Make Way for Millionaires Spending money is what they do, from $15 glasses of wine to $5,000 suits to $3 million condos. They're loud and proud, and they've taken Boston from the Brahmins. Is this what it means to be a world-class city?
By Kris Frieswick | May 14, 2006 The Boston Globe It's Wednesday night at 28 Degrees, and every soft leather banquette in the place is taken. Outside on Appleton Street, valets sprint back and forth to keep up with the double-parked Jaguar sedans, Mercedes SUVs, and Bentley coupes. Weekends bring out the birthday-and-anniversary crowd, but Wednesdays at 28 are for locals: entrepreneurs, philanthropists, designers, developers, gay, straight, young, and old, bound together by a shared abundance of good looks, a general lack of body fat -- and piles of money. Chloe blouses, Manolo Blahnik pumps, and Paul Smith stripes swirl as the staff delivers $15 glasses of wine and $30 steaks. The room is dimly lit, but it's easy to see that it's packed with the faces of the new rich. You should expect to see a lot more of them in the future. Among the 1.4 million households in the Boston metropolitan area, nearly 52,000 had at least $1 million in assets in 2004, not including primary residences or 401(k) accounts -- up 8 percent from the year before. Claritas, the San Diego-based research firm that counted all that money, predicts that the proportion of millionaires will jump by another 50 percent by 2009. In the next five years, households earning more than $150,000 annually will be the fastest growing income group in Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, and Middlesex counties, according to estimates from Wisconsin-based Third Wave Research, just one of the many wealth- and trend-tracking firms that study this desirable demographic for the companies lining up to market goods and services to that target. They're a spendy lot, these new millionaires, choosing to wear their wealth in highly visible ways and eschewing the conservative style associated with those old-money trendsetters, the Boston Brahmins, whose idea of high fashion is dusting off granddad's tuxedo (it's still in a closet somewhere) or breaking out the family pearls. Boston's wealthy are part of a spending frenzy that is sweeping the nation as a whole, but according to the 2005 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, the rate at which Boston-area families with an annual income over $200,000 are consuming luxury goods -- watches, fashion, furniture, and luggage -- is increasing faster than the national average for the same income group. Take, for example, the new Vertu cellphones. Handmade in England of a superlight, NASA-tested metal alloy, the phones have rubies embedded under the keys and a button that connects directly to a concierge. Prices start at $4,900. Their popularity surprises even those who make a living selling high-priced baubles. ... http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/05/14/make_way_for_millionaires/ Spending on status symbols http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Graphic/2006/05/11/1147378681_2333.gif Markers of wealth, 1890s and 2000s http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Graphic/2006/05/11/1147378681_4240.gif Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list medianews@twiar.org To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
