Stuff Rich People Do

[Anonymous]

This is not me -best friend from HS married a hedge fund guy (Harvard Bus. school). They are 50 now - 4 kids - he retired 10 years ago at 40 - this is their life 2015:

4 kids - 2 in private college (Columbia/Notre dame)
- 2 in private school
- beach house completely redone last year, regular house (7,000 sf - professionally decorated top to bottom with shopping trips to Paris.
- 5-6 various cars purchased after he retired
- she takes classes and travels to exotic yoga retreats to become certified but does not teach
- he studies art with a master weekly - paints okay stuff that he sells on etsy for charity
- gardener for 2 acre property, housekeeper and they had full time nanny til kids were in grade school
- Christmas in Hawaii, skiing imTelluride, summer in Namtucket, constant shopping travel to NYC and LA
- again - there was no family money and he retired at 40- -10 years ago - Yeesh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

[Anonymous]

...come on DCUM and claim to be upper middle class and just getting by.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD and her college roommates got a bad housing lottery number (meaning they won't get the suite they want to live in next year). So the parents of one of the girls just bought a $4M 4 BR house for the girls to share next year. Sweet.

This is OP. Niiiice!!! I hope your DD enjoys

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're a full pay family in private school but it's not easy. We're doing fine but no crazy vacations to Europe or anything like that.

A causal friend was telling me about their spring break plans and how she was so worried about her kids flying. Thinking it was their first plane ride- I started giving her tips about Benadryl, snacks etc. She quickly stopped me- she was worried because her kids had never traveled commercial before.

ha!!!

Lol. Love this one. OP here. We are in independent schools as well but have basically grounded vacations to afford it. So, when I next put my kids on a commercial flight, I might be nervous too for totally different reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

OP here...what a silly comment. Kids don't have to fill up the gas OR have someone else do it. $ buying time is awesome.

[Anonymous]

Boats. Very nice ones, kept someplace in the caribbean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

NP. I won't say childish, but I'd say it would make someone fall out of touch with things. I've never heard of hiring a gas pumper, for instance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am more shocked at how appalled and nasty people are at things that "rich" or event moderately rich people do. Based on what I am about to post, there are people on DCUM who would be outraged, and say "why in the world can't you do that yourself." Of course I CAN do these things, but we can afford to pay someone, and it allows time for me to do other things. For what it's worth, most of my friends in the Bethesda area have all these things also. Our HHI is under 300K.

I had a baby nurse for 2 weeks. It was great. About half of my friends had full time baby nurses, and many had night nurses a couple nights a week.

I have a cleaning person once a week. We have someone else mow the lawns.

I SAH, but when my kids were little I had a nanny come 2 days a week so I could go to appointments and run errands. (Where I live, many SAHMs have some help). I do not have family in the area able to babysit on a weekday. This set up made it so I could go to the dentist without a screaming one year old, and it's not so easy to find mid-week babysitters you trust with your kids.

We do not go on crazy vacations, and when we do we often use points or miles. We stay at Marriott level or less nice hotels, not Ritz or Four Seasons. We drive 2 cars, but they are toyotas not BMWs. We live comfortably, and we now in the grand scheme we are well off, but we are not at the level where we are private jet, exclusively luxury hotel people. But in DCUM world, we will get slammed for being rich and clueless, and how dare I not be a martyr for doing absolutely everything in the home since I am supposedly a useless excuse for a human living off of my husband.

Hey, do what you want to do without being defensive. But with that HHI, no one in DC thinks you are rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

NP. I won't say childish, but I'd say it would make someone fall out of touch with things. I've never heard of hiring a gas pumper, for instance.

Pretty sure that what PP means is that she has somebody to run errands for her, get groceries, take in the dry cleaning in and do the laundry. While out and about, they fill up the gas tank. We have the exact same setup - I truly appreciate not having to do any laundry or hurry to get my dry cleaning it if I want to get an outfit ready - it is normally already done. Somebody to get the oil changed, get the car inspected, get the car washed, and spend a half our waiting for all of these things to happen. She makes returns for us if we need to take something back, she supervises the work if something is going on in the house, pretty much everything except cooking which we enjoy. It is something I am extremely grateful for because it frees up a ton of time to do the things that we really want to do and eliminates a lot of discussions and bargaining about who is going to take care of this task or that one.

Our person is our nanny who has taken on more of these tasks since our kids have gotten older and don't require much, if any, supervision. She has a job here as long as she wants it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am more shocked at how appalled and nasty people are at things that "rich" or event moderately rich people do. Based on what I am about to post, there are people on DCUM who would be outraged, and say "why in the world can't you do that yourself." Of course I CAN do these things, but we can afford to pay someone, and it allows time for me to do other things. For what it's worth, most of my friends in the Bethesda area have all these things also. Our HHI is under 300K.

I had a baby nurse for 2 weeks. It was great. About half of my friends had full time baby nurses, and many had night nurses a couple nights a week.

I have a cleaning person once a week. We have someone else mow the lawns.

I SAH, but when my kids were little I had a nanny come 2 days a week so I could go to appointments and run errands. (Where I live, many SAHMs have some help). I do not have family in the area able to babysit on a weekday. This set up made it so I could go to the dentist without a screaming one year old, and it's not so easy to find mid-week babysitters you trust with your kids.

We do not go on crazy vacations, and when we do we often use points or miles. We stay at Marriott level or less nice hotels, not Ritz or Four Seasons. We drive 2 cars, but they are toyotas not BMWs. We live comfortably, and we now in the grand scheme we are well off, but we are not at the level where we are private jet, exclusively luxury hotel people. But in DCUM world, we will get slammed for being rich and clueless, and how dare I not be a martyr for doing absolutely everything in the home since I am supposedly a useless excuse for a human living off of my husband.

Hey, do what you want to do without being defensive. But with that HHI, no one in DC thinks you are rich.

I agree, I do not think we are rich! I said comfortable. But on other DCUM threads I have been told that because I hire out my house cleaning and yard work and get my hair done in the salon I am out of touch and essentially a snob. I find the DCUM mom world to be nasty to anyone who uses any such conveniences (while in real life, I do not consider myself rich). Even though DC area has lots of wealth, I find the DCUM crowd not to be for the most part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

What struck me about it was that I have been teaching my kids for years to clear their own plate from the table, make and pack their own lunch, be responsible for their things, and do their own laundry. It seems like a step back in terms of personal responsibility to never do any of those things. It just seems infantilizing to me. If your cleaning lady and cook go on vacation, do you just get take-out and let the laundry pile up? If you spill something, do you clean it or wait for the maid to do it?

[Anonymous]

We appear middle class, and we spend like we're middle class, but with a typical year's stock market performance (around 6 or 7%), our investment earnings exceed our living expenses.

We've always saved one of our two incomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Places I have not stepped foot in months -- a grocery store, a gas station or a dry cleaners. All the things that I need from these places are taking care of by someone else, without my ever even really thinking about them. It's like food is in the pantry and gas is in the tank and clean clothes are in my closet just magically without my ever having to think about it. But I do appreciate it greatly.

That just sounds like the life of a child to me.

What I'm paying for is my time. I work very hard and earn and good salary, so I am fortunate to be able to pay someone to do all of that. Then when I am home, I am able to spend my time with my family instead of running around crazy doing errands I don't enjoy. What is childish about that?

What struck me about it was that I have been teaching my kids for years to clear their own plate from the table, make and pack their own lunch, be responsible for their things, and do their own laundry. It seems like a step back in terms of personal responsibility to never do any of those things. It just seems infantilizing to me. If your cleaning lady and cook go on vacation, do you just get take-out and let the laundry pile up? If you spill something, do you clean it or wait for the maid to do it?

Understand what you are saying, and I occasionally struggle with this, however.....while our kids do clean their plate, clean their rooms, etc, etc - the reality is that we aren't doing the landscaping on our 2+ acre lot by ourselves, and we aren't doing a lot of the tasks listed above because we don't have to and would rather spend our time doing the things we want to do.

At the same time, we will make sure that our kids understand that what we have is a hard earned privilege, which we achieved without family help and earned on our own and that we expect the same from them. The reality is that when the time is right, they will have a bunch of money to make their life much easier down the road, but not until a work ethic is forged and they aren't going to know how much until they are able to handle that responsibility. We might, for instance, make them take out student loans and feel the pressure of paying for an education, even though we are able to pay them off and have the money saved. They will definitely have jobs to earn their own money in high school and college, etc. We realize the importance of a work ethic in what we have achieved and despite our luxuries, I still think we will be able to get them in the right frame of mind, even if there are second generation challenges as well as challenges with friends and environment that come with money.

[Anonymous]

Other stuff rich people do:

--ship their suitcases overnight instead of carrying luggage
--get everything tailored/custom made
--pay to get escorted around Disney and skip all the lines
--on that note, pay for private tours/private guides basically everywhere they go, so they can see everything on their own schedule/in private, not have to deal with any travel logistics