How the mega-rich spend their retirement pots
Irish rugby star pictured in the home he purchased at Zabeel Properties Tiara Residence on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. This highly prized city in the UAE is a popular destination for mega-rich retirees.
Barry the dinosaur’s skeleton is up for sale. The almost intact Camptosaurus is expected to fetch around €1.28 million at a Paris auction on October 20th. There’s speculation as to who might make the purchase.
Two years ago, Sidd Pagidipati and his wife Ami, bought Big John the Triceratops for €7.7 million. The entrepreneur was ranked 7th on the Inc. 500 list in 2009.
Three years ago, Christie’s New York sold a T.Rex nicknamed Stan for almost $32 million USD. While we don’t yet know, who’ll buy Barry. We do know they’ll have mega-bucks to spend.
As retirement approaches, and the pension pot’s being scrutinised, it’s tempting to check out how the mega-rich retirees are spending their cash. It’s easy to see high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) through a ‘them and us’ prism.
We might imagine they’re not the sort to add the halfpence to the pence. But really they are or they were. As building a mega fortune so as to have fun in retirement, or for whatever other reason, entails doing precisely that and more.
The ‘more’ is the interesting part. The rich work their money. They’ll have scrutinised Knight Frank’s Wealth Report, which this year declared that the total wealth held by UHNWIs shrank by 10% last year — a drop of some $10.1 trillion USD.
They’ll be aware that luxury residential prices in Dubai were up 44.2% in 2022, compared with Dublin (up 6.8%), Prague (up 16.3%), Algarve (up 15.3%) and Athens (up 13%).
Optimism for wealth creation in 2023 is high, according to the Report, despite the ‘turbulence and aggregate decrease’ seen in 2022, with 69% of Attitudes Survey respondents expecting their clients’ wealth to increase this year.
In the year ahead, Knight Frank predicts that 19% of UNHWIs intend to invest directly into income-producing property. Also, that 13% of that cohort intend to acquire a second passport or citizenship.
What has all this to do with you? I hear you say. And everything and nothing is the response. It depends on who you are or who you intend to be in retirement. Maybe you’re one of the nine individuals that made it onto the Forbes’ Irish billionaires list. Maybe you’re not. Either way, there are plenty of well-heeled amongst us.
Oxfam research shows the number of Irish ‘super rich’ has more than doubled in the past decade.
You don’t have to be super rich to live the life you want in your retirement. But if you’ve got a big pension pot, you've got money to spend.
Now imagine that that pension pot of yours is mighty, so that you in your retirement are worth megabucks.
How would you spend it? Would you choose the path not taken and forge your spending habits in your own inimitable way? Or, would you instead, mimic the habits of those megarich whose spending makes headlines around the world?
To find the answer, you’ve got to really go there in your mind and imagine retiring rich. Really rich. For sure, that’s not something we Irish are known for. Even though, this year, nine individuals made it onto the Forbes Irish billionaires list.
Imagine for example, if your diligence and perseverance in building your pension pot saw you indulging your taste for some of the finer things in life. What those might be?
In recent weeks, somebody saw fit to purchase the late Princess Diana’s iconic ‘black sheep’ sweater. For this, they paid the prince(ss)ly sum of €1.1 million at the Sotheny’s auction. It has been reported that the word ‘whimsical’ was allegedly uttered by the auctioneer.
Is it whimsical to splash the cash on a jet pack? Who cares? Jetpacks are fun. You might pick a BW-Air. Dubbed Bubba’s Jetpack, after the Masters champion golfer Bubba Watson. You might have seen him show off this $250,000 USD golf-cart jetpack, back in 2018, when he guested on an episode of CNBC’s Jay Leno’s Garage. With its 210 hp engine and twin propellers, it gives a bird’s eye view of the golf course.
Or maybe you’d prefer a JB11, for which the base price today is $340,000 USD. A mere pittance, you’ll agree, for a canny pensioner, whose only concern about a purchase like this, would be their fitness for flight.
It’s possible after all, that in the twilight years, a retiree might be enduring severe joint pain, rheumatoid arthritis, or even a bout of the black dog. For those with a hefty bank balance, a whole-body cryo chamber might be worth splashing the cash on, especially given the alleged capacity of the flagship CRYO XC™ PLUS, to help alleviate those symptoms.
If flying up in the air isn’t your thing, then you might fancy flying along in a Batmobile car.
One of the five made in the world in 2017. Or perhaps a Karlmann King. Although the fact that this low-production SUV can be fitted with bulletproof glass tells its own tale. Even so, it’s up there with the ultimate in trophy toys. In the same league as private planes, and private planes and pairs of tickets to outer space.
Not everyone is ostentatious of course. What you might covet if you’ve done the work, saved hard for retirement and had cash to splash, could be a humble vegan hang sang. Or you might pay someone, under the radar, to go to jail for you.
Some buy ‘fancy’ ice cubes from the Gläce Luxury Ice Company. There’d likely be fun to be had in seeing which of your guests — likely other HNWIs — even noticed the money melting in their drinks glasses.
They mightn’t. Particularly if you had a sufficiently spectacular art collection on display. Think Larry Ellison, the American billionaire businessman, who was once known for having a personal art curator. This much was known. Rightly, little or nothing about the purchases privately made on his behalf. Which just goes to show, that wealth buys privacy. Something everyone should have.
How private we are depends on several factors. Private island private for one. Albeit one that’s a less attractive option these days, given that we now know the likely impact of rapidly rising sea levels, and the increasingly greater chunks of land that covers.
The conundrum of whether to buy and be damned - or more likely flooded - is something one might contemplate over a glass of rare brandy, while thumbing, old-school style, through the pages of a posh real estate agency’s glossy brochure. Classy property never goes out of style. Even if their owners may well be contemplating going to outer space. Or not.
Take Kim Kardashian for example. Discussing intergalactic travel on an episode of The Kardashians reality show, the billionaire businesswoman and media personality said: “Jeff Bezos invited Pete (Davison her then boyfriend) to go to outer space… It seems like such a scary concept to me.” She knows her own mind. One day she’s in the celebrity gossip columns for allegedly purchasing gold-plated toilets for her home.
Next, she’s in the news for paying the rent on the apartment of a gentleman, who, when released from prison, allegedly couldn't find an apartment because of his criminal record. You can only admire her for that.
Just as you can only admire the American rapper and singer, Post Malone. A known fan of the collectible Wizards of the Coast card game, he was recently reported as having bought the most expensive ‘Magic: The Gathering’ card of all time. Paying a fan a cool $2 million USD for the card.
ends/ Oxfam research also shows that the wealthiest 1% of the population accumulated 70 times more wealth than the bottom 50% since 2012. This is an alarming if unsurprising statistic. All men are equal. Some are more equal than others springs to mind.
Hopefully this inequality will be reversed in the near future. In the meantime, we can take solace in the Trojan work some of the mega-rich are doing with their vast fortunes, to help humanity and indeed our planet.
Rich toys aside, the trick is to enjoy yourself and have fun, while also spending lots to save the planet and the future of humanity from a scorching or flooded demise.
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