Had a friend buy his second or third Rolex and we were all new grads. I was broke as hell at the time so it surprised me he was buying watches the price of a car right out of uni (and his parents just bought him an apartment so he lived in a different world).
He was telling me how this watch is gonna increase in value so it’d be stupid not to get it.
I never said it and only thought about it, but I was thinking that if you were buying it as an investment, why are you wearing it? Why not keep it at home？ It could get stolen or lost or broken. But I guess I have brokey mentality.
Past a certain level of wealth, it might make sense to invest in some really expensive jewelry just as an emergency and liquid wealth store.
Consider the US right now with its volatile political situation. Or any other country with volatile and uncertain politics. Or just uncertainty from major national disasters. People sometimes need to flee from disasters on short notice.
For a normal person, carrying around $100k worth of jewelry on your person would be foolish. For most middle class people, that would a substantial portion of your wealth that they’re walking around risking. But imagine your net worth is $50 million. Now that $100k worth of jewelry you wear every day is only 0.5% of your net worth. But if you need to bug out of your city or flee the country for some reason, you now carry around with you the means to do so. International money transfers can take time, and bank accounts can be frozen. But if you have $100k in jewelry just on your person, you have a liquid form of emergency bugout money. You can get on a plane with nothing but the clothes on your back, fly to a far off country, and immediately have access to enough resources to get yourself set up. Even if your accounts or frozen or your nation’s banking system has collapsed, you can pawn some of that jewelry off to obtain essentials like food, shelter, etc.
I think a fair number of rich people like having this amount of jewelry for the same reason that they often like having multiple passports. The odds of having to ever flee the country are low. And for most people, maintaining the means to flee the country at a moment’s notice is simply too much. But when the cost is a tiny portion of your net worth, putting what is the equivalent of pocket change into the ability to quickly flee a country isn’t so unreasonable anymore.
Had a friend buy his second or third Rolex and we were all new grads. I was broke as hell at the time so it surprised me he was buying watches the price of a car right out of uni (and his parents just bought him an apartment so he lived in a different world).
He was telling me how this watch is gonna increase in value so it’d be stupid not to get it.
I never said it and only thought about it, but I was thinking that if you were buying it as an investment, why are you wearing it? Why not keep it at home？ It could get stolen or lost or broken. But I guess I have brokey mentality.
Past a certain level of wealth, it might make sense to invest in some really expensive jewelry just as an emergency and liquid wealth store.
Consider the US right now with its volatile political situation. Or any other country with volatile and uncertain politics. Or just uncertainty from major national disasters. People sometimes need to flee from disasters on short notice.
For a normal person, carrying around $100k worth of jewelry on your person would be foolish. For most middle class people, that would a substantial portion of your wealth that they’re walking around risking. But imagine your net worth is $50 million. Now that $100k worth of jewelry you wear every day is only 0.5% of your net worth. But if you need to bug out of your city or flee the country for some reason, you now carry around with you the means to do so. International money transfers can take time, and bank accounts can be frozen. But if you have $100k in jewelry just on your person, you have a liquid form of emergency bugout money. You can get on a plane with nothing but the clothes on your back, fly to a far off country, and immediately have access to enough resources to get yourself set up. Even if your accounts or frozen or your nation’s banking system has collapsed, you can pawn some of that jewelry off to obtain essentials like food, shelter, etc.
I think a fair number of rich people like having this amount of jewelry for the same reason that they often like having multiple passports. The odds of having to ever flee the country are low. And for most people, maintaining the means to flee the country at a moment’s notice is simply too much. But when the cost is a tiny portion of your net worth, putting what is the equivalent of pocket change into the ability to quickly flee a country isn’t so unreasonable anymore.
Your friend is a poser, and was probably buying fake reproduction rolexes to impress ppl.