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.”
