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While a lot of us are forced to look inwards and practice self-restraint because of lockdown restrictions and COVID-19 anxiety, the world’s wealthiest are getting richer and going bigger.

Their excess cash is being thrown at incredible things, like boats, planes, and treehouses, that we can only dream of.

And while tons of well-to-dos, like Jeff Bezos, were joining the yacht party – the one where pent-up travel desire and unspent money led to a massive yacht industry surge – others were taking to the skies.

The hunger for private jets at the moment is ferocious, said bankers at last week’s Corporate Jet Investor conference, reports Yahoo! Finance.

Buyers have scooped up so many of the good, used planes out there that they’re now getting on waiting lists to purchase new jets:

“There’s been quite a party in the private aviation business in the last 18 months,” Jim Simpson, a senior managing director at First Republic Bank who’s in charge of aircraft and yacht financing, said Thursday.

“We had a fabulous year.”

In fact, Ford von Weise, who heads global aircraft finance at the lender’s private bank, often finds himself needing to talk some Citigroup Inc., clients out of taking the plunge of buying a private jet.

They’re just so flush with cash, they barely know what to do with themselves:

“It’s incumbent upon us — they’re good clients — to convince them actually to not buy the airplane,” von Weise said.

“I did that about a month ago and somebody called me up from the bank and said, ‘The client just wanted to let you know, thank you, you were right, and they’re very appreciative of you scaring them away.’”

Of course, as we know from all the eye-watering hidden costs of owning a superyacht, there’s always more to the equation than just the initial buying price.

Candice Nakagawa, a senior wealth adviser at MUFG Union Bank, said wealthy folk also have to take into account the cost of maintenance and upkeep beyond the purchase price.

But plane splurges are still rife:

“They’re itching to get out there. They’ve got excess cash. They have pent-up demand,” she said.

“They want to buy something neat, sexy, and that typically is a jet or a yacht.”

Must. Be. Nice.

Those in the private aircraft business are wary of the jet bubble that is forming because we all know what happens to a bubble that grows too big, too fast.

First Republic’s Simpson said he has been through several boom-and-bust cycles in the private aviation business, and the market froth concerns him (his own comment, not that of his company):

“I’m glad the business is good right now,” he said. “But, again, I’m a little like, ‘Hmmm, is this going to continue?’”

Only time will tell…

[source:yahoo!finance]