Life of luxury

Julius Baer has recently expanded its coverage of the luxury goods/services field to track the costs high net worth individuals face. In local currency terms, the average price rise for the Tokyo subset of the Julius Baer Lifestyle Index rose 1.6 per cent this year, while the subsets for Singapore and Hong Kong have fallen. Luxury property prices have risen by 11 per cent since 2013, but fell 15 per cent in Hong Kong, for example.

Among other details, the index shows that education-related components, such as tuition fees at university and boarding school fees, have consistently shown double-digit rises since 2011.