15 Things That Are Not Missing From a Rich Person’s Home
Here is something you didn't know. The inside of a rich person's house is usually more expensive than the acquisition price of the property, or it's at least coming close.
When you think about rich people's homes, you probably picture gold-plated everything, escalators and elevators, inside your very own McDonald's, and a basketball court because, hey, we still think about the Richie Rich movie, but that's not really it. Rich homes are a lot like rich people's clothing. Well-tailored, well-maintained, but not ostentatious or flaunting brand names because it can't be purchased at big box stores.
In some places around the world, a rich home is one that has a garage. We're looking at you, Singapore and 2018 San Francisco. So let's dig deeper, shall we? Here are 15 things that are not missing from our rich person's home.
First up, a guest house. When your house has a house, you're rich. Even richer than that is when you have another building where your staff lives. These are quite common among the wealthy. Rich people usually buy adjacent properties in order to remove the neighbors around them, to either make more space for themselves or to isolate themselves from prying eyes.
In the case of London, for example, where you can't expand up or horizontally, people are digging below their homes and building multiple levels underground. These are called iceberg houses, where what you see on the surface is just a small portion of the entire thing: a housekeeper and staff. This might sound kind of weird, but in the case of really rich people, the dishwasher, the lawnmower, and the carpet cleaner are actual people. Expensive homes require maintenance. So when you're dealing with a large property, it becomes more of a full-time job.
So you need actual people to delegate those tasks to in order to focus on what you're doing that's making you able to afford this home in the first place. As a rule of thumb, for everything in life, don't do anything you can pay someone to do for you. If the cost is lower than what you're able to earn in that same time.
More bathrooms than bedrooms. There's an unspoken rule amongst the elites in Hollywood that you're only rich if you've got two bathrooms for every bedroom. Now, the main reason for this is that these homes serve another purpose: the one of entertaining guests and you don't want people sniffing around in your bathroom cabinets, so you provide accessible powder rooms and toilets near the areas where you entertain.
Heated everything: heated floors, heated pool, heated driveways so you never have to shovel snow, heated toilet seats so it doesn't feel cold when you sit on your throne. Rich people have heated drawers in their kitchen meant to keep the plates or their food warm. You don't really think about it much when you're poor, but the moment your food touches your cold plate, it changes in temperature and in taste. Rich people have thought of everything.
It's the same with the bathrooms, for example. You'll find heated cabinets or surfaces. So when you grab a towel, it's not cold. Most luxury homes don't have traditional air conditioning pipes running through the house to regulate the temperature and the airflow. Most of these are hidden from view.
The "I want to be alone and do my thing" room. This is the quiet room. It's the getaway from everyone so you can focus on whatever it is that requires your focus. It could be a writing room. It might be a creative space. Maybe it's a home office, but structured in such a way that it's conducive to actually getting work done. It's separate from the rest of the house, and people know not to bother you when you're inside.
It's usually filled with inspiring items to get the creative juices going or to get you in the right mood. The room is used to regroup, strategize, and make decisions and move forward in life with clarity. It's a rich person's version of the meditation room. You walk in, you sit comfortably in your aims chair. You put on your headphones, open up the ALUX app and for the next 15 minutes, your brain gets pumped with actionable insights and motivation to get you out into the world to slay dragons.
And that is how they win. You might not have this room yet, but in time you will. If you go to alux.com/app, it's time you started your days like the super rich do.
Health-enhancing additions: air purifiers, a pool, sauna, ice bath, gym. You get the picture. Health is a big priority for the rich, from physical to mental. It starts with the air you breathe. Dyson is worth $20 billion because they've made a premium product accessible to the mass market. The pool, the gym, the sauna, the ice baths all walk hand-in-hand here.
Rich people don't use these things frequently, but every once in a while, they get on a health and fitness kick and they want to make sure there is little to no resistance to them not letting that motivation slip away. In the case of older rich individuals, you'll find a part of the home equipped with hospital-level equipment so they don't have to travel for their checkups. The doctors come to them.
State-of-the-art security cameras are everywhere. There are multiple layers of security before you actually enter the household. Everything either runs or has a private backup to keep things going no matter what. For example, there are generators to keep the lights and cameras on, even if the power is cut. There is a private server up and running to keep your internet going.
Telecommunications are satellite as well as cellular and contrary to popular burglar and Scrooge McDuck cartoons beliefs, rich people don't have a room filled with gold coins. The safe of the house is there to protect private documents like passports, birth certificates, and important contracts. The security installed is there not to protect the goods in the house, but the people living in it too.
If time is money and speed is cash flow to washers, to driers, to sinks, to kitchens, one is usually for display and rarely used. The other one is out of view and considered the chef's kitchen. That's the one where the food actually is prepared. And it's messier than the first.
And speaking of the kitchen, there is the normal fridge. There's the freezer. And then there's the beverage fridge. A fridge only for drinks. And for those who don't have access to a garden, you might not even know that this is a thing, but you could even get fresh herb fridges where you can grow fresh plants inside. They used to only be available in high-end restaurants, but they've made their way into rich people's homes, of course.
And speaking of fridges, there are different layers of luxury fridges based on the shape and composition of the ice cubes you get. Yeah, that's right.
The family tree photo. Pictures of your family, even extended family, are common in all households. But the rich make it a priority to make sure everyone knows the lineage. If you're building generational wealth, it's a sign of respect and a tribute to the previous generations who contributed to your present well-being. Back in the day, you used to have paintings of everyone who came before you. Now the rich make sure to keep a family tree updated.
Art, and a lot of it. The richer you are, the more you can afford the luxury to take the time to find value in art. But once you do, you realize just how valuable that actually is. The way this statement was phrased was intentional. If you're struggling to put food on the table, you don't care about art whatsoever because your needs are external and urgent. The value of art is internal. It captures value and transports it through time.
One should never be the oldest thing in their house. Once you get rich, you begin to look at art differently. You understand not only the function of storing value, but also as an appreciating asset. Due to scarcity and an ever-growing demand, there will never be any more Picasso paintings. But the appetite for Picasso is only going to grow. This is why contemporary art has crushed the S&P 500 for the past few decades.
Billionaires and ultra-high net worth individuals have always used art as a store of value and as an asset class. To them, allocating as little as 5% of their portfolio to art is a way of protecting and growing their wealth while opening themselves up to culture and beauty, and research shows these portfolios outperform traditional ones 95% of the time.
The art market has been a billionaire's paradise because traditionally only the super-rich have had access to these kinds of investments until Masterworks came around. Masterworks has a team of art historians and financial analysts. They've analyzed decades of auction data to acquire art with the strongest history of appreciation. So far, they've acquired over 300 paintings from legendary artists like Picasso, Monet, and Banksy.
Their experts select and buy the paintings for millions of dollars and then break them down into shares like you would do with a traditional company. Then investors like yourself can now buy and hold these shares. When the painting is sold at a later date, the profit is split between the shareholders, and so far, Masterworks has generated over $45 million in net returns and counting.
To investors like you, they've had 17 exits so far, and each of them has shown price appreciation for everyone else. This kind of investing service is behind a closed store, usually by invite only. But since you're an Aluxer and Masterworks was kind enough to sponsor this video, you get to skip the waitlist by going to masterworks.art/alux or using the special link in the description.
Temperature-controlled wine cellar or a walk-in humidor. Wine, Cognac, Cigars. Rich people always seem to be talking about them, don't they? Well, outside of the busyness around it, there is value and money to be made in these. Now, investment wine is usually stored outside of the home in a special location. So what's the deal with in-home cellars or special rooms? Well, we'll let you in on a little secret.
Rich people want to consume expensive products, but they want to pay retail prices for it. So what do they do? Well, they find a good wine, buy three cases of it. That's 36 bottles and have them on display. Every year, the price of each bottle, since it's now aged another year, has gone up and retail price usually by 15%. A few years down the line, the bottle you paid $100 for is now worth $250. And when guests come over, you get to flex on them. This and you know, also having your favorite wines and cigars available to you at any moment in a fashion that ensures the quality you desire.
Fresh flowers. Few people know this, but you can change the entire vibe of a room by changing the flowers. Especially in this economy, paying money for something that's only decorative and you know you'll throw away in a couple of days definitely reads like rich people behavior, right? The way the rich people do it, though, is they have flower subscriptions and they receive new flowers regularly. And like not to get too feng shui on you here, but when done right, fresh flowers lighten the mood and harmonize the room.
It builds up to one of the key elements that make a place memorable. The smell. Rich people curate the way their homes smell. They rarely change that scent so that other people associate that particular smell with them and their beautiful home. Everything you touch is made out of high quality materials, from kitchen knives to the floor to the door handles. If you touch it, pay a little bit more for it. If it affects your sleep, pay a little bit more for it. From the mattress to the pillows to the curtains. Do it all, and you won't regret it.
Having a room fully blacked out while getting into your high thread count sheets on a comfortable mattress will literally change your life and you'll wake up feeling like a million bucks.
Panic room, sex room, the Costco room. There are many specific rooms catering to someone's particular interests. The panic room is pretty obvious, right? It's the reinforced room where the safe is. You and your family can lock yourselves in and wait out whatever emergency you're encountering, be it a break-in or a tornado. The other one we mentioned is going to get us demonetized if we go into detail. Okay, you can use your imagination here.
And the third one, the Costco room, is something most people aren't familiar with. It's basically an entire room filled with every possible essential you might need, from toilet paper to paper towels, detergent, disposable bags, batteries, light bulbs, you name it. The sole purpose of this room is for you to never need to go out to buy one essential thing out of necessity. The Costco room gets refilled every couple of months. If you've got money, you've actually come out ahead since these aren't perishable items, so you can buy them in bulk for a lower price than everyone else.
And finally, space. Regular people's homes are crowded, filled with junk or things that you don't dare throw away. They say if your couch touches the wall, you're not rich. As the world gets more and more crowded, living space has become more cramped by the day. Space is the new luxury. Empty space. Negative space. Space to move through without having to push something out of your way. A crowded home feels like traffic. An empty home feels soulless. Somewhere between those, there is a Goldilocks amount of personal stuff in a home that, in the words of Marie Kondo, sparks joy.
Those of you who are rich or know people who are rich, what did you see in their home that sparked your interest? Share your insights in the comments.
And since you stuck around until the very end, of course, we've got a bonus waiting for you that reminds you every day that you made it. Not all views are created equally, and not all views inspire the same kind of dreams. Every morning when you get out of bed, what you see out the window is an instant reminder of where you are in life. If you're on the backside overlooking the trash bins, use it as motivation to change that view. If your view is inspiring, use it as a constant reminder of what you had to do to get here. And if you aren't careful, you might lose it.
So take a moment to get up and look out the window of your room right now. Stand up and do it. What do you see? Is this it? Well, if not, what will it look like once you do make it? For extra bonus points, spend the next couple of minutes searching online for your dream home. Save those pictures somewhere on your desktop so you'll revisit them once in a while as a constant reminder of what you're headed toward. If this got you as excited as it did, us, write the word "view" in the comments.