For the Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs) of the world, there’s no need to lift a finger for the rest of your life – you can hire someone to cook and clean for you, drive you around, and even plan your social life. In fact, some ultra-wealthy people hire staff for more unusual jobs, from babysitting meerkat pups to viewing houses for them, as seen on the Netflix hit show Selling Sunset. Read on to see the strangest jobs people do for the super-rich.
Why go to the cinema when you can recreate the experience in the comfort of your own home? For those with cash to splash, professionals such as Theo Kalomirakis offer bespoke home theatre design services, helping the rich and famous watch their favourite films in style. According to CNBC, Kalomirakis's clients have included Eddie Murphy, the Rock, and Seth MacFarlane. Considering one renovation featured a custom ice cream parlour and $90,000 (£73.7k) chandelier, it's perhaps unsurprising that his renovations can cost millions of dollars.
For some, the true spirit of Christmas means having the perfect decorations. If you don't have the time to put up your own tree this year, why not follow in the footsteps of celebs such as Kendall Jenner and hire someone to decorate one for you? According to an article in People magazine, Jenner's 2018 Christmas tree could have cost around $2,000 (£1.6k) and "would have taken one person about two hours from start to finish" to decorate with around 800 lights.
Buying a classic car is a huge investment not to be taken lightly. Enter Marcel Massini, the man you go to with your millions when you want a Ferrari. With a database of 20,000 Ferrari chassis numbers, he will check your Prancing Horse’s provenance and history. In 2018, he confirmed the sale of the world’s most expensive car, a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO, sold for $70 million (£52m). The car, which won the 1964 Tour de France Automobile, is understood to have been bought by David MacNeil, founder of car accessory company WeatherTech, who already has a supercar collection.
So you've got a private yacht and, naturally, it's got its own basketball court. But what do you do when a basketball falls in the water? If you’re Oracle founder Larry Ellison, you just pay someone to follow you in a speedboat and pick them up. Ellison, worth $97.9 billion (£80.2bn) at the time of writing, has installed courts on two of his private yachts, Oracle’s former director of external affairs told the Wall Street Journal. As it would be impossible to fit a big stash of basketballs on board, he apparently pays someone to retrieve them so he can shoot hoops at sea.
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Most students have to fend for themselves when they leave home. But this wasn't the case for one Indian billionaire’s daughter starting her studies at St Andrew’s University (pictured) in Scotland. Her parents clearly wanted her to have the full Downton Abbey experience and advertised for 12 staff, including three housekeepers, a house manager and a lady’s maid, all roles said to pay around $39,300 (£30k) a year, to care for the student at her newly-bought Scottish mansion.
The first wealth is health, said American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the ultra-rich like to ensure they can fast-track their way back to health if they get sick. Medical concierge services have become common in the US and now the UK, offering 24/7 advice and support. Concierges can set up video consultations or get an immediate face-to-face appointment with the world’s top consultants. More unusual tasks they can help with include decorating new mothers’ hospital rooms and organising air ambulances between continents.
For the UHNWIs among us, flying first class doesn't quite cut it. That's why many of the rich and famous have their own private jets to get around in, accompanied of course by a private jet pilot. Interestingly, private jet pilots actually earn less on average than those working for commercial airlines, according to a survey by PrivateFly.com. More than a quarter (27%) of private pilots' salaries were under $63,000 (£48.3k), compared to 21% of all pilots whose salaries fell into this range.
So you've got the private jet – now you need to personalise it. You need a private jet decorator, like an interior designer but for your Gulfstream. A private jet decorator (or boutique completion centre) can modify your cabin’s floorplan, entertainment system, galley, lighting, upholstery, paint, or cabinets. Want it gold-plated or trimmed in Burberry? Just say the word.
Time is money and when your child’s tablet won’t synchronise or you can’t remember your password, wouldn’t it be nice to buzz your own family services systems administrator? If you have the money, you can do just that. One job ad for such a role calls for knowledge of both Microsoft and Apple devices as well as drones and air cards, videoconferencing, email, Microsoft Office, and anti-virus software. The administrator needs to be able to provide custom training as required, be on-call for evenings and weekends, and ensure technology needs “are met in family homes, offices, marine vessels, and other locations”.
Estate managers look after all of the super-rich's properties, jets, and security. Recruiter The Bespoke Bureau goes a step further, offering palace managers as well as estate managers among its household staff services. One job ad for a Florida estate and operations manager asked for a “hands-on executive” who would manage the team’s personal assistant, engineer, chef, personal trainers, maintenance staff, and housekeepers, as well as oversee construction and landscaping projects and look after the household pets.
Lifestyle consultants can provide on an ad-hoc basis what a personal assistant may not be able to find for their ‘principal’, from buying a horse to getting a restaurant reservation or VIP access. They are a catch-all for the odd and bizarre requests, whether you want to arrange dinner on an iceberg or close down a tourist attraction for a private event, and need a book stuffed full of contacts. One such consultant says she was paid $10,000 (£7.6k) to line up and buy six iPhones, hiring helpers to bypass the two iPhones per purchase limit. Lifestyle consultants tend to charge a membership fee of anything up to $45,000 (£34.2k) a year.
If you’re a valet (or gentleman’s gentleman), you may be called upon to do just about anything. In 2001, US rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was snapped in St Tropez with an assistant obediently holding a white parasol over his head. That job actually did Fonzworth Bentley (pictured) no harm at all. He went on to have his own MTV show, bring out a hip-hop album, write a book on etiquette – and bring out a line of signature umbrellas, naturally.
This is a pretty bespoke role but it has been claimed that, in her 30-strong entourage, singer Mariah Carey hires someone to fly around the world with her and hold her drink. Mariah’s vocal coaches David and Carrie Grant claimed in 2008 that the artist employed a drinks holder, “like old monarchs had food tasters”, with a straw to ensure she never smudged her lipstick. You don’t get more of a niche job than this.
A laundress is the modern-day equivalent of a lady’s maid and is expected to manage a rich household's standard washing, ironing, dry-cleaning and repairs and alterations, plus also garment inventory, seasonal changeovers and packing lists. One job ad for an estate in England calls for a laundress and seamstress with a possible background as a theatre costumier who will provide a “valet service if required” and be “confident looking after a high-value/couture wardrobe”. The average salary for the role is $75,864 (£58.1k) according to SimplyHired.com.
A nanny, governess or tutor is a standard hire for the rich, but the expectations of these modern-day Mary Poppins are escalating. When Gwyneth Paltrow advertised for a tutor for her two children, she expected the successful candidate to teach Greek, Latin, French, Japanese or Mandarin, as well as philosophy, art history, sailing, chess and tennis, in return for a reported salary of $78,325 (£60k).
If you have a grand country estate you don’t just need a few gardeners – you need a landscape architect. Keeping their distance from the actual gardening, a landscape architect will spend most of their days at a desk, using computer-aided design software to model stunning grounds for the uber-wealthy. A landscape architect usually has a bachelor's or master's degree and can expect to earn $63,400 (£48.2k) per year.
Most of us could benefit from some careful financial planning. But when your net worth stretches into the millions or even billions, you need something a little more specialist: so-called elite wealth planners who'll help you manage your money shrewdly. From working out how to mitigate taxes to ensuring family fortunes pass down the generations, these professionals essentially have the task of making sure the rich get richer – and net an impressive salary for themselves in the process. According to Glassdoor, an elite wealth manager could earn around $120,000 (£99k) a year.
Netflix's latest hit series Selling Sunset has offered the world a glimpse into the lives of the ultra-wealthy, and people are loving it. In the show, luxury real estate agents working at elite agency The Oppenheim Group in LA sell properties to clients looking to live in the famous Hollywood Hills area. But they're tasked with so much more than your average estate agent, spending months building up relationships with their high-profile clients or more often their real estate agent representatives, who are paid to view properties on their behalf to create a shortlist. That way, millionaires and billionaires don't waste time on properties that don't match their dream. As the saying goes, "time is money".
It might sound old-fashioned, but many stately homes across the world still hire butlers – and the job hasn't changed much in the past century or so. It's a hectic schedule, according to Grant Harrold, former butler to the Duke and Duchess of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. "The day would consist of doing breakfast maybe around 7 am, followed by elevenses, an 11 am cocktail and biscuit, a 12:30 pm pre-lunch drink, lunch at 1 pm followed by coffee, then afternoon tea between 4-6 pm, then evening drinks at 7.30pm, then dinner which could be around 8-10.30pm", he told Town & Country magazine.
You don't necessarily need to be a millionaire to hire a wedding planner, but for elite wedding planner, and star of BBC TV documentary Million-Dollar Wedding Planner, Lelian Chew, planning a no-expense spared day is a task of epic proportions. In the show, which hit television screens in October 2019, Chew gave us an insight into the multibillion-dollar Asian wedding industry, helping to plan multi-day weddings which often have thousands of guests and a seemingly unlimited budget.
Having access to a private chef is becoming more commonplace and super-rich individuals including Oprah Winfrey, billionaire Ronald Perelman, and Hollywood director Steven Spielberg have all allegedly hired one at some point. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even have one on-call at their Palo Alto, California company apartment, according to Taste. The role isn't for the faint-hearted though, as private chefs have to deal with unusual food requests, antisocial working hours, and very high expectations.
Carrying out surveillance on unfaithful husbands and wives might sound like a surreal job to have, but it's all in a day's work for private investigators. One such detective, Natalija from Australian PI firm Lipstick Investigations, told the Daily Mail that her role involves following people for hours on end, filming their actions and reporting back to clients, in return for which she makes a minimum of AU$500 (US$363/£277) per day.
Going above and beyond the demands of a regular housekeeper, in 2017 one ultra-wealthy New York family advertised for a "domestic couple" to manage their 30,000-square foot second home. The live-in role, which pays an impressive salary of $100,000- $150,000 (£76.6k-£114.8k), involves all aspects of housekeeping, including laundry, cooking, serving food and managing vendors and contractors.
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