‘Wealth Fatigue Syndrome’ On the Rise, Experts Say

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For some people, flying first class represents the height of luxury. But not Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who has become the first person to buy an Airbus A380 superjumbo to use as a private jet. Given that the passenger version costs about $300 million, the VIP edition — dubbed “the Flying Palace” — will surely cost a hefty chunk of change. Another, anonymous, billionaire spent about $170 million on a flat in the Richard Rogers Partnership’s new Hyde Park development — which was double the going rate.

Such excessive spending might not be a sign of conspicuous consumption but of addiction. “For the super-rich, houses, yachts, cars, and planes are like new toys that they play with for five minutes and then lose interest in,” a psychoanalyst, Manfred Kets de Vries, says. Mr. de Vries is one of the new breed of therapists treating the angst of the very rich. “Pretty soon, to attain the same buzz, they have to spend more money. All the spending is a mad attempt to cover up boredom and depression.”

According to Mr. de Vries, the super-rich are increasingly succumbing to what has been labeled Wealth Fatigue Syndrome. When money is available in near-limitless quantities, the victim sinks into a kind of inertia. Feeling any sort of excitement means taking more and more risks, financially and physically. Luxury holidays are replaced by abseiling in Australia and swimming with sharks. The first-class ticket of old becomes a private jet such as Prince Alwaleed’s: Boeing has 11 standing orders for such wide-bodied “mobile mansions.”

Frank James, the author of “Richistan,” a study of this new class, saw WFS up close. “The rich are never happy, no matter what they have,” he told CNN. “There was this man who owned a 100-foot yacht. I said: ‘This is a terrific boat.’ He said: ‘Look down the harbor.’ We looked down the marina, and there were boats two and three times as large. He said: ‘My 100-foot yacht today is like a dinghy compared to these other boats.’ When else in history has someone been able to call a 100-foot yacht a dinghy?”

The rich are no longer a tiny elite that hides behind electronic gates in Mayfair. There are half a million American households with assets of more than $10 million, and a study of 71 countries by Merrill Lynch and the consultancy firm Capgemini found that the fortunes of “high net-worth individuals” increased by 11.4% last year. In Britain, the wealthiest self-made billionaires have tripled their fortunes over the past five years.

But as you draw up battle plans for surviving the credit crunch, spare a thought for the sufferers of WFS and how monumentally dull and isolating it is to live in a world where estates are traded like Pokemon cards.

“A lot of my clients made money in commodities, and consequently everything — including houses and boats — is treated like shares,” Peter Grabham, a project manager for the rich and famous, says. “When the houses have outlived their purpose, they are sold.”

Gardens arrive on the back of trucks; art collections fill entire wings overnight, though the owners often can’t recall the artists’ actual names. I have seen 20-year-old cypress trees craned into gardens — and out again when the owner got bored with that year’s fashionable look. One neighbor in Holland Park tore up her house, employing the most expensive interior designer in England. But after spending the better part of $4 million on refurbishment, she decided she was more a traditionalist than a minimalist, and tossed the contents into the skip outside.

Many who join the super-rich find it hard to keep their old circles of support. Happiness studies have repeatedly shown that being marginally better off than your neighbors makes you feel good, but being a hundred times richer makes you feel worse. So either you change your friends or live with the envy of others.

“When a relationship becomes unequal, it becomes difficult,” a professor of economics and psychology at Cambridge University, Brendan Burchell, says. “If you’re out in a three-star restaurant, how do you split the bill when he is a super-millionaire?

According to Mr. de Vries, the only cure for the boredom and anxiety is to give something back. “These people need to return to small pleasures and to stop worrying about having bigger and better toys,” he says.


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