Green eyed monster after being in Harrods

[Moneyjealousy]

Lighthearted (I think?!)

But this weekend I've been in London with adult DD's and we somehow ended up in Harrods champagne bar where we treated ourselves to a couple of cocktails before heading back to the nearest Wetherspoons type bar 😁

I have to say in advance that I am very lucky, I have a lovely dh, great dc all our bills are paid and even though we aren't living the high life I don't have to worry about food or heating the house.

After getting off the tube at Harrods though........OMG! Where does all the money come from?! The big houses and fancy cars outside the shop then once you get in the huge selection of jewellery/bags/clothes etc that I could never dream of affording.

Who are the people that shop there? Where do they get the money for it? How can you ever afford to buy a house and drive a Porsche across the road from Harrods?

I'm back home now in my northern house that I could never afford if it was moved 300 miles south but still have a feeling of not believing how the other half must live.

Can you afford a shopping trip at Harrods? Do you look down on people like me who pop in for a cocktail and post it on Facebook to remember it by 🤣

I'm not even really jealous I don't think it's just coming from where I do seeing such a big difference in others life styles is a bit of a culture shock.

Vulture funds are a curse on society. They buy up swathes of property or distressed mortgages at a discount and then rent them out at exorbitant rates.

There are few things in Harrods that you can't find an every bit as good substitute for at a fraction of the cost. It's a shop for schmucks.

I've had the same thought many times before. I wonder how anyone lives these days really! I sound like my grandma every time I go food shopping lol

The make up counters, toy shop etc are all normal prices. They even sell sportswear, again normal prices. We uses to go quite often, I wouldn't waste money in the champagne bar tho I do like the food hall. 🐷

Saudi and Russia. That’s where the money comes from.

Vulture funds are a curse on society. They buy up swathes of property or distressed mortgages at a discount and then rent them out at exorbitant rates.

Vulture funds, zombie apartments and REITs laundering dirty money. Some of the many reasons housing is fucked. And cities are dying.

Average earning Londoner here!

I have no interest in Harrods (not that I could afford to!) apart from getting a drink / hot chocolate.

I just find it a frenzy of tourists buying overpriced (designer) tat tbh.

Most of the customers are ultra wealthy foreigners, Russians, Chinese, Arabs.

Not that I know many wealthy British people, but I don’t think they would even shop in Harrods regularly. Shops like Harrods are selling an aspirational dream that some tourists lap up, so they can pretend to be Kate Middleton or something.

I couldn’t agree more. I am baffled as to why there isn’t more discussion about this. The government want to build more and more houses, which will deplete our already shrinking wildlife, when we already have plenty of housing available. For heaven’s sake, let’s legislate against properties being sold to foreign nationals who do not live here and have no intention of living here. I believe that other places around the world have such prohibitions.

Where do they get that sort of money? From the exploitation of others and the natural world.

Totally agree. These people didn't get their wealth by climbing the ladder working at the local market research firm.
It's likely come from inherited wealth (at the very least always linked to unfair working practices at the very worst, slavery), oil, gas or siphoned from other countries public money. A very small amount of the people you saw shopping their were spending their hard earned money made ethically.
Sorry - I realise this is supposed to be lighthearted! I'm just fed up living in such an unfair Tory society.

Its not the other half, its a tiny minority. We both have good careers, (just about) 6 figure salaries, Harrods is way out of our reach. I can’t afford a cocktail there, so you are ahead of us there ;)
London (commuter belt) is expensive, we have kids, and one has SENDs. Our money goes to specialist schooling.
Harrods is for the top 0.5%, the ultra rich who like bling, a bit like stately manors used to be. The few rich enougb people i know don’t go there - too show off.

My inner housing nerd is coming out @BeeLaidee

Other places have tried various methods. From foreign buyers taxes to prohibitions. It's really difficult to police. The taxes have to be very high because if it's 10-15% it's just a business expense. Added to which so many of these buyers are laundering money that it becomes meaningless. In order to launder money you will lose money, that's the reality. So they don't care if they lose a chunk. Hiding their foreign status in REITs, where the company is the 'buyer' based in the country and all the investors are foreign is another way. Also making sure one family member has nationality and buys for the others. And you can buy nationality if you are rich enough. So you have to have second home taxes as well. For every half-hearted scheme to police it there are well-paid lawyers and accountants trying to beat it. You actually need a government which cares more about housing than profit.

The trick is to be 'worse' than other places for it. So if Vancouver, Paris and Berlin do a 15% tax, you do a 20% tax. Just make London slightly less attractive for empty homes. Or my cunning plan, which is to have a Council Tax/Poll Tax/whatever the version you want, that doubles every year the place is empty. Until it is more than the cost of the place. Of course all the people with second homes in Cornwall and Pembrokeshire would have to give them up to locals. And those people vote.

I used to work down the road in Sloane Square.

A lot of the money (and residents) are foreign and a large proportion is generational wealth. Some are on big money work contracts where employers will cover high rents; rich Arabs; rich Russians; rich Chinese. Properties that have been in families for years pass hands. Lots of nepotism to keep money and good jobs in the right hands.

It's also a really nice place for tourists to go and buy a little something and walk around with their harrods bag but no not anymore! Bought the little Harrods bear 🐻 when I went and they said they don't give a free bag anymore and I could buy a hessian one which I think was £12?
:-( 😞

London is full of very wealthy people from all countries, they buy the multi ££million house, often through offshore companies. Don’t forget there are also many people like footballers who have huge paycheques!

Didn't they recently have to change the law, putting a cap on how much cash you can spend at Harrods, because it turned out the vast majority of it is laundered.....?

❤️

Anyone else really surprised you can just buy an elephant from the shops?
"I'll take damson jam, some lemon and black pepper water crackers and a savanna elephant to go, thank you."
I feel extravagant at the lidl bakery, this has shocked me to my core.

I do get you op, but it's not just those parts of London where you ' see' a lot of wealth and a lot of it is coming from high house prices and people inheriting their wealth from grandparents or parents. I know ordinary folk who no longer bother working ( or not many hours anyway) as they have enough in the bank not to be too fussed about work and a lot of it is purely from bricks and mortar and not necessarily from having a higher paid career.
You will always have the very mega rich though
Much of it is old money I would imagine or those lucky enough to have a really good career.
I would rather have a tea and a baguette in my local cafe where the service is great and the prices reasonable, but then I've been a fan of fancy places or shopping in these big department stores!

The answer is a Land Value Tax, paid annually, and if the landowner defaults for more than three years then the land and any buildings on it is confiscated by the State and sold at auction.

You might hide who owns the land but you can't hide the land itself.

I used to live in the Middle East. Rich there and rich here are cut from a different cloth. Their middle class is what we would consider properly rich. A bit like the wealth divide when I went to Malawi but just the other way around!

But there are people who are not rich and still spend everything they have. Just to look rich. My DH and I are both higher earners, currently pregnant with our first so no kids. However we moved out of London to a commuter town where housing is more affordable. We currently live in rented accommodation and drive a four year old Honda. But we have friends with similar earning power who live in million pound houses in trendy parts of London, send their kids to private school and drive the latest Tesla. Unsurprisingly, we don't really have money worries while many of them do.

@CallumDansTransitVan I do agree, the British aristocracy don't tend to flash their wealth. But then they're often asset rich and relatively cash poor, at least compared to the people who do park their Bentley's outside Harrods. They're Russian, Chinese etc, and lord knows how they get their money.

This is v interesting @MrsTerryPratchett and @BeeLaidee as a Londoner I agree, all this talk of building more seems a nonsense when there is so much housing here already, with the obstacles of a messed up market. Is housing (especially in London) really the best we have to offer the world as a product, selling homes to become assets at a cost to so many families and communities - I don't think so.
Harrods is great fun and a nice way to track change in our city - contrast the Georgian Staircase with the Egyptian Escalator, both fabulous. The staff are generally welcoming even if you're obviously just having a window shop. OP I love the place and aspire to having a few champagnes like you!

Have you ever read Crazy Rich Asians? It’s people like that with massive generational wealth or whose parents own billion dollar companies. It’s not even for normal wealthy people. One of my cousins is a CEO at a reasonably large company (think 5-6k employees). It affords him & his family a lifestyle we definitely couldn’t get close to but he’s still not wealthy enough the family could shop somewhere like Harrods beyond the odd occasion pair of shoes or statement handbag. It’s the type of wealth that is the 1% of the 1%
I strongly suspect it’s less fun than it sounds to have a life where you’ll just be excessively rich whatever you do. Much more fun than having nothing but if you can always have whatever you want at the snap of your fingers would you ever really appreciate and enjoy anything. I don’t know but I suspect a big part of the satisfaction in owning something you buy yourself is knowing the work you put in to earn the money to buy it and the nice thing about gifts is being treated to something you might struggle to justify buying for yourself even if you can afford to.

It's just stuff . It won't make you happier.

It's not just Harrods that has gone for the mega rich overseas clientele. Fortnums has always been a great shop to meander to look at its traditional products and surroundings, I sometimes used to buy make up there, but that has now changed to attract gaudy people. Last time I went it had changed on the upper floors, the clientele was same as Harrods crowd and those tacky faux flower arches were everywhere so people could take a photo for Instagram.

I never feel anyplace is off limits. I was brought up in central London, not rich, but felt no place was out of bounds. Harrods used to be a great store, but Al Fayed made it tacky. He sold it when his love affair with UK ended but the tackiness remains. The pet department used to be huge, and that was where the elephant story emerged. They sold Christian the lion to those two guys on the Kings Road, who kept him in their shop until they released him into the wild - worth a look on You Tube. But they would not be able to do that now. The food hall and make up was great, especially sale time. But again, the last, and I suspect final time I went in there, there were no normal people in there. There were just rich overseas people.

Fenwicks in Bond Street has not attracted the new clientele despite being near Selfridges. They are closing down. Their regional branches are staying open, with a rumour that they are taking over the old House of Fraser site in Guildford.