It's tough living up to a rich image

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." Scott Fitzgerald might have struck one nail on its head with that observation back in the Roaring Twenties. But Ernest Hemingway really drove it home with the response: "Yes, they have more money."

But is being rich expensive? It depends on what one means by "rich". Take a look around Johannesburg - mansions, expensive cars, designer labels, all the accoutrements, glitz and bling some believe prove that one has "arrived". Don't forget, this is Jo'burg - the town where you see the assets but where the liabilities are hidden.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart and one of America's richest men, never built a mansion and would drive around his Arkansas home town in a battered pick-up truck with huntin' dawgs in the back. Asked why he did not have a fancy car, he famously replied that he could not carry his dogs around in the back of a Rolls Royce.

But that is in America, where financial success does not have to depend on buying political favour. Here in SA it can be different. About 60 years ago, for example, it helped to be a member of the Broederbond and fund the party when you were busy creating a tobacco and liquor empire. Once you were in, you were in for life.

Does the same apply today? Once you are in the billionaire ranks, forking out half a million to hob nob over dinner with Jacob Zuma might seem akin to an insurance policy. The same goes for providing the politically powerful or their nearest and dearest with the wherewithal to live the high life.

Are the people who count impressed by a Montblanc fountain pen or a Cartier Tank watch? Not really. You might impress someone lower down the food chain, but you will not be impressing any of the Rothschilds. No matter what the ads might have us believe, essentially they are mass-marketed, airport goods.

If you really have to have one, pay less than £200 for the pen in Heathrow's Duty Free against R3500 in Sandton, or $3500 for the watch in Dubai.

You can pick up Johnnie Walker Blue Label at R1750 a bottle. When you are drinking in a more intimate environment you might prefer Louis Roederer Cristal, at R3500 a bottle or indulge in a bottle of 50-year-old Glenfiddich for R150000.

Getting to the office from the Sandhurst or Bishopscourt mansion, a barely used Ferrari F430 F1 Spyder will set you back R3-million. There's no space for the chauffeur, so you will need a Bentley for when you need to get home after a night drinking - a scarcely-used Continental can be picked up for less than R3-million.

But if you are really feeling the financial squeeze, lease the darned things - no-one except your bank managers need know that you do not own them. Better still, put them all through on the company's account.

You need cash flow to cover top boarding school Michaelhouse - a couple of hundred thou a year all-in for each boy.

Then, in the Christmas holidays, there is a fortnight's skiing at Courchevel - R100000 to rent a self-catering chalet. And that is before you have flown there, popped a morsel into your mouth or paid the oh-so-charming ski instructor.

You are never going to make money out of that wine farm you bought for possible tax breaks, and that house in Plet that cost a fortune to buy and more to run is empty most of the year.

It is tough being rich and living up to the image.

Money, they say, does not buy you happiness. But it can allow you to be miserable in comfort.

And when you have had enough of piling up the cash, do a Bill Gates and give it all away for good works. If you leave it to the kids, chances are they will just fritter it all away.