What Can One do to Appear Wealthy?

[Recyclersteve]

I started a post titled What Can One do to Disguise Wealth? fairly recently. Now I want to do the exact opposite. What can one do to appear wealthy (even when you are not)?

People have all kinds of reasons why they might want to appear to be wealthy- attract a member of the opposite sex, get a job (or win a contract), etc. If you go to a coin show and want someone to accept a check from you to pay for a fairly expensive coin, you need to look like you have a lot of money before they will likely consider taking a check.

I remember the old Rockford Files show where James Garner (RIP) had a collection of business cards in the trunk of his car, so that he could appear to be just about anyone.

What other kinds of things can people think of? This one could get interesting. I want to set aside the moral aspect of it for a moment and let's just assume there is some type of scenario where legitimately good people might need to appear to be a bit more wealthy than they really are to get the break they deserve. Any war stories about what you or your friends have tried in the past would be most appreciated. Let the juices flow...

[NHsorter]

Just do what most Americans do. Buy everything on credit. Be sure to buy lots of stupid disposable stuff. Fancy cars are critical. Get some bumper stickers on that car for some real expensive ski resort or golf clubs. Ignorance and lack of foresight are crucial skills! Hone them.

On a larger scale the way to appear more wealthy that you really are is to convince the world to store their gold in your vaults. Then steal all the gold for yourself. Initially back your currency with gold and then slowly erode any real backing. Once that is achieved, just fire up the print presses and mortgage the future generations. Kick the can. Kick the can.

[Engineer]

Ditch the suit and keep your hair trimmed.
http://api.ning.com/files/QWDB8dPQd2n2SGFGUv7Ja4ivfBVIXg1cLaAUKIgRLXhMMCrtGFHDNoB2oIf5Qg6tO8-DcwvPrDt29WStIrgns0aidQyMHfLl/stevejobs.jpg

[brian0918]

Manicures, tans in winter, well-groomed, fake confidence, entourage, body guard.

[brian0918]

Big sunglasses like you're hiding your identity (or don't want to be bothered by the lower classes).

[hobo finds]

Where a lottery t shirt! I kid you not a lady asked me if I won the lottery! And this could be an answer for the other thread as well...

[frugi]

speaking from experience of being around a bunch of rich douches........

nice quality clean dress shoes, clean body & haircut, be a huge jerk to everyone, wear a rolex ballcap, or a porsche ballcap, talk down to women in public, carry a fake mont blanc diamond edition pen in your chest pocket, ignore people when they talk directly to your face, rudely bump into people and yell it them to watch where they are going, have pretend conversations on a cell phone about things like: "how bad off that girl must be to have showed up in a 2014 BMW", or "Don't worry about it, my dad is in Zurich, but will be back tonight, he only went there for breakfast", or "Dude if you dont get that 100K by tomorrow, we are going to lose the deposit on the penthouse suite....I will not let you ruin my bachelor party", or whatevr that may sound totally unbelievable and sound like the biggest a-hole possible. Or pretend to be talking to your mom on the phone and yell and cry about that you wont let her cut off your trust fund, throw a big fit in public and whip up some fake tears. Have a bunch of crumpled up 5 & 10 dollar bills in your pocket, and when you pull out your phone, make sure and drop a few on the ground so that people will notice you dropping them, and then make sure those people see you notice that you dropped them, and didnt even bend over to pick them up......and when someone nice picks them up and hands them to you, take the money and dont say thank or even acknowledge they did anything for you.

[barrytrot]

Someone doesn't like rich people

My daughter's school has a lot of wealthy people that attend there. Most of them when you see them in public look "normal". Nothing would give away that they lived on multiple acres of land and had a "secondary house" bigger than most normal houses.

Others try to act rich. I think these are the people that frugi doesn't like. And I can see why. One example was a time when a classmate of my daughter's came to our house. She said as she pulled up, "your house is so tiny."

Our house is definitely smaller than all the kids in her class, in some cases by a lot (even though our house is not what I would call a small house by any means).

But she was the only one that "noticed" that type of thing. She was 4 at the time by the way. All the other 4 year olds (and now 5 and 6 year olds) that came over didn't seem to notice that our house was substantially smaller than hers/theirs. Right away my wife and I started hoping secretly that she and my daughter would not be good friends. By luck they were in different classes next year and are acquaintances at best.

On a side note I met her dad at a daddy-daughter-dance and our conversation was largely him complaining about the cost of the school going up. I told my wife about it and she said that their family complains about the cost and/or state of things quite often. Interesting.

So I wouldn't try to "act rich". Being rich is cool, I'm assuming based on experience with making more money from time to time. But whether people know you are rich or not seems to be a lot less important and the one example we have with someone that seemed to care wasn't a positive one.

[frugi]

I think it is worth mentioning that there was one time I pretended to be rich. It was a evening event in a trendy place with a couple of my good friends. We went there to have fun. We were all dressed nice. Mind you I dont subscribe to the notion of being a jerk in general so I wasnt being that jerky rich guy. The way I pretended to be rich was to wear a Rolex ballcap, and just dress nice, look nice and be polite. At the serve yourself dinner, I ate very little, didnt go back for seconds and was just all around a nice guy......we had a fun night and left early. On the way to our car, I was almost carjacked, and robbed.........Luckily, I prescribe to the theory that a legally armed citizen is a safe citizen. (this is the short story).

The moral of the story is I will never pretend to be rich again, rather I have since been doing my best to pretend to be poorer than I actually am.....& I will never, ever, wear that damn Rolex hat again!

[chris6084]

speaking from experience of being around a bunch of rich douches........

nice quality clean dress shoes, clean body & haircut, be a huge jerk to everyone, wear a rolex ballcap, or a porsche ballcap, talk down to women in public, carry a fake mont blanc diamond edition pen in your chest pocket, ignore people when they talk directly to your face, rudely bump into people and yell it them to watch where they are going, have pretend conversations on a cell phone about things like: "how bad off that girl must be to have showed up in a 2014 BMW", or "Don't worry about it, my dad is in Zurich, but will be back tonight, he only went there for breakfast", or "Dude if you dont get that 100K by tomorrow, we are going to lose the deposit on the penthouse suite....I will not let you ruin my bachelor party", or whatevr that may sound totally unbelievable and sound like the biggest a-hole possible. Or pretend to be talking to your mom on the phone and yell and cry about that you wont let her cut off your trust fund, throw a big fit in public and whip up some fake tears. Have a bunch of crumpled up 5 & 10 dollar bills in your pocket, and when you pull out your phone, make sure and drop a few on the ground so that people will notice you dropping them, and then make sure those people see you notice that you dropped them, and didnt even bend over to pick them up......and when someone nice picks them up and hands them to you, take the money and dont say thank or even acknowledge they did anything for you.

Those cell phone conversations drive me crazy. I travel a lot for work and hear these all the time at the airport and on the planes. The guys that are so "important" that they have to make "business" calls right up until the point where they tell you to turn off your phones. I hear a lot of "I got that new client....It's only going to bring us about a few million bucks a month, so it won't help us out much", and "Yeah, I walked away from that sales meeting, they only agreed to a million dollar a month contract. I told them my time was worth ten times that and walked right out" and "How much does it cost? 75K? Ah, just get it, its ok, you don't need to ask me about petty things like that" Its funny how those conversations are very loud and the ones calling to say "I'm on the plane honey, see you later" are at a much more reasonable volume.