Here Are the Most Extravagant Things You Can Waste Your Money On

For your weekend reading pleasure, I submit an oldie but goodie from 2-1/2 years ago, the ultimate guilty pleasure on uber-conspicuous consumption. I used to think that the ultimate conspicuous consumption were the wealthy families that built indoor swimming pools in their luxurious mansions, even though they live on the lake, a practice not uncommon in my hometown of Orchard Lake.  Then there was the story of that Arab prince who flew in hundreds of palm trees to line the 20-mile road between his palace and the airport -- in the middle of the desert! And the special underground drip-fed watering system to keep the trees properly hydrated. 


But this article from an October 2017 issue of The Street goes into what are by far the most vulgar examples of conspicuous consumption.  The one that really takes the cake (and is literally a load of crap) is the $1.6 million dollar roll of toilet paper made of gold.  There's only one of its kind and the only redeeming feature of this one is that they've yet to find someone stupid enough to buy it. But a close runner-up is the $25,000 ice cream sundae (and not even a double scoop, just a single) that can be found in an exclusive Manhattan restaurant.  Among its many super-luxurious ingredients is a garnish of 5 grams of 24 karat gold powder. So you're paying all this money for roughly 1/6th of an ounce of totally indigestible solid gold sprinkles that are just going to end up in your colon, and ultimately the city sewer (another item that is literally a load of crap.)  Anyway, it's all very amusing but, since it's also very real, it's certainly all too frightening that there are actually super-wealthy people out there willing to squander their fortunes on this nonsense.  Hope you're all enjoying your weekend and that maybe this list of idiotic luxuries might bring a smile to your face.  (And at least as of this evening, this two year old link still works.) 

Here Are the Most Extravagant Things You Can Waste Your Money On

Oct 20, 2017  --  The Street

Luxury items get that name for being frivolous, but some luxury goods are far less defensible than others.

Though a luxury item typically involves some level of comfort or appointment that a standard version does not, there are corners of the luxury industry that exist solely because they can. The median household income in the U.S. is still $55,775, which means just about anything above that price is is still a hardship for the average consumer, but someone who spends seven figures on a bejeweled knick-knack lives in a somewhat different universe.

The U.S. is also home to 565 billionaires -- more than 11 per state (although California has 124 and Idaho, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Mississippi and Alabama have none). That's also little more than a quarter of the 2,043 billionaires Forbes counted this year, up from 1,810 last year.

Credit Suisse, meanwhile put the number of global millionaires at 35 million last year, but says that group will expand to 53 million by 2019. Among those 35 million millionaires, there are 140,900 with $50 million or more, 50,800 with more than $100 million and 5,200 with more than $500 million.

There are ways to turn that into a lasting legacy of wealth. However, when someone comes into that kind of money after generations of living without it, there are often more lavish uses for it. Diamonds, gold leaf and helicopter rides can be thrown in as perks to make any simple item or service far more appealing to those with newly deep pockets and powerless accountants.

We clicked through the higher end of the luxury listings and found 15 items that exist largely to absorb money. Bemoan the redistribution of wealth all you'd like, but if you're paying this much for any of these luxury items, you'd best have plenty of wealth to redistribute:

Here Are the Most Extravagant Items You Can Waste Your Money On - TheStreet