooked on community BBQs etc for years...... I've known many others that were average ordinary people and others that were and are rude, demanding and intolerant of getting anything other than what they want.

I know exceptionally wealth people that travel economy when flying those that will only fly business class, and a few with 10+ million dollar private jets in hangars....

As Kenny would say "people vary" extremely rich people as it turns out, vary too.