A new Porsche, designer handbags and Scott Dunn holidays? Not in the age of stealth wealth.
The real clues to who has serious money are subtler these days, from the butter they buy to their children’s hobbies.
Here’s your cheat sheet for spotting the secret millionaires around you.
Having the ‘right’ energy
Whoever said ‘energy doesn’t lie’ must have been talking about the serene way the rich float through life. Whether it’s stepping onto a zebra crossing or entering a restaurant, they move with a quiet assurance that the world will accommodate them.
A friend spent the weekend in a Cotswolds corner filled with antique shops and aristocrats and was gently told she had ‘the wrong energy’. Why? She looked busy. Of course, the wealthy have to-do lists, too. They just have other people ticking them off.
Take a look at their butter
Nigella Lawson once confessed that she keeps three types of butter in the fridge: salted, unsalted and a special ‘dinner-party’ one.
For the truly wealthy, this isn’t indulgence, it’s a baseline requirement. Take a peek at the butter on their table. Is it cultured or hand-churned on a single-estate dairy? If it’s Lurpak or below, odds are their bank balance isn’t quite what you imagined.
Wedding band but no engagement ring
Because a diamond that big would be too gauche to wear on the school run.
They don’t own a kettle
Why wait for one to boil when hot water, like Champagne, is literally on tap? A £4,000 Zip tap, naturally. Besides, they don’t really drink tea. It’s all about the double macchiatos from the Jura coffee machine installed by a man who flew in from Switzerland.
Also watch out for any mention of cookers from La Cornue Château or Lacanche, kitchen appliances from Thermomix or Dacor and fridges from Sub Zero.
The real clues to who has serious money are subtler these days, from the butter they buy to their children’s hobbies
Their children have many, many hobbies
They casually sigh, ‘We have rowing on Mondays, fencing on Tuesdays, coding on Wednesdays and chess on Thursdays – such a faff. Over the weekend, Hugo really likes to let off steam with his DJ classes.’ It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the costs involved.
… and jobs that don’t pay the rent
Their grown-up children work in publishing, are launching a wellness start-up or have just qualified for Reiki Level 5. Thank goodness for the trust fund that tides them over until they ‘find their thing’.
They don’t do social media
The mum friend posting selfies in her new JW Anderson x Dior jumper may look loaded, but she’s probably just an influencer with a freebie. The very wealthy don’t document purchases because buying isn’t an event – it’s an everyday activity.
They don’t drink brands, but regions
You drink Tanqueray. They drink ‘something from a small batch distillery in Devon’.
You’re thrilled because your favourite Pouilly-Fuissé is on special at Sainsbury’s. They ‘only drink Bordeaux’ but had to ‘make do with a Burgundy at Agatha’s kitchen supper last week’.
Their people are not your people
When the wealthy mention their ‘people’, they don’t mean Aunt Lucy in Wiltshire.
They mean professionals on their payroll, called forth to perform the most mundane or most complicated of tasks – whether that’s booking holidays or feng-shuiing their house. The school bake sale next week? Not to worry, their people are on it.
They don’t have a designer handbag
Truly wealthy women almost never lug one around, simply because they don’t need one. They carry only a phone – used to summon whoever is carrying everything else.
Their furniture is mostly hand-me-downs
The dining chairs in their homes are ‘just something Granny had shipped over from Paris’. Their art could hang in a museum, but is on their walls because Mum and Dad didn’t have the room for it after downsizing.
They talk of ‘retreats’ and ‘practices’
You might buy a five-for-four-classes yoga pass. But the millionaire dedicated to wellbeing has a practice – one that takes place in a private, custom-built room with a teacher who goes to Rishikesh twice a year.
And they never just go on holiday. It’s a couples retreat on Turtle Island in Fiji or a family reset in the Dolomites. A week in the Maldives sounds quaint in comparison.
Names and identifying details have been changed
