“I Could Never Take Her Seriously”: 44 Times Rich People Showed How Far From Reality They Are

"Why did you take your car to get 'looked at'? Just get a different one. I don't know why you waste your time with repairmen like that."

My sister is a therapist, and she used to make incredible money at this bougie therapy practice that only accepted customers who weren't using insurance in a very wealthy neighborhood in our city.
Her specialty was troubled teens.
Almost universally, her clients were children of parents who'd drop them off and be like, "Fix them." And when she'd review with the parents what needed to change at home, they'd be like, I don't understand; I'm paying you to fix this.
It legitimately does not compute when they encounter a problem that money won't fix.

"How could your family accountant let that happen?"
When talking about how growing up, we couldn't pay the bills and had our water/electricity shut off multiple times.

"How do you only have one dishwasher?" Imagine their shock when I told them the apartment that I had just moved out of, which I lived in for 14 years, didn't have one at all.

My college girlfriend's freshman roommate threw a fit that her daddy didn’t buy her a bunch of Thanksgiving presents, including a $2000 flat screen TV (and this was 2007.)
Who gets a Thanksgiving present?

I have a boss who makes 7 to 8 figures a year, owns a home, and is in the process of building himself a new 6-bedroom 6-bathroom home. He complains all the time to us employees about how stressful it is picking out tile for the bathroom or deciding on a kitchen backsplash, even though his wife doesn't even work, and that's literally all she has to do all day. He complains about the moving guys getting a little scratch on the floor that will soon be covered by carpet anyway. He even complained about staying in a hotel while the houses are renovated, saying his shower pressure is low. And most of all, he complains that building your own home is sooooo expensive, as if someone is forcing him to do it.
Meanwhile, I had to force him to bring my wage up to market rate for the job, and I work two jobs now. I have been sick at work for a few weeks now, and desperately need time off, but I have to fight with him and justify to him in order to get it.

While working for a valet parking service in the Santa Barbara area years ago, a woman hired us for a jewelry showing she was having at her giant house in Montecito, and while we were waiting for guests to arrive, my boss informed me that when the guests get in their cars to leave, that I needed to be sure to close their car doors or else they would just drive off with their doors open. As they're so used to people closing their car doors for them.

Not understanding why we didn’t get more than one gift on our birthdays and Christmas. It was usually clothes.

My old boss was verbally criticizing her new son-in-law, and said, “He won’t be any kind of decent husband, hell, he only makes xxx an hour at his lousy job”.
My boss clearly forgot that I was making less than that…

I've known quite a few people to not realize the benefit they received by just getting a house, car, and the cost of a degree (sometimes including advanced) from their parents.
It's much easier to budget when those items are removed from the equation. Even more so when you can get some income from the house.

I worked for a guy who only flew in his private jet. He moved staff payday to the 3rd and 16th to save himself a few bucks. Staff were literally evicted after 3 months for failure to pay late fees on rent.

I did some work on a multimillion-dollar house once, and the wife was making small talk by complaining about gas prices and how that extra $12 per tank really adds up. She didn't work and drove a BMW. Her husband "worked" from home and drove a Porsche. Pretty sure they both A) could afford gas, and B) absolutely didn't need to drive any of the places that they went during the day.

I was friends with a multi-millionaire for a while. The sheer amount of times he told me he was "going broke", that he was poor, etc., etc., TO MY FACE, as I was struggling to pay for rent/grocery... Is astounding. I would call him out on it, and he never took it seriously. It drove me crazy.

I once sat next to a woman on a plane who justified renting her freshman daughter her own 2-bedroom, water-view apartment because, "She's a good girl, not a party girl, so she didn't want to do the share-house thing."
Like the rest of us, split the rent for the sheer thrill of it...

I occasionally drive minibuses for a private school in the UK, have overheard some very privileged conversations from the students but one that sticks out is: A tutor on the bus asked a student what he says when other students make comments about the very expensive watches he wears to school, to which he said his response is “my dad has the same 24 hours as your dad”. He then proceeded to go on about how his dad inherited a massive entertainment chain and various hugely successful companies from his grandfather.

My ex-boss was whining about "having" to buy new furniture from an upscale furniture place here because his sister was coming to visit. Poor guy.

Once heard my ex-boss say, "People just don't want to work anymore". Staff did ALL her work, her dad owned the business, she was in the office maybe 18 hours a week, actually worked maybe an hour a day, and complained constantly that she needed a vacation and she was overworked. Best part? Her dad decided to retire about 3 weeks after I quit, and she closed the business because she knew she couldn't do the job. She would cry to my coworkers that she couldn't run the place on her own. No surprise, princess. Did you think he was going to work forever?

I worked with a guy who got a living stipend from his dad that covered all his bills every month. The money he earned from working went towards partying mostly. He once told me that his success (lived in a nice condo in a super desirable area, drove a new car, etc.) was due to his money management skills. “I only get the money once a month, so I have to be disciplined enough to only spend it on necessities. Other people would blow the entire amount in the first week. That’s why they don’t live in (insert name of well-known fancy building here)”.

My now wife had a roommate years ago when we were first dating. Her roommate was 25 and had one of her dad's credit cards and could do whatever she wanted with it. She would order shoes/clothes literally every day online and then complain about having to split utilities/food. She easily dropped $5k/month on designer stuff.

I taught high school math at a private school for wealthy kids. The lesson was about compound interest and how it’s calculated. A student raised their hand and asked why we know this. Naive me answered that you need to know when you get a loan to buy a car or a mortgage for a house. They looked baffled and asked me why I wouldn’t pay for it in cash like the last Mercedes-Benz I bought. I couldn't reply after that.