15 Ways Rich People SHOW OFF

To flex is to show how much money you can afford to unnecessarily waste in order to draw attention, admiration, or envy of those you perceive as lesser than you. If you've been around rich people long enough, you realize that some of them still need validation, but they've got to disguise it. Otherwise, they seem oblivious to just how good their life is.

So get ready because this is a good one. Here are 15 ridiculous ways rich people flex. Welcome to ALUX, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

First up, complaining about how expensive things are in their rich reality. Recently, we were talking with an executive in the valley whose child is in their second year of kindergarten, getting ready to start school next year. Now, they casually complained about the $40,000 fee they pay per year to send this kid to kindergarten. $40,000 per year. And they're going to do it every year until it's time for high school. Two years of kindergarten, plus eight years of primary school and middle school. That's $400,000 just in school fees.

Another complaint you'll hear among the rich is that a subtle flex is the 3.25% property tax. In New York, this is called the mansion tax. You pay 3.25% of property tax per year. If your home is worth between $10 to $15 million, above $15 million, you pay 3.5%, and it caps at 3.9% once it goes over $25 million. Just listen to how crazy this is. Right now, there's a penthouse for sale in Manhattan for $250 million. The property taxes alone are almost $10 million per year. Rich people flex when their taxes and fees are more than most people will earn in a lifetime.

And it gets crazier from here. They brag about how much money they lost or spent. The thing about telling others how much money you lost ticks off two boxes. One, it's supposed to make them more sympathetic to you because loss is difficult for everybody. But it really doesn't work that way because nobody feels bad when people richer than them lose money. Two, it brags about how much money you had in the first place that you could afford to lose that much.

We're actually guilty of this ourselves. Last year, our personal portfolio dipped by over $1 million, and we made a video documenting the lessons we've learned from that, but more importantly, how it felt, especially since we are someone who came from poverty. It's by far the most underrated video we've posted on our channel.

You'll hear this backhanded flex across the wealth spectrum from the richest people in the world losing over $50 billion in a single year. Elon's $200 billion drop being the largest financial loss in human history to venture capitalists like James Altucher blowing through $30 million in 45 days. Or Hollywood elites like Aerosmith's Steven Tyler spending over $6 million on Bellow alone donating money so things get named after them. Streets, roads, museums, hospital wings, airport lounges, and even desserts on restaurant menus.

Rich people are vain, so charities use this to extract more money out of them in their pursuit for immortality or to feel like their legacy will outlive them. They'll seek opportunities to have their name carved into stone. And look, truth be told, it would be kind of higher to have a famous bar or hotel named after you. Right?

They complain about how long they have to wait for their expensive orders. You might not know this, but a second-hand Ferrari or Lamborghini is actually more expensive than a brand new one. Why? Because it takes 18 months for you to finally get delivery when you buy a new one. So people who want to skip that wait time resort to resellers. It's the same with luxury watches or luxury bags. The moment that Birkin or Patek leaves the showroom, you made at least ten grand in paper profit.

If you order the latest Rolls-Royce Spectra now, you should expect delivery in 2025. And don't even get us started on the Tesla Roadster Art. Historically, rich people have separated themselves from everyone else through different behaviors and appetites. They invented specific ways and utensils to eat food just so they can show that they're in the know. And it's the same with art. The weirder the art, the better they get it. You don't.

Then, money came in. Turns out the weird art you see on their walls is not only a pretty good store of value that they get to flex with, but it's actually a great investment vehicle crushing gold, real estate, and even the S&P 500 to ultra-rich people. It doesn't matter that they don't understand what the artist was trying to say as long as the returns are great.

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Rare animal breeds? Scarcity is status. "I have something ridiculous that you don't have, so I'm better than you." From MJ's Monkey Bubbles, Tyson's Tigers, to Peter Balder’s Savannah Cats and French Blue Bulldogs. Or how we've meddled with the breeding and changed the British bull terrier to a caricature of what the breed used to be. And the list goes on.

A notable mention here are aquariums and birds in cages. We feel like both of them really had a moment when we were growing up, but now almost nobody keeps birds in cages anymore. Extremely large doors and high ceilings are one thing that's been taken to the extreme despite being incredibly inefficient when it comes to climate control. But the way rich people flex on everyone else is with their doors. If opening the entrance to your house is a literal workout, you've gone beyond what's considered okay.

Oversize everything seems to be the trend here. In the words of modern poet 21 Savage: "Why are you at a 12-car garage when you only got six cars?" Why indeed?

Over-the-top weddings or parties. If there's one event where rich people don't care about the budget, it's their wedding. The poorer the country you're in, the more expensive the wedding has to be. We're looking at you, Lakshmi Mittal, spending $66 million on your daughter's wedding. You'll find it similar but not that extreme versions in every country. People wear that bill like a badge of honor.

And speaking of bills, overpriced restaurants… Just because it's overpriced. Look, don't get us wrong, okay? We love exquisite food and great dining experiences, but it's gotten to a point where things are just ridiculous. They throw gold leaf on anything these days just so they can charge you in the hundreds. Salt Bay is a great example of this. This is a bill for $250,000, a quarter of a million dollars for one meal and seven bottles of wine.

And you'd think this is just a Middle East thing, but you see it in London as well. The service charge alone for this bill is $6,000. Here is Lionel Messi's bill from when he went out to eat in Ibiza with Suarez and Fabregas. At this point, you're doing it just for the thrill of spending money because there's no additional return in quality or experience that you get for the extra buck.

For example, the highest quality meat there is the grade A5 Wagyu beef coming straight from Japan. Air-flown costs $250 a pound. That's the ceiling. Restaurants like Salt Bay charge $1,000 for a $50 tomahawk and then add like $5 worth of edible gold leaf to justify it.

Celebrity coaches. It's not enough to have a good coach. You need to have a professional teach you. That's how you end up paying $210,000 to have Tiger teach you golf. Money buys you access. But just like with the steak example, there's a ceiling to raw quality and then it bleeds into just status signaling. People pay $19 million to have dinner with Warren Buffett just for him to tell them to invest long-term.

The most effective coaches are those who are just a handful of steps ahead of where you are. If you were to have dinner with Ellen or Jeff and ask them to tell you about what they're learning in their day to day, it's unlikely that you'll get anything actionable to apply to yourself. Why? Well, because their reality is so different from yours.

The gap and the kind of challenges they have to solve compared to what you're dealing with is just too big. And this is the foundation on which we built the Alexa app. The goal is to take you from $1,000 a month to $10,000 a month to $100,000 a month and forward in incremental jumps through education.

Although our app centers on money, health, relationships, intellect, and emotions all evolve and change as you make progress, so they all need to go up at the same time, otherwise your mind will break. ALUX is the only app out there designed to do that for you. Go to alux.com/app right now and start the free trial. You'll be blown away.

License plate numbers. Take Dubai, for example. When everyone's driving a Rolls-Royce or a supercar, there is only one way to stand out: have a lower license plate than they do. For real. This is a thing in the Emirates. The Sheikh of Dubai has the number one license plate on his G-Wagon. The closer you are to his number, the higher the status. So to show you how insane this craze is, a couple of months ago, someone paid $15 million for a number seven, which makes the $9 million someone else paid for number five look like a steal.

Super yachts. Here's how it goes. Among rich people, you have money? I have money. You have a supercar? I have a supercar. You have a vacation home? I have a vacation home. You have a jet? I have a jet. But how big is your yacht? That's literally what it boils down to.

Now, there are three levels to yachts: millionaire yachts, those are under 25 meters, a price point between $1 million and $15 million. Super yachts are between 25 meters and 60 meters. And price-wise they go from $15 million to $50 million. Everything longer than 60 meters falls under the mega yacht category. And mega yachts are in the ballpark of $100 million. These are basically floating hotels.

The crazy thing about yachts is that the maintenance and crew costs are around 10% of the yacht's value on a yearly basis. If you learned something new about yachts today, subscribe to our channel.

The table you sit at. Now, this might sound crazy to some of you, but high-end restaurants have a ranking system when it comes to what tables you're seated at, depending on how high-profile you are.

So here's the insider scoop: We had the privilege of eating at one of these high-end restaurants in midtown Manhattan a couple of months ago with some of our friends in finance. Now, getting a table here is hard enough to begin with. But if you manage to get in, it goes like this. Millionaires and other people in finance sit in the center of the room—think your regular tables. Executives from high-end firms get the window seats, and then there are specially reserved booths, more private, usually elevated for the big shots whose net worth starts with a B.

When big deals are being made, they usually happen around food in these establishments—think mergers and acquisitions. So yeah, not all restaurant tables are created equally.

Terraforming land. At this point, you enter a world of people who are actively shaping the world around them. Billionaires flocked to Hawaii. Larry Ellison bought 98% of the island's land for $300 million. Mark Zuckerberg is trying to do the same thing with Kauai, among other ridiculous stories that we've heard.

Are people paying $250,000 to uproot an old tree and move it by a lake for his daughter's wedding, only to pay another $50,000 to move it back to its original spot after the wedding? These are the kinds of folks who stumbled upon the Maldives and decided to transform the wild island into a touristy paradise. They build beaches; they create islands. Some of them blow up parts of mountains to make room for their estate.

Then finally, humble bragging. Humble bragging is when ego meets false modesty. Here are some examples: FS in the chat for Kylie being teased by her family for being a billionaire. Or Floyd giving his son the spotlight he deserves. And you know, having… we all been in Ariana’s shoes when none of our three BlackBerrys were working on a flight—so relatable or whatever these are.

You must have some really cool stories to tell as well. So what's the most ridiculous way you've seen or heard about someone flexing a leg? So let us know in the comments.

And as a thank you for sticking around this long, you get a bonus. Don't flex your parents' money because look, here's where it's at. The kid who bought their own Toyota is more successful than the one flexing in their dad's Range Rover.

The problem is, until you get into your late twenties, you don't really have an idea of who you are and you don't have much to show for any of your efforts in a social media superficial world. The culture wants you to flex.

"Get your own success," okay? "My dad beat up your dad" type of thinking never works out in the real world. Make something of yourself. Build something of value. Don't allow social media or culture to put pressure on you. Focus on yourself and you'll find something real.

You'll become something real that you're solely responsible for. When you look in the mirror, you'll be able to smile deeply and not just on the surface. And we'll leave you with this: Flexing is a shortcut to poverty. If this idea has resonated with you, and if you're one of the few who wants to actually be rich, not just look rich to those peeking in, right? The word "flex" in the comments. Let's see how many real ones we've got today.