I’ll Pass on the €600,000 Watch (But I Will Take the Beach House)

A few years ago I read Crying in H Mart and followed that up by watching some interviews with the author, Michelle Zauner. A major theme of this memoir is the death of Zauner’s mother (spoiler alert). One interview question stood out to me: What do you think your Mom would think of all of this [professional success] if she were still alive?

Without missing a beat, Zauner replied: I think she’d ask…Where’s my bag?

As in, if you, my daughter, have been successful, I want a luxury bag as a tangible representation of that success.

And that got me thinking – I would never, ever want to spend my money on a designer purse. A nice purse is one thing (though even that would be a stretch for me), but a “designer” purse holds zero appeal.

A few weeks ago I read a section in Wired magazine devoted to watches.

Here are a few highlights:

• The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ulta COSC – €600,000.

• The Speedmaster Flight Qualified – only available for purchase by military pilots. Darn, I’m out of luck on that one.

• The “steal of a deal” IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar priced at only €175,000. This watch can keep accurate track of dates for 400 consecutive years. (Not sure who’s going to still be around to verify this claim.) Even more impressive is the lunar tracking – it’s accurate for 45 million years, deviating by one day in that time as “a train of wheels translates the lunar cycle of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.8749 seconds.” Developers used computer simulations to whittle down 22 trillion combinations of gear sizes, teeth counts, and alignments.

Ahem. Alrighty then.

Obviously, we’re all different. For some, a designer bag might be a much-loved addition to their wardrobe; for others, it could be a fancy watch. But not me!

Your turn.

• What high-end luxury doesn’t hold any appeal for you in some theoretical windfall that must be spent on superfluous items (e.g. you can’t donate the money to charitable organizations or pop it into an investment account).
• What can you see yourself spending excessive amounts of money on? I think I’d choose property. A beach-front villa somewhere warm, perhaps?

Header photo by Yash Parashar on Unsplash