“Hidden Luxuries”: 29 Unusual Things Only The Wealthy Can Buy

If you are rich you can have a leg up when it comes to organ transplants. I believe there are flight services where you pay a subscription fee every month or year and if/when an organ is available it will fly you out right way. Also Steve Jobs gamed the system because he was able to get to different transplant hospitals over the country quickly because of his money so he was able to be on multiple waiting lists. He was on liver transplant lists in California and Tennessee, and I believe the later had a shorter waiting list and because of his severity he was able to rise up the list and get a liver faster than if he was only on the list in California. This practice is not technically against the rules but many view it as unethical.

Basically if you need an organ you better be rich.

Private banks. Rich people use banks like Chase, but they don't bank through regular branches, instead they use Chase Private Banking. They never wait on hold for a banker to pick up the phone, they get same day access to their deposits, lines of credit, etc.. Deposit $3 million into your checking account and you'll get a call from your Bank's private banking group.

I had a buddy who hired a driver, got him to get a chauffeur's license, and then made sure his jaguar was long enough to meet criteria as a limo, and then he could legally drink in the backseat.

When I traveled with him internationally, someone met us at the door when we were dropped off, and they walked us to our plane. None of that customs/security stuff occurred.

For most people, a car is a depreciating asset - from the moment you buy it, it starts to go down in value. For ultra wealthy car collectors, they are able to access limited edition cars that go up in value immediately. For example, McLaren only made 375 'P1's that they sold for $1-1.5M...they are now worth easily over $3M.

The challenge is it takes more than just money to get one of these - with only a few hundred models to allocate, and with them immediately earning their owners a profit, the manufacturer will look at a number of criteria to decide who gets one. Including how many models of their 'regular' cars you have purchased. If are offered a Ferrari La Ferrari Aperta for $2.2M, you probably own 5+ other Ferrari's and you just bought a pair of matching Portofino's for your twins who are going off to college.

If you're willing to fork out $35,000 for the player and $500 per showing, you can watch films that are currently in theaters in your own private home-theater.

Specialized household staff. When someone is truly mega-rich, running their household takes the same complexity as running a small to mid-size company, and management is skilled and compensated accordingly. Don't think "butler" - think "head of operations at a luxury hotel."

The staff that household managers oversee can be really specialized as well. For example, Larry Ellison has his own personal curator to oversee his collection of Asian art. They do things like:

* advise on the purchase and sale of art in his collection
* oversee storage and display of art housed on his property
* oversee process of lending art for storage and display at museums

The curator will often have their own staff to conduct actual conservation work, art transport, art installation, etc. So if you've already got an in-house crew of 7 people focused on your art collection alone, imagine how big your entire household staff is! That's why you've got a household manager.

Private jet timeshares. For those not quite rich enough for their own private jet, or those rich people wanting to be a bit frugal.

I don't see it on here, but the vast majority of financial products are out-of-reach for all but the rich. One reason the rich get richer is that they have access to investments that we've never heard of. Ever seen "The Big Short" why do you think Goldman Sachs took a week to correctly price Dr. Michael Burry's housing-short position? Because they were securing that position for themselves and their clients. Those financial instruments are so complicated and the regulation on them so byzantine that it wouldn't surprise me if Goldman actually didn't do anything illegal, like they're allowed, at their discretion, to misprice an asset for a certain period of time. Probably under the guise of the assets being complicated to price, but really it's just a buffer for them to get an edge that regular people couldn't believe.

Imagine going to a horse race an being able to bet on the horses near the end of the race. Rich people get that.

I used to work in the photo department at Saks Firth Ave. Some days, I would shoot an entire rack of clothing worth around half a million dollars. There was a Alexander McQueen leather jacket that was around $40,000. So I imagine a lot of that sort of nonsense.