He gets up in the morning when he feels like he’s had enough sleep, so that means no alarms need to
go off. He has a healthy breakfast and spends some quality time with the people in his home. His days
are regularly taken up by meetings, but he hates it when they’re crowded. When he returns home from
work, he likes to eat unusual food for dinner and he always tries to help with washing the dishes.
He then watches a bit of TV - Star Trek if it’s on - and then he goes to bed at a reasonable time.
Well, that doesn’t sound very interesting for a billionaire, does it?
We might also add that he spends around $1.6 million a year on security. When he’s
at work his office is protected by $180,000 bulletproof panels. When he’s not working,
he likes to take the kids on his private jet or for an adventure in a submarine.
This is course is not the life of a mere millionaire. It’s the life of a billionaire,
a famous one, too. The one and only Jeff Bezos (net worth $185.1 billion).
At least it was how he lived a few years ago according to various media stories.
The day-to-day life of millionaires and billionaires can of course be vastly different
even when we’re not talking about security and very expensive hobbies. How an ultra-rich tech
CEO and a member of a royal family live are two very different worlds. A guy who made millions
as a high-ranking member of a crime family will very likely have a different routine from
some kid who was born a millionaire and spends most of his time posting photos on Instagram.
Saying that, there are some commonalities in how the rich live,
either the ultra-rich or the just a bit rich.
Let’s start with the billionaire lifestyle.
If you’re one of the top billionaires, it’s highly likely you’ll have hired 24-hour a day security.
That means at home; when you go to the office, and while you’re at the office.
When it comes to security, it seems out of the tech billionaires it’s Mark Zuckerberg
(net worth $96.7 billion) who spends the most,
or at least Facebook spends the cash. The last numbers we can find said his security costs in
the region of $23 million per year, but his private aircraft costs another $2.95 million.
So, personal freedom is one of the biggest differences between the ultra-rich
to the mere millionaire types. Obviously,
we can’t tell you everything about their security because that would mean it sucked,
but some things do make it into the press. There were rumors back in 2016 that Zuckerberg planned
to build four new houses on his compound, except one of those houses was a giant panic room.
As for when he’s at work, it’s said he has what the media called a “Praetorian Guard” around
him at all times. If someone gets funny ideas about taking the CEO down with a rugby tackle,
they won’t even get close to him. If that’s not excessive,
it’s said in a conference room he has an office protected with bullet-proof glass.
There’s a panic button, too. According to rumors, and we repeat
rumors, he has a panic chute, too. Where it takes him we can’t say, if it exists at all.
Like many billionaires, there’s an armed guard outside his personal residence at all times.
If he does go out in public, where he’s going will be vetted and swept before he even steps
foot in the place. Obviously, he doesn’t go anywhere without this highly-trained entourage.
That doesn’t sound like much fun at all. It’s almost like being imprisoned by your wealth.
But what about millionaires, maybe they can say, “Millionaires have more fun.”
We guess it all depends on how many millions you have. There are a thousand million in one billion,
so there’s a big difference between having sold a few Bitcoin and got yourself 1.2 million
and someone who has 836 million. It also depends on where you live,
because a few million in some countries is a fortune and it could mean the risk
of someone kidnapping your kids and asking for a ransom.
Still, not all very rich millionaires have round-the-clock security.
Take for instance the actors Keanu Reeves and Jake Gyllenhaal, guys who like to ride the
subway. The former is said to have a net worth of around $350 million and the latter, $80 million.
Let’s just add here that net worth’s for celebrities change a lot depending on the
resource you’re looking at. As for billionaires, their net worth changes like the wind, so
what we say at the time of writing might be very different from when you watch the show...Yes,
we’ve been reading your comments about us getting net worths wrong.
Many actors in fact don’t have any fancy security detail,
especially when they’re doing their day-to-day stuff. When Brad Pitt (net worth $300 million) and
Angeline Jolie (net worth $160 million) were together they had a bodyguard, even so,
they were once spotted riding on a scooter in Vietnam not even wearing helmets. It’s
also said when in Asia they’d spend up to $20,000 a night on their luxurious lodgings.
Many multi millionaires you won’t be surprised to hear have personal chefs. Occasionally those chefs
kiss and tell, talking about who the fussy eaters are and what strange foods they like to eat.
One personal chef said the job was fun in that he got to travel around on yachts,
but he also said he was on call all the time and generally worked 15-hour days.
Another chef who refused to say much about the people he worked with said celebrities hardly
ever leave the house. Like the billionaires, they’re somewhat trapped by their status.
That doesn’t sound like much fun. Chef Kat Turner, who’d worked with a bunch of celebs
said her clients at times demanded the utmost privacy, meaning some celeb chefs
have to almost be invisible. That, she said, makes the job a lonely one. It seems
she at least had fun working with the Smashing Pumpkin’s frontman, Billy Corrigan
(net worth $60 million). She said he ate simply and most of the food she made for him was very
healthy. She said she worked hard but he also worked 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week.
What about your regular millionaires. Do they require bodyguards and personal chefs?
A bodyguard from the UK was asked about that. He said it all depends on where you are working.
A person with not many millions or even a solitary million might walk around with bodyguards in the
poorest nations on Earth, but in a place like England, he said you pass them in the supermarket
every day and you wouldn’t know that they were what he called part of the Upper Middle Class.
Consider that the average house price in West London is around $1.5 million,
being a millionaire in some of London’s swankier suburbs isn’t a big deal at all.
There will be no personal chefs for the folks who can just call themselves a millionaire,
no bodyguards, and certainly no super-yacht.
Just like the in the U.S., they will have more time than regular working folks to focus on
personal growth, to enjoy hobbies, to have the time to talk in-depth to their kids’ teachers.
They will also strategize about what they do with their wealth. According to some experts,
mere millionaires on the bottom rung of the ladder are actually very careful with their money.
When 600 millionaires in the US were questioned in a survey, many of them said they spent below their
means. Even though they had a big income, they weren’t rich enough to go crazy with their cash,
so being frugal was the way to go. Most of them didn’t live in a house that was super-costly in
relation to their wage. There was no showing off going on. Most of them lived in a place
they could comfortably afford. Many of them even managed to save around half of the pay
they received each year. Put it this way, if you’re a millionaire with a $250,000
a year salary it’s unlikely you’ll be spending $20,000 a night on a hotel room.
Nonetheless, in another survey of regular millionaires, most of the people interviewed
said they didn’t budget. They had enough cash to know that if they were sensible
everything was going to be ok. If you have a million in the bank you don’t
really need to worry too much about buying a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes.
Entrepreneurs who hit the millionaire mark apparently like to have side
hustles. They start looking for new streams of income, and why not,
they have a safety blanket. The problem with being poor or even middle-class is
not having enough time to get out of your situation because you’re working so hard.
If lower millionaires are not working on their ideas, they will likely be investing their cash in
index funds or in the property market. When they are not doing that, millionaires on
average spend more time exercising than the poor, or doing yoga, or going to steam baths,
or taking archery lessons, or just reading books. This is how one person put it when
talking to Business Insider, “Successful individuals are keenly aware of how they
spend their resources, including their emotional and cognitive resources.”
Ah, precious time, it’s such a valuable resource and the working poor often doesn’t get enough of
it to focus on their personal development. So, with the lower end of the millionaire ladder,
safety and comfort and personal development are the big luxuries. And just to give you
guys some hope, in some of the surveys we read, many of the millionaires didn’t do
exceptionally well in school or college, and quite a few didn’t even finish high-school.
Now let’s get back to the very rich.
Ok, so not all multi-millionaires are careful with their cash, after all, they rarely have to be.
It’s not easy to fritter away many millions of dollars. Some have tried hard, though.
Take for instance the movie star, Johnny Depp. Reports surfaced not too long ago that he was
spending in the region of $30,000 a month just on wine. It’s also reported that he bought a town in
France that cost him $75 million. Before that acquisition, he bought a chain of islands in
the Bahamas for $3.6 million. He even spent $3 million in 2005 on his friend’s funeral,
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. That was according to a lawsuit. Depp’s lawyer
argued that he only spent $2 million on blasting Thompson’s ashes from a cannon.
According to an article in CNBC, when he was raking in the cash his lifestyle alone cost
him $2 million a month. It’s thought he’s worth around $200 million now,
but you could triple that not too long ago.
When that lawsuit was brought against him, his monthly costs were made public,
so that’s how we know so much. On top of his expensive wine habit, he also spent
$300,000 a month on his 40 employees. What they all did we don’t exactly know, but we’re
guessing Mr. Depp unlike Mr. Bezos didn’t get dry skin from all the dishwashing he was doing.
Depp spent another $150,000 a month on security and his family, and a further $200,000 a month
for his private jet. In conclusion, if you want to get rid of a fortune, ask Johnny Depp.
But here’s the real-life story of Brewster’s Millions.
Wasting tons of cash is easily done, especially if you have a devil-may-care attitude such
as Depp or you were brought up poor and never really learned how to handle cash.
That happened to a 19-year old in England after he won the lottery in 2002. His windfall was almost
ten million pounds, which in today’s money in dollars is about $21 million. Needless to say,
he quit his job as a garbage man - “bin man” as they say in England.
This teenager, who learned to read and write in prison, was turned down for a private bank account
because of his colorful criminal record. He gave lots of money away to family and friends,
made some bad investments, and even paid a ton of cash to fight a celebrity on TV.
He was arrested not long after that for being caught firing steel balls at store
windows from his Mercedes Benz. Just five years after the win, and a lot of houses,
cars, and drugs later, he was pretty much broke. In 2010,
he was back to working collecting people’s garbage and he said he was happier doing that.
So, these are two examples of how people threw away fortunes. It’s
not something you hear billionaires doing often.
Ok, so we always hear about Bezos getting his hands dirty and how Warren
Buffet (net worth $85.6 billion) religiously eats hamburgers, ice cream, and Coke, but
isn’t that just to make us ordinary folks think they’re just like us? How do they really live?
Let’s look at the Russian billionaire named Roman Abramovich (net worth $14.5 billion).
As we write this, the media is talking about the yacht he bought for $610 million.
Just the upkeep and running of this yacht costs him $65 million a year.
Many billionaires own yachts. One of them, whose name was withheld,
was asked why. This was his reply: “You're going to think I'm crazy.
I'll tell you why. It's because I'm OCD about toilets and germs! If I rented a yacht,
I would be sharing a toilet with people that I don't know. So I purchased my own.”
Unlike lower millionaires, they can make the world fit to their whims.
Abramovich is the owner of a Premier division soccer team in England,
too. That’s another thing billionaires like to do, buy sports teams. In the aforementioned division,
teams have belonged to Chinese billionaires, Thai billionaires,
and billionaires from the Middle East. We’re not sure about all of them, but for some,
including Abramovich, watching their team play might be one of their past times.
Not all billionaires have fancy cars, but that’s because most of them don’t
drive around in their own cars. Elon Musk (net worth $166.1 billion) has a collection of cars,
including his own Tesla’s, but billionaires are generally not into showing off. It’s more
likely that millionaires will be the ones buying top-of-the-range Rolls Royce’s and Bugatti’s.
Billionaires are happier in submarines doing some kind of deepwater expedition.
Do they walk around the house in the most expensive garments?
Possibly, if they’re royal, but it’s unlikely if they are self-made rich folks. Look at
Elon Musk on his two times on the Joe Rogan (net worth $100 million) podcast.
As we write this he’s the richest man in the world but on that show, he looked like
he’d just finished his shift at Taco Bell. He also mixed the ice in his whisky with his
fingers. Billionaires don’t have to act like they’re rich. They’ve peaked already. Instead,
they play their wealth down. This is how one writer and friend of a billionaire put it:
“When meeting with my billionaire friend in his home, he wears Nike flip-flops,
worn-out jeans, and t-shirts. Once, he even came downstairs to meet me,
featuring a fresh ketchup stain on his shirt.”
That doesn’t mean to say on the wall of their houses they don’t have incredibly expensive
paintings. Next time you go around to Bill Gate’s (net worth $136.6 million) house for
dinner ask him where he hangs his $36 million dollar painting, “Lost on the Grand Banks.”
In fact, ask to see his entire collection. It’s worth many more millions. It’s said
business magnate David Geffen (net worth $9.7 billion) has an art collection worth $2 billion,
so don’t be fooled by the flip-flops. We are guessing no billionaires in
the world hold back on luxuries all the time. Still, as one friend of a billionaire put it,
they are so rich they value the normal stuff. Unlike some millionaires who hire expensive
high-end chefs to cook for them, some of the ultra-rich get off on cooking as a family. That’s
exactly why Mr. Bezos scrapes dried macaroni off dishes…even if they are dishes made by Versace.
Now you need to watch, “Spend $1 Billion Dollars In 24 Hours or LOSE IT ALL - CHALLENGE.” Or,
have a look at, “Why Winning The Lottery Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen To You.”