Rising Limousine, Caviar Costs : Magazine for Rich to Publish a ‘Cost of Living Well’ Index

There is the cost of living, and then there is the cost of living well . You know, the annoyance when the price of a chauffeured limousine rises $4 to $41 an hour, or the relief that Beluga caviar is still just $35 an ounce.

The rich may be different, but they too worry about inflation, albeit on a different scale, claims Washington Dossier magazine, which is beginning a Cost of Living Well Index in its November issue.

“They don’t want to be taken advantage of,” Dossier publisher David Adler says of his wealthy readers. “They’re still educated consumers and they pride themselves on that. One of the reasons wealthy people have money is because they watched their pennies.”

Hardly a Matter of Pennies

The items on the Dossier index, however, are hardly a matter of pennies: French truffles, still $30 an ounce; Roederer Cristal champagne, up $6 from September to $56 a bottle; the price of a Concorde ticket from Washington to London, no change at $2,423, and a room on the French Riviera at the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferrat, up $15, to $170 a night.

Washington Dossier, which each month chronicles the comings and goings of the capital’s social elite, concluded on the basis of 20 expensive items that the Cost of Living Well Index rose 0.2% from September to October.

Who would be interested in the month-to-month price changes in these luxury items? Adler thinks his upscale readers would. A recent survey of Dossier’s 38,000 readers showed an average household income of $115,685 per year and an average net worth of $477,038. The average reader is 48.6 years old, owns two homes, drinks scotch or wine and eats dinner out half the time.

Adler and a friend in public relations conceived the idea over drinks--gin and tonic--at an upscale Washington restaurant, the Old Ebbitt Bar & Grill.

“We can get away with being elitist because our audience is very upscale and that’s the way Washington is,” he said.