To flex
to show how much money
you can afford to
unnecessarily waste in order
to draw attention, admiration
or envy of those you perceive lesser than you.
If you've been around rich people long enough,
you realize that
some of them still need validation,
but they've got to disguise it.
Otherwise they seem oblivious
to just how good their life is.
So get ready because this is a good one.
Here are 15 ridiculous ways rich people flex.
Welcome to ALUX.
The place where future billionaires
come to get inspired.
First up, complaining how expensive
things are in their rich reality.
Recently we were talking with
an executive in the valley
whose child is
in their second year of kindergarten,
getting ready to start school next year.
Now, they casually complained
about the $40,000 fee they pay per year
to send this kid to kindergarten.
$40,000 per year.
And they're going to do it every year
until it's time for high school.
Two years of kindergarten,
plus eight years
of primary school and middle school.
That's $400,000 just in school fees.
Another complaint you'll hear among the rich.
That's a subtle flex is the 3.25% property tax.
In New York, this is called the mansion tax.
You pay 3.25% of property tax per year.
If your home is worth
between 10 to 15 million, above 15 million,
you pay 3.5% and it caps at 3.9%.
Once it goes over 25 million.
Just listen to how crazy this is.
Right now, there's a penthouse
for sale in Manhattan for 250 million.
The property taxes alone are almost $10
million per year.
Rich people flex
when their taxes and fees are more than most
people will earn in a lifetime.
And it gets crazier from here.
They brag about
how much money they lost or spent.
The thing about
telling others how much money you lost
ticks off two boxes.
One, it's
supposed to make them more sympathetic to you
because loss is difficult for everybody.
But it really doesn't work that way
because nobody feels bad when people
richer than them lose money.
Two It brags about how much money you had
in the first place
that you could afford to lose that much.
We're actually guilty of this ourselves.
Last year, our personal portfolio
dipped by over $1 million and we made a video
documenting the lessons we've learned from that,
but more importantly,
how it felt,
especially since we are
someone who came from poverty.
It's by far the most underrated video
we've posted on our channel.
You'll hear this backhanded flex
across the wealth spectrum
from the richest people in the world
losing over $50 billion in a single year.
Elon's $200 billion drop being the largest
financial loss in human history
to venture capitalists like James Altucher
blowing through $30 million in 45 days.
Or Hollywood elites like Aerosmith's Steven
Tyler spending over $6 million on Bellow alone
donating money
so things get named after them.
Streets, roads, museums, hospital wings,
airport lounges,
and even desserts on restaurant menus.
Rich people are vain, so charities use this
to extract more money out of them
in their pursuit for immortality,
or to feel like their legacy will outlive them.
They'll seek opportunities
to have their name carved into stone.
And look,
truth be told,
it would be kind of higher
to have a famous bar or hotel named after you.
Right?
They complain on how long they have to
wait for their expensive orders.
You might not know this,
but a second hand Ferrari or Lamborghini
is actually more
expensive than a brand new one. Why?
Because it takes 18 months for you
to finally get delivery when you buy a new one.
So people who want to skip that
wait time resort to resellers.
It's the same with luxury watches or luxury bags.
The moment that Birkin
or Patek leaves the showroom.
You made at least ten grand in paper profit.
If you order the latest Rolls-Royce
spectra now, you should expect delivery in 2025.
And don't even get us
started on the Tesla Roadster
Art. Historically, rich
people have separated
themselves from everyone else
through different behaviors and appetites.
They invented
specific ways and utensils to eat food
just so they can show that they're in the know.
And it's the same with art.
The weirder the art, the better they get it.
You don't.
Then money came in.
Turns out the weird art you see on
their walls
is not only a
pretty good store of value
that they get to flex with, but it's actually
a great investment vehicle crushing
gold, the real estate
and even the S&P 500 to ultra rich people.
It doesn't matter that they don't understand
what the artist was trying to say
as long as the returns are great.
So the super rich
allocate 5% of their portfolios to art,
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Rare animal
breeds Scarcity is status.
I have something ridiculous
that you don't have. So I'm better than you.
From MJ's Monkey Bubbles.
Tyson's Tigers two.
Peter Balder, Savannah Cats,
French Blue Bulldogs.
Or how we've meddled with the breeding
and changed the British
bull terrier
to a caricature of what the breed used to be.
And the list goes on.
A notable mention here are aquariums
and birds in cages.
We feel like both of them really had a moment
when we were growing up, but now almost nobody
keeps birds in cages anymore.
Extremely large doors,
High ceilings are one thing
that's been taken to the extreme
despite
being incredibly inefficient
when it comes to climate control.
But the way rich
people flex on everyone else is with their doors.
If opening the entrance to
your house is a literal workout,
you've gone beyond what's considered okay.
Oversize.
Everything seems to be the trend here.
In the words of modern poet 21 Savage
why are you at a 12 car
garage when you only got six cars?
Why indeed?
Over-the-top weddings or parties.
If there's one event where rich people don't
care about the budget, it's their wedding.
The poorer the country you're in,
the more expensive the wedding has to be.
We're looking at you.
Lakshmi Mittal,
spending $66 million on your daughter's wedding.
You'll find it similar, but not that extreme
versions in every country.
People wear that bill like a badge of honor.
And speaking of Bill's overpriced restaurants,
just because it's overpriced,
look, don't get us wrong, okay?
We love exquisite food
and great dining experiences,
but it's
gotten to a point where things
are just ridiculous.
They throw gold leaf on anything these days
just so they can charge you in the hundreds.
Salt Bay is a great example of this.
This is a bill for 250,000 American dollars,
a quarter of $1,000,000 for one meal and seven
bottles of wine.
And you'd think this is just a middle East thing,
but you see it in London as well.
The service charge alone for this bill is $6,000.
Here is Lionel Messi's bill
from when he went out to eat in a beat
that with Suarez and Fabregas had this point.
You're doing it
just for the thrill of spending money
because there's no
additional return in quality or experience
that you get for the extra buck.
For example, the highest quality meat
there is the grade A5 Wagyu beef
coming straight from Japan.
Air flown costs $250 a pound.
That's the ceiling.
Restaurants like Salt
Bay charge $1,000 for a $50 tomahawk
and then add
like $5 worth of edible gold leaf to justify it.
Celebrity
coaches, it's not enough to have a good coach.
You need to have a professional teach you.
That's how you end up
paying $210,000 to have Tiger teach you golf.
Money buys you access.
But just like with the steak example,
there's a ceiling to raw quality
and then it bleeds into just status signaling.
People pay $19 million
to have dinner with Warren Buffett
just for him to tell them to invest long term.
The most effective coaches are those
who are just
a handful of steps ahead of where you are.
If you were to have dinner with Ellen or Jeff
and ask them to tell you about what
they're learning in their day to day, it's
unlikely that you'll get anything
actionable to apply to yourself.
Why? Well, because their reality
is so different from yours.
The gap
and the
kind of challenges
they have to solve compared to
what you're dealing with is just too big.
And this is
the foundation on which we built the Alexa app.
The goal is to take you from $1,000 a month
to $10,000 a month to $100,000 a month
and forward an incremental jumps
through education.
Although our app centers on money,
health, relationships, intellect and emotions
all evolve and change as you make progress.
So they all need to go up at the same time,
otherwise your mind will break.
Ala is the only app out there designed to do that
for you to go to alux.com/app
right now and start the free trial.
You'll be blown away lo
license plate numbers.
Take Dubai for example.
When everyone's
driving a Rolls-Royce or a supercar,
there is only one way to stand out, have a lower
license plate than they do for real.
This is a thing in the Emirates.
The Sheikh of Dubai has the number one
license plate on his g-wagon.
The closer you are to his number,
the higher the status.
So to show you how insane this craze is,
a couple of months ago, someone paid
$15 million for a number seven,
which makes the $9 million
someone else paid for. Number five.
Look like a steel
super yachts.
Here's how it goes.
Among rich people.
You have money?
I have money.
You have a super car?
I have a super car.
You have a vacation home?
I have a vacation home.
You have a jet?
I have a jet.
But how big is your yacht?
That's literally what it boils down to.
Now, there are three levels to yachts,
millionaire yachts.
Those are under 25 meters.
A price point between one and $15 million.
Super yachts are between 25 meters and 60 meters.
And price wise they go from 15 to 50 million.
Everything longer than 60 meters
falls under the mega yacht category.
And mega-yacht
are in the ballpark of $100 million.
These are basically floating hotels.
The crazy thing about yachts
is that the maintenance and crew costs are around
10% of the yachts value on a yearly basis.
If you learn something new about yachts today,
subscribe to our channel.
The table You sit at.
Now, this might sound crazy to some of you,
but high end restaurants have a ranking system
when it comes to
what tables you're seated at,
depending on how high profile you are.
So here's the insider scoop
We had the privilege
to be eating at one of these
high end restaurants in midtown
Manhattan a couple of months ago
with some of our friends in finance.
Now, getting a table here is hard
enough to begin with.
But if you manage to get in, it goes like this.
Millionaires
and other people in finance
sit in the center of the room.
Think your regular tables.
Executives from high end firms
get the window seats
and then there are
specially reserved booths,
more private, usually elevated
for the big shots
whose net worth starts with a B.
When big deals are being made,
they usually happen around food
in these establishments
think mergers and acquisitions.
So yeah, not all restaurant
tables are created equally.
Terraforming Land.
At this point, you enter a world of people
who are actively shaping the world around them.
Billionaires flocked to Hawaii.
Larry Ellison bought 98% of the land
island for $300 million.
Mark Zuckerberg
is trying to do the same thing with Kauai.
Among other ridiculous stories that we've heard.
Are people paying $250,000
to uproot an old tree and move it
by a lake for his daughter's
wedding, only to pay another 50,000 to move it
back to its original spot after the wedding.
These are the kinds of folks
who stumbled upon the Maldives
and decided to transform
the wild island into a touristy paradise.
They build beaches, they create islands.
Some of them blow up parts of mountains
to make room for their estate.
Then finally, humble, bragging, humble bragging
as when ego meets false modesty.
Here are some examples
o FS in the chat for Kylie being teased
by her family for being a billionaire.
Or Floyd giving his son
the spotlight he deserves.
And you know, having
we all
been in Ariana's shoes when none of our three
BlackBerrys were working on a flight
so relatable or whatever these are.
You must have some really cool stories
to tell as well.
So what's the most ridiculous
where you've seen or heard
about someone flexing a leg?
So let us know in the comments.
And as a thank you for sticking
around this long, you get a bonus.
Don't flex your parents money
because look, here's where it's at.
The kid who bought their own
Toyota is more successful than the one flexing
in their dad's Range Rover.
The problem is,
until you get into your late twenties,
you don't really have an idea of who you are
and you don't have much
to show for any of your efforts
in a social media superficial world.
The culture wants you to flex.
Get your own success. Okay.
My dad beat up your dad.
Type of thinking never works
out in the real world.
Make something of yourself.
Build something of value.
Don't allow social media
or culture
to put pressure on you.
Focus on yourself and you'll find something
real.
You'll become something real
that you're solely responsible for.
When you look in the mirror,
you'll be able to smile deeply.
And not just on the surface.
And we'll leave you with this.
Flexing is a shortcut to poverty.
If this idea has resonated with you,
and if you're one of the few
who wants to actually be rich,
not just look rich to those peeking in right.
The word flex in the comments.
Let's see how many real ones we've got today.