Many people like to enjoy some time away from work by engaging in hobbies. While most hobbies involve a sport or starting a collection with little or no upfront or ongoing costs, more affluent members of society can engage in hobbies that leave you wondering whether you all live on the same planet.
Here are 14 hobbies that people do that make people think: “Ah… rich people.”
Equestrian Sports
Think polo and horse riding.
If you want to buy a horse, you could easily spend tens of thousands of dollars. That’s before looking at ongoing board and care, which, according to My New Horse, can be between $500 and $2,000 per month. And all that is before considering the feed, vet bills, training, and farrier costs (the last one is your horse’s ‘shoe guy’).
The only people we can think of who play polo are royals.
Track Days
Track days involve taking a car to a race track and driving around.
While certainly a lot of fun, some enthusiasts will spend tens of thousands of dollars upgrading their cars in search of performance at the track or even buying bespoke track-only cars that cannot be driven on the road. Once you factor in fuel, track fees, breakages, and consumables such as tires, track days can indeed get very pricey.
Yachting
As a rule of thumb, requiring specialized equipment or a location to do a hobby is a good sign that it is going to be a bit inaccessible—requiring a yacht and a body of water (and an optional chic ensemble) is going to slot in there with the best of them.
Yachts can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to millions, with maintenance, fuel, berthing fees, and insurance costing several thousand dollars a year more—not to mention a crew if you are so inclined.
Art Collecting
Nothing screams ‘pursuits of the rich’ more than the art of spending money on art.
Think about it—art appreciation is objectively subjective at the best of times, and it becomes extremely difficult to pass off collecting art as an ‘appreciation of art’ rather than parking money in non-cash objects.
Wine Tasting
For those who do drink alcohol, enjoying a glass of wine from time to time can be an enjoyable pursuit.
So the mind boggles when people spend potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bottle of wine—not to mention the fridges and/or cellars required to do it properly—only to.. not drink it?
Private Aviation
Flying one’s own aircraft used to be reserved for the realms of the uber-wealthy, the Howard Hugheses of the world… and arguably, it is still a fairly inaccessible pastime.
Considering the cost of an aircraft, along with expenses for maintenance, storage, insurance, and the tens of thousands of dollars required to become qualified—even as a private pilot rather than a commercial one—it’s clear that pursuing this as a hobby is largely a luxury reserved for the wealthy.
Gambling
It is strange to think that the only difference between gambling being a vice or a hobby is whether you can afford it or not.
While skill can play a role, gambling is an inherently risky pursuit that requires gamblers to stake potentially large stakes of money on a game of chance, and absent a gambling problem, most people would not consider risking their food allowance for the month as a ‘good time.’
Skiing
Skiing can be pretty expensive business—from the equipment to skiing passes, travel, and accommodation, even a short skiing trip on the cheap can wind up costing several thousands of dollars.
Antique Collecting
Most people would prefer to spend their money on the latest tech or models, so the fact that some people spend more money to get older things for fun can make others’ heads spin.
Whether it is furniture or crockery, the thought that spending more money on something less new would be good fun can only be conceived by those who can afford it.
Golf
While conceptually, many sports involve putting a ball of some description through a net or in a hole, golf requires a wardrobe, a clubhouse, a set of expensive clubs, and potentially someone to caddy those clubs around.
The opinion that slumming it in golf means playing 9-holes rather than a full 18-hole course smacks of detachment from reality that only the rich can manage.
Collecting Luxury Cars
Most people consider cars to be depreciating assets or even liabilities – they drop in value, require maintenance, fuel, storage, and insurance, and somewhat counterintuitively, you must ‘not use them’ to retain their monetary value.
So, it is no wonder that it is decidedly not your average person, who would collect cars and all their associated costs ‘just for fun.’
Fine Dining
There are many positions on the ‘enjoyment of food’ spectrum, all the way from ‘food is fuel’ to ‘food is art.’ That being said, Michelin-starred restaurants and exquisite dining settings with rare and expensive ingredients—often accompanied by remarkably large bills—have become another hobby of sorts that attracts well-heeled patrons.
Exclusive Clubs and Memberships
Why go to a bar for free when you can spend tens of thousands of dollars in application dues and membership fees to do the same thing in a more exclusive setting? OK, that is sort of self-explanatory as to why some people would pay the premium, but where many people may struggle to justify the cost of enjoying a night out at all, it is commonly perceived that exclusive clubs are an exclusive hideaway of the rich.
Luxury Travel and Adventure
High-end resorts, exclusive travel, and luxury tourism – where accommodation, travel, and excursions are catered to the needs and whims of the traveler – are often cited as hobbies.
While some people take time away from work to destress and relax as their main objective, traveling for the sake of unique experiences, such as having breakfast with giraffes (we’re looking at you, Giraffe Manor), is decidedly considered a rich pursuit by some.
Rooftop Gardening
It’s fascinating how humanity has evolved from hunter-gatherers to subsistence farmers and then to industrialized agriculture—largely to escape the toil of farming for service-based economies—only for some affluent and leisurely individuals to adopt what amounts to non-productive agriculture as a pastime.
Yoga and Wellness Retreats
Let’s face it—mindfulness and spiritual wellness are not often considered essential. Most ordinary people consider physical health and financial wellness paramount before taking a moment to wonder if their chakras are aligned. Much less so would ordinary people take trips to do yoga and focus on their wellness, hence why they are seen as hobbies of the rich.
Where Leisure Meets Luxury
Some hobbies are simple, some are extravagant, and some seem like they exist in an entirely different universe. For most of us, leisure means something affordable and accessible, but for the rich, it can mean private aircraft, yachts, or collecting luxury cars. These hobbies don’t just pass the time—they make it very clear who has the money to burn.
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