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43 Shockingly Out Of Touch Rich People Who Proved The Wealthy Literally Live On Another Planet
“[He] had been going to Paris twice a year since he was 12 to purchase all new clothes to replace the previous season’s wardrobe. … He genuinely did not know that normal people just keep wearing the same clothes for years.”
We’ve written a LOT about out-of-touch rich people over the years, and on each post, members of the BuzzFeed Community have shared their own tales of woefully unaware wealthy people. Here are some of the worst.
We also included some of the replies from the original posts.
1. “For high school graduation, my cousin got a brand new Porsche, got drunk, did a lot of coke, and totaled the Porsche. When I asked why he did it, he said he never asked for a car. He’d asked for new drums. I told him he could have sold the car and bought drums. He said with a straight face, ‘Then how would my parents learn not to disappoint me?'”
—RouxRaven
2. “A coworker asked me what bank had my safe deposit box. I said I didn’t have a safe deposit box. She said, ‘But where do you keep your jewels, then?’ This was twenty years ago, and I still remember it.”
—u/DiscountArmageddon
3. “I worked as an au pair in France for a VERY wealthy international real estate couple. They would routinely forget to pay me, and I would often have to remind them. One time, I had to remind them several times, and they were clearly annoyed. The mother said, ‘As if getting paid on time is really so life or death.'”
—estrellamartinez
4. “Not that my in-laws are wildly wealthy, but…when I met my (then) boyfriend’s family, they were living in a new-build house they had designed. A few months later, my mother-in-law decided she hated it, and at our wedding less than one year later, they had bought a new house five minutes from their old one. The joke at our wedding rehearsal was how many houses they owned that week. They’re HUGE Dave Ramsey fans, so I know they’ve got to be setting money aside, but they’re the definition of ‘I see it, I like it, I want it, I buy it.'”
—Anonymous
5. “‘How do you only have one dishwasher?’ Imagine their shock when I told them the apartment I had just moved out of and lived in for 14 years didn’t have one at all.”
—u/redjessa
6. “I went to a fairly expensive private high school. The majority of my classmates were pretty wealthy. There was a girl I was close to whose dad ordered her a custom Land Rover for her 16th birthday. Between the date of his order and its arrival, she decided she was vegan. She pitched a fit about the leather seats and had it sent back and replaced. Still not sure how returned leather helps animal rights…”
—Anonymous
7. “I had a family member who worked for a billionaire. One time, they were flying on their jet from their NY house to their CO house. One of the kids realized that they had forgotten their cat. So they sent their helicopter to bring their cat to the airport and sent their other plane from MD to pick up their cat in NY and bring it to them in CO.”
—kingchop
8. “When I was in college, I dated a guy who we’ll call John. His family was old money. We dated for about a year, and I never met his parents — they were never home. They never got together for holidays; I have never seen a family less close. His father was always off handling some vague business deal, and his mother pretty much lived in their vacation home on St. Croix. They were still married, but I don’t think they’d actually spoken since their youngest child graduated high school. The only ‘family’ I ever met was the live-in housekeeper/nanny who basically raised John. She was as lovely as can be, but she also had her own family. The idea that this woman lived in this giant house she kept up for a family who spent maybe three weeks a year in it when she had a husband and son in her own home was…bizarre.”
“We broke up because John was honestly just completely disconnected from day-to-day reality. I had to teach him how to do laundry, make coffee, and put sheets on a bed. The man didn’t know that you have to clean a shower. It was like the scene in New Girl where Nick thinks that you don’t wash towels because the towel washes you. John thought that since the bathroom is a space where you clean your body, it was, in turn, naturally clean. After about six months in his own apartment, he broke down and started having the housekeeper/nanny come weekly to clean his space in addition to his parents’ house. He couldn’t handle the effort of taking care of himself, and I couldn’t handle what felt like raising my own boyfriend into an adult.
The final fight was because I wouldn’t take off work to go with him to Paris on short notice. John wanted to take me with him to help select his new wardrobe for the season. It turns out this guy had been going to Paris twice a year since he was 12 to purchase all new clothes to replace the previous season’s wardrobe (at least the ‘old’ clothes were donated and not just tossed). He genuinely did not know that normal people just keep wearing the same clothes for years. The idea of wearing the same winter coat (and you can imagine the fabulous full-length cashmere coats this man was buying) two years in a row was unfathomable to him.
That was almost 20 years ago, and my understanding is that he’s since gone completely right-wing incel. He was honestly lovely when I knew him, and I have no idea what turned him that way. It is strange to think how much happier I am than he will ever be when he’s had the whole world at his fingertips this whole time.”
—Anonymous
9. “A girl I went to college with came into class late one day, absolutely fuming. She had been pulled over on the way in because her tax and insurance had expired on her car, which her Dad had bought her for her birthday last year. She was genuinely asking everyone if they knew that you had to tax and insure a car.”
—joannafbourke
10. “‘I’d rather stop eating than fly commercial.’ Some rich ass dude with a private plane told some of us that while having a conversation.”
—Anonymous
11. “‘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.”
—u/irrelevanttrumpeter
12. “I dated a rich guy who seemed really down to earth, and that is what I really liked about him. That was until he was ‘forced to fly in first class.’ He was used to flying private, but then his dad decided that they would fly first class moving forward to help their carbon footprint and keep his board happy too. He wouldn’t talk to his dad for a few weeks, and tried to have an intervention with his siblings around their dad not paying for private flights anymore. His dad walked out of the intervention, and threatened to cut them all off. I have never flown in first class. I couldn’t even look at him after his temper tantrum. It had to end.”
—Anonymous
13. “I dated a rich guy in college. He was very kind and sweet. I was sucked into his gentleman-ness, so to speak. After seven months, I ended up breaking up with him over his views of other men and his flippant attitude toward money. The moment I realized I wanted to be far away from this man was when he bought a bottle of Louis XIII cognac (worth around $4500), just to show off that he could to strangers at a bar. He didn’t even drink it or bring it home with him.”
—Anonymous
14. “A friend lamented that her husband’s quarterly taxes were $75,000. That was more than my yearly income at the time. It was one of those, ‘You really need to know your audience’ moments…”
—blueship35
15. “I went to a private high school full of rich, privileged kids. I remember this one girl in my ethics class arguing that ‘being super rich is just as bad as being super poor because you’re judged just as much.’ She was 100% serious.”
—Anonymous
16. “My former wealthy boss told a friend on the phone, ‘When my ship comes in, I hope to give it all away.’ He has 20 million dollars; it’s still not enough. The same man told his wife, ‘We don’t need to go downstairs for the party. Those people have nothing we need from them.’ Wow.”
—mittens2u
17. “After my dad married my stepmom, they moved to the super-affluent suburb of Chicago, where she grew up (rumored to be full of mob money). At a dinner, one of their neighbors asked, ‘Where do you winter?’ He said he almost spit out his water.”
—jessicawho
18. “I was working for a real estate company in Oregon and doing quite well, when BAM, the 2008 recession pulled the rug out from under ALL of us. Our owner/broker held a meeting for the company and told us that it was up to US to restore faith in the real estate industry in our city for our current and potential clients. He told ALL of us (about 170 agents) that he wanted ALL of us to go out and buy a property in the next 2-4 weeks. When I asked him with WHAT, he said that I should just go into my savings or 401(k) and withdraw the price of property…yeah, RIGHT.”
—cornyzombie61
19. “[I] worked for the daughter-in-law of a man who owns a sports team in New England. … [It is] very well known how wealthy they are. …We sold imported Italian ceramics, and she would often ask us why we hadn’t been to the random towns she imported from, like everybody summered in Europe. My favorite out-of-touch moment was when she was picking out a tooth fairy gift for her daughter and wasn’t sure if a necklace from Tiffany’s was enough.”
—harveyceramics
20. “I was living in Milwaukee circa 2001 and accepted a nanny position for two attorneys. It was a paid trial day, and by the end of the first day, I turned down the job. The reason? Their eleven-year-old had a poor attitude. She couldn’t be seen in my old, smelly car because she was embarrassed. They were taking her to get her navel pierced on her twelfth birthday. When I pointed out that this was a responsibility, she said, ‘I don’t like you and don’t want you here. I don’t have to listen to you, and I always get what I want, no matter how much it costs.’ She was ELEVEN years old. When I turned down the job, the parents had a poor attitude. I can picture this child at 34, and it sounds scary.”
—smellytortoise841
21. “I was having lunch with a former friend, and we were having a discussion about dental care. I mentioned that I had a tiny little discoloration on an otherwise healthy tooth. She told me I should just get it pulled and replaced with a veneer, like it wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg.”
—fluffyblackcloud
22. “I may or may not know some billionaires. I worked for the largest tech company in the world during a period of explosive growth, and over the next decade, people’s soaring stock had made many of them very, very wealthy. That’s fine, but the thing that used to drive me wild was the humble bragging. It’s this game they would play with each other. ‘Hey, were you in Tahoe this weekend?’ ‘Oh yeah, we just snuck up for 10 days to spend a little time at our cabin.’ ‘Do you have a house there?’ ‘Oh yeah, just a rustic little place, you know, 12 bedrooms, on the lake, not a lot of land, just a little lawn and a helicopter pad. We don’t even have that much lakefront, just our pier, and only room for seven or eight boats. I mean, the garage only holds three cars, no big deal.’ Kill. Me.”
—goldensun34
23. “When I was pregnant, I was talking to a friend of mine about how I was worried I was going to have postpartum depression after my baby was born. She told me, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that; only poor people get PPD.'”
—zeeroworeez
24. “One time, the CEO of my previous tech company asked me if $10,000 would cover the start-up costs to purchase a record player and a few vinyls to play on it.”
—Anonymous
25. “A friend of mine bought a flat for $1 million, and now they’re complaining about it being too small after all. Then she wondered why I haven’t moved cities yet, cause I have a commute that takes about three hours. Seriously, she lives in another dimension. I’m glad I can afford the rent I’m paying, tbh.”
—lilla.w
26. “When I worked at a daycare center, I had a teacher clock out for the day, and she was sitting in the lobby, waiting for her ride. She was checking something on her phone and started crying. Right then, the owner of the center pulled up in his Corvette, waltzed in, and asked, ‘What’s wrong? Why are you crying?’ and she told him that they were about to turn off her electricity because they could not afford to pay the bill. He responded with a shit-eating grin and said: ‘Well, I got $2 million in the bank, so I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.’ He was paying us $10/hr, btw.”
—Nadine Leach
27. “Living outside Jackson Hole, my friend’s sister told me how hard it is to live there because you have to fly in your ‘help’ (cleaning, yard work) from Salt Lake. I had no words.”
—u/the3secondrule
28. “Once I mentioned to this friend of a friend that I lived on about $600 a month TOTAL and that that was a lot of money for me compared to in the past, and she said, ‘Yeah, same, I only have like $600 a WEEK to spend after bills,’ and I was like ‘…'”
—Anni Eddie
29. “The median home value where I live (a small county in the Midwest) is $240,000. That’s a two-bedroom, two-bath. My boss (also the business owner) said he heard I was looking to buy and did some checking for me. He handed me a listing for a home that cost $1.5 million. I was kinda caught off guard (like, ‘Is he joking? Or maybe he didn’t see the price listed in bold on this paper?’) and said it was a little out of my price range. And by that, I mean by A LOT. ‘Why? You’re good with money. Why don’t you have savings?’ He pays me $40,000 a year, and I’ve worked for him for over 10 years. He was genuinely surprised I couldn’t afford a $300,000 cash down payment. ‘I thought you were good with money…’ Fuck. Off. 😑
“P.S. He bought his third vehicle last month as he says he likes to ‘rotate what he drives.’ It’s a $75,000 truck. He drives it one day a week. It’s his literal ‘Friday truck.’ Must be nice! 🤷🏾‍♀️”
—vibrantorc46
30. “I work as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) in an upscale assisted living community. One of the residents recently told me it was good I could come in a few days a week as a hobby to spend some time away from my four-month-old daughter. She is a very nice woman, but it genuinely did not even occur to her that I HAVE to come in a few days a week because we can’t pay rent without me staying on part-time to have two incomes.”
“The same day, another resident told me I needed to start getting on waitlists for the better country clubs so that we could be accepted by next summer for my daughter to enjoy activities. Wonderful people, but no concept of where I am financially.”
—shelbyq2
31. “My boyfriend’s family tells me every year at the holidays that I need to ask for more things, and more expensive things. I grew up middle class, and consider $50 to be an ‘expensive’ gift, but saw his brother-in-law asking for (and receiving) a new set of AirPods as a stocking stuffer.”
—Anonymous
32. “My multimillionaire ex-boyfriend and I went on a trip to China to visit his family (where all his money came from), had an argument, and he said, ‘Find your own way home then,’ when I wanted to leave. As if I could pay the thousands of dollars for the ticket without going into debt or navigate to the airport by myself in a foreign language with no Internet access.”
—Disastrous-Bad-7435
33. “I work in a bank, so I have heard it all, but the worst was definitely a customer of ours who came in frequently. She once said, ‘I wish I were poor like you guys. It’s too much work having all this money.'”
—hillaryd45fdef058
34. “A girl I was seeing’s dad paid for a brand new car in cash (Chevy Equinox), paid for her college in full, paid her rent in full, and covered all living expenses while I knew her. I, on the other hand, paid for everything I own and the education I have myself. She couldn’t estimate the cost of anything. I remember when I asked her, ‘How much do you think I make a week?’ and she said, ‘$20,000.'”
—u/Last_Debate_218
35. “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. While waiting for guests to arrive, my boss informed me that when the guests got in their cars to leave, I needed to be sure to close their car doors. Otherwise, they would just drive off with their doors open because they’re so used to people closing their car doors for them.”
—u/Trappist_1984
36. “My husband grew up in an exorbitantly wealthy British family. We do have wildly differing perspectives. My husband kind of assumed our son would have a nanny (and he does), but he asked about not only my nanny (that I didn’t have, because nurse mom and firefighter dad) but my younger brother’s nanny as well. Yep. He and his siblings all had different nannies assigned to them. It is bonkers. I have to remind him all the time: YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE NOT UNIVERSAL.”
—u/thoughtsforbirds
37. “My wife’s family is quite wealthy. … Every once in a while (even after five years), there are situations where I can clearly see that we have a completely different understanding of money. I remember when I talked about cars with my wife. And she literally said, ‘I cannot understand why people buy old or used cars. I would never feel safe. Or why do people even buy those cheap brand cars? Better go for Mercedes-Benz or BMW. Everybody knows that these cars are better. So why do people buy other cars?!'”
“I could see in her eyes that she meant it 100% honestly. She was not joking, she was very serious. I just calmly answered, ‘Well, maybe because some people just can’t afford those expensive cars?’ I could see how surprised she was and said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re right. I didn’t think about that.’ I swear to god, I could see how surprised she was and how she just never considered the fact that there are people that cannot afford a Mercedes Benz or BMW.”
—u/The_Real_Dolan_Duck
38. “I was at a cocktail party at a beachfront house on Isle of Palms, SC. Everyone was in private equity, Manhattan-based. I was chatting with someone, and they asked me, ‘Where is your beach house?’ I was a 25-year-old associate with two years of experience making about $75,000, but I was supposed to own a multi-million dollar beachfront property.”
—u/jaw719
39. “I was studying abroad with this guy who I thought was really cute, but he boasted about coming from a wealthy family. After spending a few weeks in classes together, we started hanging out. We were telling each other about previous people we dated and our friends back home. He said he had a crush on this girl for a while, but she was ‘too poor for him’ because she was going to college on a scholarship. Mind you, she was going to MEDICAL school and will be a doctor someday. Needless to say, I didn’t think he was cute anymore.”
—Anonymous
40. “I work for a startup based out of San Francisco. I’m a remote employee halfway across the country and am, therefore, a sort of ‘second-class citizen.’ My direct peers who work in SF make at least double what I do, and they almost all had extremely privileged upbringings. They went to top 10 business schools, they ‘summer’ in Tahoe, that kind of thing. I was in the home office a few months ago for our annual kickoff meeting, and one of the speakers polled the room: ‘Has anyone here worked at Amazon?’ (Nobody raised their hand) ‘Wow, I’m surprised.’ I said, ‘Does warehouse count?’ And the entire room erupted in laughter. To them, I’d just told a very enjoyable joke.”
—u/Conscious_Raisin_436
41. “I once had a college-age coworker explain to a bunch of us in EMS … that his family wasn’t ‘that rich’ because they ‘only have a beach house, not a summer house’ and then explained the difference between the two. Another coworker then went to pull up his apartment complex and pointed out the trailer park next door. Rich coworker then remarked that it must be nice to live next to a storage facility (referring to the trailer park). He didn’t believe us when we explained that people lived in those trailers. He thought that was only something that happened on reality TV shows. We all hoped that inner-city EMS would help bring him back down to earth, but it had no effect.”
—u/pathofuncertainty
42. “In my 20s, I dated a fabulously wealthy girl who lived on a private island in Miami. (Oprah also had a house there.) One of the funniest things was explaining to her mother what I did for a living. I worked for a nonprofit, and she simply could not wrap her head around the concept. She would ask me question after question, trying to get it.”
‘So the company doesn’t make any money?’
‘It does, but the money is used to help people, and then the rest is reinvested into the company.’
‘But then why does anybody work?’
‘To help people.’
‘But couldn’t you just keep the money instead?’
‘Yes, but that’s not the point; the point is to help people.’
‘But then why do you do it?'”
—goldensun34
43. And finally…”‘If you really care about helping elephants, you’d buy some and put them in a sanctuary.'”
—sexyfart
What’s the most out-of-touch, entitled, or just plain rude thing you’ve ever heard a rich person say? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form!