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Comment by yoodenvranx | Hacker News Reader

> If I were rich, I would have a permanent secretary.

If I ever play and win the lottery this is the one thing I would spent big money on. No expensive cars, no expensive wine, just a person which takes care of everything.

Need a new insurance for the car? Tell the secretary to do it. Car is broken? Tell the secretary to take care of it. Need a hotel? Tell the personal secretary to book one. Phone broken? Just send an email "Please order me a Samsung S8" and it will magically appear the next day. Don't like it? Just tell them to send it back.

This would solve 95% of my daily struggles and it would improve the quality of my life way more than any expensive yacht or car could ever do.

In fact if you have a group of half a dozen people who each pay a few hundred $ a month you could almost employ one person who takes care of such stuff even as a not-so-rich person.

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> if you have a group of half a dozen people who each pay a few hundred $ a month you could almost employ one person who takes care of such stuff

You could move to Singapore, where a full-time (24x6) "domestic helper" costs about 400 USD per month. They'll cook meals for you, help care for your kids, buy groceries, do laundry, etc. Some people I know say they'd never move back to the US because of this.

For comparison, that cost is roughly 15-20% of typical rent.

The number of people I know who would trust their domestic helper to do the kind of things the OP mentions is pretty low. They're maids, not PAs, and they are not generally here because of their outstanding educational attainment and bright career prospects back home. Most of them can hardly speak English.

On the other hand, I've known a few young people in Indonesia and the like who really would make excellent PAs of the kind the OP desires, and their salaries are not much more. We're talking university graduate, excellent English and phone manners, and the kind of proactive dedication to a task that one greatly desires in an employee - $500/m or less. I agree, there could be a market.

There's a shared service a bit like that that I've seen discussed here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10846540

It's gone from $100/hr to $.59/min ($35/hr) since then. Suddenly I'm much more interested...

They have some specials sometimes too. I've used it for a few tasks I seriously didn't want to do that involved calling multiple places.

> Just send an email

Are you going to send it yourself, and miss out on the archetypal secretarial duty of dictation?

That's actually what a lot of rich people do (and it makes the company I work for a boatload of money).

Concierge/Valet services seem to be very valued by rich people (and I guess it would be a hard habit to wean off).

There's definitely work being done on replacing some of that with AI (and it's hard, as rich people want GOOD service).

I think that’s basically what this company does (though I haven’t used them): https://www.zirtual.com/plans-pricing

In general this doesn't work out as well as you would hope. In many cases (financial, medical, legal) another person can't trivially act as your agent. (I.E. your secretary can't do it for you)

I think the very wealthy handle this via specialists with specific licensing, but I personally had no luck going the virtual assistant route.

Is that true even with a power of attorney?

Do you really want to grant an app power of attorney over you? That's like adding yourself as a co-signer of a loan. If they mess something up, it's your problem and "they should have know I didn't want that" isn't usually considered a valid reason to undo anything.

A secretary hired in the us is expensive. A virtual personal assistant in India (which is the same thing, except you never meet in person) is not.

As long as nothing you want to do requires any financial transactions or otherwise has legal ramifications, sure.

But hiring someone you’ve never met in person to deal with money or legally binding documents is a recipe for getting your assets stolen or worse.

Credit card concierge services might fit the bill here for some of these things.

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