Money You Can See
In 1899, the economist Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" to describe wealthy people spending mostly to be seen spending. The idea has aged a little too well. These days you don't need to be rich to play along, because a lot of the signals can be leased or put on a payment plan. Some of the purchases below are harmless fun, and a few can wreck a budget for years once the payments outlast the thrill. Here's 20 things people buy just to convince others they have money.
1. The Leased Luxury Sedan
A lease lets you drive a German luxury sedan for a monthly payment and hand the keys back when the three years are up. The badge on the hood does most of the work, and the mileage cap written into most leases keeps the car from going very far. Nobody at the valet stand asks who holds the title.
2. Logo Belts
The interlocking G on a Gucci belt sits right at your waist, where it's hard to miss. It costs several hundred dollars and holds up your pants about as well as a $20 belt from Target. It usually gets paired with a T-shirt tucked in just enough to show off the whole buckle.
3. Steel Sports Watches
For a stretch in 2021 and 2022, steel Rolex sports models sold on the resale market for well above their store price. Getting one at retail usually meant building a purchase history with a dealer and then waiting, sometimes for years. The watch told everyone you had the patience or the connections to get one, and resale prices have cooled off since.
4. Birkin Bags
Hermès doesn't sell a Birkin to just anyone who walks in with the money. A 2024 lawsuit filed in California accused the company of steering Birkins to shoppers who had already spent heavily on its other products. The bags start above $10,000 at retail, and popular colors and leathers resell for far more.
Filip Rankovic Grobgaard on Pexels
5. Bottle Service
The bottle arrives with a sparkler stuck in the neck and a small parade of servers, so the whole room turns to look at your table. Clubs charge many times the store price for the same vodka. The table minimum, which can run into the thousands at big Las Vegas clubs, is the real price of admission.
6. Fake Private Jets
In Los Angeles, you can rent a photo studio built to look like the cabin of a private jet, complete with leather seats and oval windows. It never leaves the ground. Influencers book it by the hour for pictures that look like they were taken on the way to Aspen.
7. Rented Lamborghinis
Rental companies in Miami and Los Angeles will hand over a Lamborghini for a few hours, long enough to park it somewhere with good light. Most of that time goes to posing next to it with the doors up. Day rates can top $1,000, and the security deposit is often several times that, held on a credit card until the car comes back clean.
8. Arctic Parkas in Mild Cities
Canada Goose built its reputation on a parka designed for scientists at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The same style of coat now shows up on sidewalks in cities where winter barely dips below freezing, with the round patch on the sleeve doing the talking. The heaviest models cost well over $1,000 for a coat that rarely gets zipped all the way up.
9. Monogrammed Luggage
Louis Vuitton started out making trunks in Paris in 1854. Today a Keepall slung over one shoulder can be spotted from across an airport terminal. The brown monogram canvas is the whole appeal, and it scuffs on a baggage cart like any other bag.
American Green Travel on Unsplash
10. Borrowed Badges
An AMG badge for the back of a Mercedes costs a few dollars online. Some owners stick one on a base-model sedan and count on strangers not knowing the difference. Others swap the number on the trunk lid too, so a C300 reads like a C63 at a glance, right up until the light turns green.
11. Luxury on Installments
Buy now, pay later apps like Klarna and Afterpay split a purchase into four payments, and many designer sites offer them at checkout. A $1,200 bag feels a lot more reachable at $300 every two weeks, at least until a missed payment starts the late fees.
12. Metal Credit Cards
The American Express Platinum Card is made of metal, and it lands on a restaurant table with a heavy clunk. That sound is part of what people pay for with an annual fee in the hundreds of dollars. Above it sits the Centurion card, the black one, which is available by invitation only.
13. The New Phone Color
When Apple released the iPhone 17 Pro in 2025, its bright orange finish became an easy way to show which model you had, since the cheaper phones didn't come in that color. A clear case keeps the orange visible, and some buyers skipped a case entirely. The standard iPhone 17 came in softer shades like lavender and sage.
14. A $20 Smoothie
Erewhon, the Los Angeles grocery chain, turned smoothies into a status item through celebrity collaborations like Hailey Bieber's Strawberry Glaze. Depending on the flavor, one cup runs close to $20, and it ends up in a lot of photos held up next to someone's face.
15. Private Club Memberships
Soho House charges yearly dues for access to its private houses around the world, and applicants usually need existing members to vouch for them. A rooftop pool photo lets everyone know you made the cut. Many of the houses ask members not to take photos inside, a rule that doesn't stop everyone.
16. Bigger Stones
Lab-grown diamonds have gotten cheap enough that a two-carat stone costs a fraction of what a mined one that size would. They're chemically the same as mined diamonds, so from across a dinner table nobody can tell which is which. Mined diamond prices have slipped too, partly because of the competition.
17. Designer Shopping Bags
Designer shopping bags sell online for real money, especially the orange Hermès ones with the tissue paper still inside. People carry them as totes or leave them on the back seat where a passenger will notice. Tiffany's robin's-egg blue bags are a common listing too, usually with the white ribbon.
18. Resale Sneakers
A limited-run pair of Jordans can resell for several times its retail price on sites like StockX and GOAT, sometimes within hours of release. Wearing them outside matters, and so does being able to name what they cost. Serious collectors buy a second pair to keep unworn in the box, which sneaker people call deadstock.
19. Superfakes
Counterfeit handbags have gotten good enough that sellers call the best ones superfakes, copying the stitching and hardware closely enough to pass a quick glance. Customs officers still seize shipments of them at the border, and luxury brands regularly take the sellers to court.
20. Business Class Selfies
A photo of a lie-flat seat and a glass of champagne tends to get posted before the plane even leaves the gate. Some of those seats were paid for with credit card points saved up over years, and a few were last-minute upgrades bought at the check-in kiosk. Airport lounges get the same treatment, with the lounge's name visible somewhere in the frame.
