How to meet and marry a billionaire

Join the leisure class

Don't despair if your job takes you no closer to wealth than the dollar store. There are plenty of other activities that the resolute billionaire hunter can pursue to mix with the excessively prosperous during evenings or on weekends.

Move close to where they live. "You need to move into a rich environment," says Ginie Sayles, a Houston marital consultant and author of How to Marry the Rich. "If you want to be rich, you must live where the rich live, even if it's in an attic."

She claims that no matter what your budget, you can find a hidey-hole "within 16 blocks of the big money."

By hanging out in a ritzy neighborhood, you'll get comfortable with wealthy people and attuned to what they like. And you'll greatly increase your chances of running into a billionaire at, say, the local Starbucks.

Get thee to a gallery. Billionaires' expansive estates, urban pieds-à-terre and quaint 30,000-square-foot country homes confront them with the task of covering vast stretches of empty walls and filling echoing foyers with something. That means they are constantly on the prowl for paintings, sculptures and other objets d'art that will do the job. So prowl where they prowl.

For starters, cultivate a taste for museums and become a member, not a visitor. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, for example, you can become a supporting member for $250 a year. That entitles you to attend hosted exhibition previews and receptions where you can elbow your way into the elite.

If you're willing to go without dinner for a few months, invest in a $1,500 membership in the Artist's Circle, which provides much greater mingling opportunities, including evening receptions, private viewings for major exhibitions and priority invitations to special events such as the biennial art auction.

Christopher London, editor of the website ManhattanSociety.com, which covers cultural and philanthropic events in New York City, recommends that you attend as many gallery openings as possible.

"A chance encounter could easily lead to dinner," he says.

Every major city has a Web site that lists openings. For instance, if you visit ArtSceneCal.com, which covers galleries in Southern California, you'd find that you could view a new artist almost any night of the week. Better yet, you'll avoid another Chinese takeout dinner by scarfing the wine and hors d'oeuvres that galleries serve to ease buyers' grip on their wallets.

Show them the Monet. If you can't tell the difference between Jasper Johns and Johns Hopkins, study up so you can converse. It doesn't matter what you say specifically as long as you sound knowledgeable.

Even though he collected Impressionist works, hedge fund biggie Ken Griffin ($1.7 billion) didn't get mad when his date, Anne Dias, dismissed the movement as something she'd outgrown. Instead, he married her.

Money Magazine suggests that you specialize in the eras that interest the greatest number of billionaires. For example, Milt Esterow, editor and publisher of ARTnews, counsels that you focus on modern (late 19th century to 1970 or so) and contemporary art (post-1970), which are what le tout billionairage have been buying. Indeed, 85% of ARTnews' annual list of the 200 top collectors listed those two periods among their specialties.

Change the world

Getting and spending might be enough to fill your life with satisfaction, but for those who are loaded, there's a greater joy - and an even bigger tax deduction: giving money to others.

What other tasteful way is there to prove that you are truly a moneybags than to fork over a few mil to the Nature Conservancy, your alma mater or the hospital that performed Granny's hip replacement?

Look for good benefits. The fervor to give fuels an endless round of charity balls, silent auctions and golf tournaments in every town. There aggressive overachievers compete with one another to donate the most in what Milton Pedraza, head of the Luxury Institute, a market research company that studies the wealthy, calls the "alms race."

Now thanks to the Internet, you can ferret out those shindigs. Just type "charity events" and your city's name into a search engine and press "Go."

Not all charities are created equal in the hearts and wallets of the superrich. To figure out which nonprofits are most likely to put you in touch with people of ultrahigh net worth, peruse the Chronicle of Philanthropy to see what causes top givers favor.

You would learn, for example, that Veronica Atkins, widow of low-carb diet guru Robert, has a $400 million fortune to share. Her philanthropic cause: obesity research (duh). She is bound to visit - even be honored by - the hospitals and universities to which she has given dough.

Cultivate dowagers. In some cities there's an unspoken hierarchy of charities, says Richard Conniff. Newcomers to Palm Beach usually join the Opera Guild, which, he says, accepts anybody whose check doesn't bounce.

But it may take a few years to learn that the Preservation Foundation and the Rehabilitation Center for Children and Adults are considered the most prestigious and are more likely to win you invitations to private parties. Study the society pages and ask around to learn which charities are best for your purpose.

Shelby Hodge, society columnist for the Houston Chronicle, likes the American Heart Association and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's Board of Visitors, among other charities.

She recommends that you attend the annual gala or dinner. That usually costs about $1,000, but doing so is worthwhile. Even if you wind up seated with a group of dowagers instead of wealthy bachelors, Hodge says, "those women can be your entry point."

There's no way the average Joe or Jane can cough up $1,000 every night or even every week, but Christopher London suggests that you can cut your costs by as much as 75% if you attend the so-called junior events - cocktail parties and dances that occur before and after the big charity dinner. Don't let the word junior put you off; most who attend are in their late thirties and forties, London says.

Become a charity yourself. Usually you can just buy a ticket - after all, it is a benefit. But some events admit only those with invitations. A person of your humble means is not likely to be included unless you are a regular volunteer -"but not stuffing envelopes," says Hodge.

Instead, she advises, you should set your sights on more highfalutin activities that will vault you into the upper echelons of the philanthropy - say, fund raising. Unfortunately, to sit on a committee you may have to donate $10,000 or so to the cause.

Another possibility: Become a grantee yourself. Pedraza suggests that you develop your own do-gooder project, such as a documentary on the environment, and take it around to charities, foundations and arts councils that might fund it. You may not meet a billionaire, but who knows, maybe you'll become the next Al Gore.

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