Vampires Are Rich

What is a budget? A miserable little pile of secrets! (Image by Lo0bo0)

"The luxury with which this Vorador surrounded himself was impressive. His wealth would shame the haughty nobles of my former court. That this vulgar display of fortune remained undisturbed was a testament of fear's dominion over greed."

— Kain, about Vorador living in a very luxurious mansion, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

In most vampire fiction, vampires tend to be filthy rich or at least comfortably loaded. It's presumed that over the years they've managed to save/squirrel away money so that they can have a comfortable lifestyle, plenty of security so nobody comes in and stakes them in their sleep, and a fabulous wardrobe. Some certainly look like the Idle Rich aristocrat, others may be Non-Idle Rich and manage to be financially enterprising. Generally justified in that the vamp is hundreds of years old, and thus has had plenty of time to accrue his wealth (and invest it via The Slow Path version of a Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit). Being technically dead also saves several bills, as there's no need to buy food, water, health insurance, you get the idea.

Tropologically, it's probably to do with vampires being decadent aristocrats going back to at least Lord Ruthven. Both tropes play on the symbolic connection between literal blood-sucking and the parasitic way of life of a real-life idle class which does not support itself by its own efforts, but by exploiting other people.

Ever since Anne Rice repopularized them, vampires are more likely to play with this in modern stories. They might be Impoverished Patricians struggling to adapt to the modern age (again paralleling history) and so Reduced To Rat Burgers. On the other hand, they could be an otherwise Average Joe working nights at the Quik-E-Mart in order to pay for a dark enough apartment to sleep in.

Undead Tax Exemption may factor in here.

See also Vampires Own Night Clubs. If they eat both flesh and blood, they’re also High-Class Cannibals. Contrast Working-Class Werewolves.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Dance in the Vampire Bund the Tepes vampire clan paid off the entire national debt of Japan as part of the deal that got the Bund, a politically autonomous refuge for vampires, set up, and they still have enough funds to operate the place, complete with a private army for security. Admittedly, the Tepes happen to be the royal family, and not all vampires are so affluent. It also took Mina a long time to lay the groundwork.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio Brando seemed to have accumulated quite a fortune by the time he reentered the story in Stardust Crusaders, being able to pay his followers in gold and having an impressive, expensive-looking wardrobe and giant mansion.
• in Ms. Vampire Who Lives in My Neighborhood, Sophie Twilight is at least well-off enough to live in a Big Fancy House, possess a large library, indulge in otaku interests on her laptop, and regularly order shipments of blood on the internet.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has Evangeline A.K. McDowell, who was from a noble family even before she turned into a vampire and uses her extensive magic power and connections to maintain her wealth in undeath.

Comic Books

• The Carpathian/European vampires from American Vampire represent old European nobility and thus are loaded. So much that in the miniseries Survival Of the Fittest they're a major financier of the Third Reich as they are big on racial purity as well.
• Life Sucks brings this up, then explicitly rejects it as unrealistic. Vampire Vannabe Rosa imagines a society of rich and cultured vampires; real vampire Dave is stuck working night shifts at a convenience store, and most of the vampires around him are hardly doing better.
• Played for laughs in Mini Monsters, with the Von Piro family in this trope.
• Raptors: Most of vampirekind are running The Masquerade to keep humanity around as lifestock, and are primarily composed of old Spanish nobility.
• In Runaways, Toph says he made a small fortune during the Great Depression, but lost it all when the dot-com bubble burst. His love for an expensive lifestyle means that he and the two vampires he embraced spend their nights holding up liquor and convenience stores every night.

Film

• Byzantium: Averted with the two protagonists - a mother and daughter who've been living mostly as transients for almost 200 years, taking odd jobs, doing sex work, conning hapless men into funding and sheltering them, and often still living near the poverty line. But, this is all due to being pariahs among the wealthy, misogynistic vampire nobles, who prefer to turn blue-blooded men only, and refuse to help or mentor two female vamps of "low" birth.
• Count Yorga: Never stated in film but it's implied Yorga is pretty wealthy through his decades of undeath. In the first film, he states he comes from a country in Bulgaria, buys a lavish manor on the outskirts of Los Angeles and even fashion his cellar like a throne room of a castle where he has a throne with his family crest over it and where his brides sleep. In the sequel, he likewise buys a manor, though not quite a big as the first movie's (then again these films are unconnected) its more then spacious enough to include a abandoned graveyard where he buried most of his female victims until purchasing the house, now give the brides their own room with coffins, a separate room for a witch like character to stay in, shudder doors that can open and close with buttons to trap his prey, a quicksand pit in the back of the house to get rid of victims he doesn't turn and odd medieval trinkets around the house as well.
• Played with in Dark Shadows. The main vampire's family has fallen on hard times, but when he is released, he shows his family the enormous wealth still hidden in the house.
• The Lair of the White Worm features Lady Marsh who, as the name implies, is a noblewoman that often ventures around the world... and yes, she's a vampire to boot.
• Inverted in Near Dark, in which the vampires not only aren't rich, but are essentially penniless drifters who steal as well as kill to survive.
• Only Lovers Left Alive's Adam and Eve are both rich enough to live alone without working, book first-class flights at the drop of a hat, and pay for any item they want(such as vintage guitars and stolen hospital blood) with big wads of bills. While Adam does put out records as a underground musician, he eschews credit for them and turns down paying gigs so as to remain anonymous(though he may have earned money from them in decades past). Eve meanwhile just spends her days lounging around reading with a box full of money and credit cards in her home.
  • Adam has also disconnected his house from the city energy grid, powering both it and his custom car with Nikola Tesla-inspired equipment that collects free electrical charge from the air - so he's at least saving plenty of dough on gas and utilities there too.
  • Seemingly averted with Eve's younger sister Ava, who shows up to leech off of the main couple - apparently not for the first time, either.
• Underworld (2003): The members of Kraven's vampire clan live in a gigantic mansion, throw extravagant balls and wear gorgeous costumes.
• In Monster Family, Dracula has been updated to be more high-tech, but he's still loaded. On top of an enormous castle full of goodies like a giant pipe organ and a yards-long fireplace, he has his own custom jet, a jetpack, and enough resources to develop a doomsday device and launch it into the sun.
• Played with in He Never Died: Jack's amassed a pretty substantial treasure trove throughout his extremely long life, not only of currency old and new but also of antique items which, were he inclined to sell, he could probably make millions off of. However, having done literally everything anyone could ever think of during that time, Jack is completely jaded and has zero concern for wealth or extravagance by the time of the film. Instead, he lives in a very modest apartment in a run-down neighborhood and purchases only what is necessary to survive (i.e. human flesh and blood) and avoid detection (and attend bingo).
• We Are the Night: The women lead a very wealthy lifestyle. They live in a high-end hotel suite, can afford frequent dinners at fancy restaurants and shopping sprees, and own several expensive cars (though at least one of the cars was stolen), including customized "safe cars" with heavily tinted glass windows to protect them from sunlight.
• Kiss of the Damned: Those in the Connecticut community are all dressed very well and show every sign of being high society types. Maia however is an exception, as she lethally feeds on humans rather than follow their moral Vegetarian Vampire ways, which necessitates living in a more insecure position.
• Once Bitten: The Countess lives in a lavish mansion with a huge closet full of expensive clothes and a faithful chauffeur/butler who waits on her every need.
• Inverted in Shadow of the Vampire where Schreck is a lonely scavenger squatting in a ruined castle and feeding on bats. Reading Dracula to study for his role actually saddens him, as he realises how far he's fallen from when he had armies and servants at his beck and call.
• The Invitation (2022): Walter Deville is a fabulously wealthy aristocrat, while the families who serve under him, though not as wealthy, certainly have wealth as well. All turn out to be vampires.
• BloodRayne: Elrich, Leonid and especially Kagan are vampires powerful enough to all live in castles, with a lot of human servants. Kagan's is the most massive, with a small army of human soldiers, and his castle is shown to have every finery inside.
• Theresa & Allison: Powerful ones like Paisley, Lorena and Sakkara are all quite wealthy. In the latter two cases they're older, so they had time to accumulate possessions. Paisley however was rich already before turning.

Literature

• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Henry Sturges points out in the short term one can rapidly accrue wealth if one takes the time to loot the corpse of your victim. The rest is investments.
• Anita Blake: The vampires vary in this. Jean-Claude is a very enterprising vampire and has businesses all over town, employing various werewolves and vampires in his various clubs, especially at a strip club he often emcees personally.
  • While an uncommon topic in the series, the books have shown that becoming a vampire is a dubious economic decision. Not only does it limit your job options but as most vampires do not become incredibly attractive and desirable, staying unlive usually means paying the living for more than they pay for their own food.
• In Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters, Genevieve considers the trope to be broadly accurate, but she herself is an exception; one of the very few elders who still has to work for a living.
• Blood Books (and the TV adaptation Blood Ties (2007)): Henry Fitzroy is an aversion: he writes for a living. There's a Lampshade Hanging in the first book where Vicki asks why he has to work, and he says something like, "Oh, sure, I could have bought IBM for pennies back in nineteen-oh-something, but who knew? I'm a vampire, not clairvoyant." He also points out that there is a reason for a high percentage of vampires being aristocracy. A mausoleum is much easier to break out of then a coffin under six feet of dirt. A inversion is also featured; Fitzroy lived a life of luxury before he became a vampire.
• Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain is incredibly rich, largely because he learned the alchemical secrets of how to make gold and jewels on demand. Over the course of his long existence, he's also found that rich foreigners make easy targets for greedy governments and thieves, and has learned the wisdom of keeping investments in different locations and under different names. He used shell companies centuries ago, but has using them more and more often recently, along with using attorneys and blind trusts.
• Some Discworld vampires.
  • Agnes's first impression of Count Magpyr in Carpe Jugulum is that he's the sort of nobleman who never, ever worries about money. Lady Margolotta is also very well off.
  Agnes: "Vampires have a lot of cash, do they?"
  Vlad: "Well, the family has always owned land. The money mounts up, you know. Over the centuries. And obviously we've not enjoyed a particularly active social life."
  Agnes: "Or spent much on food."
  • Otto Chriek works for the newspaper; though it's possible he only does so to indulge his one great passion, photography.
  • The very middle-class greengrocer Arthur Winkings, Count Notfaroutoe and his Vampire Vannabe wife Doreen, whose determined effort to keep up appearances results in them having the only terraced house with a crypt and a moat. (Considering he was a greengrocer first, and became a vampire after receiving a letter from a lawyer....)
  • There's a nameless vampire in Feet of Clay who works in such places as the holy-water section of a religious supply store.
• In the Dr. Greta Helsing series, both Ruthven and Varney are incredibly wealthy.
  Very long life and wise investments tended to go together.
• Dracula by Bram Stoker: Count Dracula is the go-to example. Dracula lives in a big castle and summons Jonathan Harker to Transylvania to help him buy land in England. Harker notes that Dracula doesn't have any servants, but we later find out that it's because no local will come near the place. Dracula's continuing source of income seems to be buried treasure that is marked by Will-o'-the-Wisps one night out of the year.
• In The Dresden Files universe, the members of the White and Red Vampire Courts we have seen tend to be extremely wealthy. It may just be that the characters that Harry meets are either ranking members of the vampire aristocracy, or are the kind who can be promoted to such heights. In Changes, Harry sees a large number Red Court Vampires who have given into their bloodlust, and they're noted as only kept around to be used as cannon fodder.
  • Justified for the White Court, in that they're a (very) extended family, and when you're able and willing to Mind Rape normals into doing your bidding, it's not exactly hard to get rich, after which money begets money and it all stays in the family. The Raith clan, for example, owns the pornography business. All of it.
• The short story The Extinction Parade by Max Brooks features rich, aristocratic vampires battling a Zombie Apocalypse to save their food source. Brooks has stated that he sees vampires as the personification of privilege and aristocracy, and used this as a metaphor for the reactions of the world (particularly the comfortable developed world) to crises like Global Warming and resource shortages; in other words, World War Z with vampires in place of the United States.
  • In the comic book adaptation, the vampires' wealth is explained by use of human proxies to put a living human face on their finances and cover up their misdeeds, with most of them recruited through promises of wealth or eternal life, or simple intimidation. The narrator and her partner Laila have one that they call Willem, whose entire family has served them this way for several generations.
  • The comic also combines this trope with a streak of populist anti-elitism, with the narrator describing vampires as parasites who contributed nothing to society while exploiting its weakest and most vulnerable members. "Willem" also snaps and kills himself over his poor treatment by his vampire masters, telling them in his final words that they should learn how to take care of themselves for once. In addition, even before the Zombie Apocalypse the growth of the middle class was having the same effect on vampires that peak oil has on human society. Desperately poor people were the vampires' go-to source for sustenance, as they were the ones who, unlike the rich and the middle-class, wouldn't be missed by society at large, and as a result many vampires moved to Third World countries as the West grew more prosperous (and thus depleted of easily-accessible resources). The narrator laments the fact that vampires never bothered to learn how to sustain themselves on such a difficult food source rather than treating it as a mere sport for when killing slum dwellers was getting boring, wondering if more of them might have survived had they not grown lazy subsisting on the low-hanging fruit.
• Averted with Fred, The Vampire Accountant, at least with the titular protagonist. Fred is a mild-mannered CPA, who just continues doing what he knows after being embraced. Partly justified, as he was only bitten a year before the start of the novel. His sire thought Fred's reserved ways hid a deep resentment for the world, so he embraced him, hoping that Fred would unleash his pent-up rage on the unsuspecting city, turning it into a bloodbath. He was rather disappointed with Fred after coming back.
• Subverted in a (humorous) how-to book on how to be a vampire. It says that being a vampire doesn't make you rich, so it recommends ways of making money for which being a vampire is helpful: selling collectibles (objects that are cheap can become valuable when you sell them after decades or centuries), theft, being a con artist or cardsharp.
• De Quincey from The Infernal Devices, is known to throw absolutely lavish parties where they abuse mundanes.
• One of the Jason Wood short stories centers around Jason trying to help his vampire friend Verne Domingo create a socially acceptable explanation for why he is so rich - most of his fortune was acquired long before there were such things as banking laws and tax auditors, so now he needs a way to explain how he got all that cash if he wants to spend any of it. They eventually settle on dealing and collecting art/antiquities, which Verne already owns a considerable amount of.
• Both played straight and subverted in the Kitty Norville books, with the vampires in power being the wealthy sort and at least one caller of Kitty's being a Quik-E-Mart employee.
• The Laundry Files (by Charles Stross): In The Rhesus Chart, it's pointed out that any long-lived vampire has to be wealthy; they're essentially serial killers and only those with resources can afford to get away with murder over a long period, not to mention odd behaviour is more likely to be excused in the wealthy.
• In Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam, vampire Sebastien de Ulloa observes he has more money than he could ever spend. However, his lifestyle tends to upper middle class comfort more than complete luxury.
• Night Watch (Series): Mostly subverted in Sergey Lukyanenko's series. Since vampires are, basically, the lowest of the low in the hierarchy of the Others, their jobs in the Day Watch are limited to security guard duties. High Vampires fare a little better. Played slightly straight with Kostya Saushkin's father, who makes a decent living as an interior decorator (enough to put his son through medical school). Not so much in The Movie, where he's a poor butcher, who only has one pair of pants.
• Nightfall (Series): In Tristan’s backstory, Prince Vladimir is already rich and living like a nobleman. Myra guesses he steals money from his victims, but Tristan insists that Vladimir has never been a common thief.
• The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries and True Blood:
  • Eric is clearly the local entrepreneur and runs Fangtasia. And being the local sheriff means that he can force the local vampires to hang out in his bar regularly in order to entice the clientele.
  • There are plenty of middle class vampires. Bill Compton, for example, makes do with a rather old house that's in poor condition (at least before he became King of Louisiana, when his house got a very swank makeover). In the second or third book it's revealed that he owns a shopping complex, so he can't be that strapped for cash, but it's more like he's just discreet with his money. When he learns that the Bellefleur family home is in worse condition than his own, he quietly gives Caroline (one of his descendants) enough money to restore the house and then some. And as revealed in the epilogue of the books, he creates a line of video games designed for vampires, which is so successful that lands him on the books's version of the Fiction 500, he's able to buy Louisiana, and can afford to have his employees live on his estate.
  • Eddie lived in the suburbs like a normal person.
  • Subverted in True Blood with Sophie-Anne Leclerq, who despite being vampire royalty has been taxed by the IRS since coming out of the coffin for all the years that she paid no taxes, and resorts to selling "V" and even using lottery scratch cards to try to pay off her debts.
• In The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, James has $85,000 in cash that he carries with him, he mostly preys upon the poor Black kids in the Six Mile neighborhood because he knows that nobody will investigate deaths in the ghetto, and a key part of his M.O. is to exploit his image as a respectable Southern Gentleman to get the rich locals involved in a financial scheme with promises of enormous wealth before taking their money and walking away (in this case, a Villainous Gentrification project that he proceeds to sabotage).
• Sunshine: Despite their existence being illegal, vampires are estimated to control at least a fifth of the global economy. The Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire Constantine inherited a huge trove of priceless artifacts from his master and has added to his collection, though an existence outside mortal society gives him little use for his wealth.
• In Tentyrian Legacy, the Dark Coven and Tentyrian Coven are the two richest organizations in the world.
• The Twilight Saga: The Cullen family own their own island off the west coast of Brazil, and can apparently afford to purchase or build any number of honeymoon cottages, luxury cars, and gemstones. One of the vampires explicitly mentions that it's due to Alice's ability to read the future and the relevant impact it has on the stock market. Before Bella ever meets Edward, the first thing she notices is the incredibly expensive cars that they drive parked in the school parking lot.
• Unique has vampires literally creating corporate culture, as an old joke on humanity. Soulless entities influencing the world through employed minions? Nonhuman "citizens" given the same rights and privileges as a human being? Needless to say, the vampires have cash to burn when it comes to indulging their hobbies.
• Subverted in The United States of Monsters as well as played straight. Vampires are literally so rich they were able to bail out the US economy in 2008. However, it turns out that only a tiny fraction of vampires control 99% of the money. The rest of vampirekind is either middle-class or dirt poor like the protagonist.
• Vampire Academy:
  • Played straight by Moroi vampire royalty. This is never thoroughly explained, though it is hinted that some of them hold jobs in the human world. Earning their wealthy living. Averted in the case of working-class Moroi, who differ little from their human counterparts.
  • Played straight with Galina, a Strigoi vampire who led a criminal empire in Russia. She lived in luxury until Rose staked her.
  • Abe Mazur, a non-royal Moroi, is also comfortably wealthy, earning his wealth through illegal activities.
• The Vampire Chronicles.
  • Louis was a wealthy plantation owner as a mortal, and that wealth carried himself and Lestat through much of their world traveling adventures in Interview with a Vampire. In the present day he primarily haunts Louisiana and much less ostentatious.
  • Lestat is first introduced as a vagrant wastrel who latches himself onto Louis after turning him, using him for funds to fuel their travels, but in The Vampire Lestat, he gets to tell his side of the story, where after becoming a vampire he was already wealthy, but used the excuse of needing money to make Louis' acquaintance. As a mortal he was a Land Poor aristocrat, the youngest son of a minor nobility with a manor house and not much else, but when he himself was embraced by Magnus, he was gifted a literal treasure trove of gold, gems, and valuables that Magnus, a supremely reclusive vampire, had stolen from his victims over centuries and proceeded to do jack all with. At some point, he gave all his wealth to a series of banks where it's more or less taken care of itself, and now he has an army of accountants to look after his accountants' accountants. Lestat mentions that he has so much money that he doesn't know how much he has. More than enough to indulge any hideously expensive whim he has, which is just how he likes it. In Tale of the Body Thief, when the eponymous thief asks him for $20 million in exchange for letting him swap bodies for a day, as Lestat considers the offer, the monetary cost is literally the least important factor in the decision.
  • Lestat's latest protege Quinn Blackwood is the heir of an incredibly well endowed family trust, managed by a firm with sorta kinda supernatural ties that gets the kind of returns Wall Street execs would kill for. Ironically, despite his family's wealth and posh surroundings, he had a very humble upbringing, with the family estate being an actual plantation farm and extra bedrooms in his house rented as a bed and breakfast.
  • Armand owns an entire island and flies around in private jets.
• Played with in Elrod's The Vampire Files, in which Jack Fleming gets a lot richer over the course of several books, but only because he pockets some cash each time he gets into a feud with the mob. If only the gangs had left him alone to un-live his un-life, he'd still be scraping by selling stories about spider-gods to pulp magazines.
• The Von Kriks in "Vampire Island". They had a winding staircase and everything.
• Lord Ruthven, the villain of The Vampyre (1819), is a suave and wealthy aristocrat whose money and social standing help him hide the fact that he is also a vampire who preys on young women. It is commonly accepted that Lord Ruthven is meant to resemble Lord Byron, employer and travel companion of the author, John Polidori. Trope Maker.

Live-Action TV

• American Horror Story: Hotel tugs back and forth with this. The Countess is the owner of her own hotel and resides within the penthouse... and it's a flea-bitten Skid Row antique that has a reputation just this side of the Cecil Hotel. She does have the money that comes with decades of life, experience, and predation... or "did," because she trusted a huge chunk of it to Bernie Madoff. It's the stress of trying to keep the hotel open and her hedonistic lifestyle going while securing a steady supply of victims that partially drives a lot of the events of the season.
• Angel
  • Angel himself is not as rich as he could be. However Angel always does seem to have enough money to start over when he moves. He also had enough money stashed away to pay Cordy, Wes, Gunn and Fred their salaries yet only charges his clients on the basis of what they can afford to pay. And he owns a hotel that never has guests. He did stash that bag of loot from the unfortunate lady in the hotel for fifty years, so he certainly has a major emergency fund at hand.
  Cordelia: You aren't exactly rolling in it, Mr. I-Was-Alive-200-Years-And-Never-Put-Together-an-Investment-Portfolio.
  • Apparently when he was the evil vampire Angelus, if he wanted something he'd just kill the owner and take it, a pattern of behavior that doesn't encourage a creature of the night to put aside for a sunny day. This applies to most vampires in fact. When they need food, they kill someone; and when they want new clothes, they either take clothes from their victims or steal them from a store. Due to their aversion to sunlight, they typically either live underground or in crypts. As such, they have no real need for money. Darla and Angelus at one point talked about staying in high-end hotels and ordering room service (and eating the people who brought them food), and presumably they'd just leave without paying. With no need for money or any way for the law to prosecute them for theft, why bother?
  • Russell Winters, head of Russell Winters Enterprises from the first episode, is a straight example of a rich vampire, and lives in a mansion.
• In the fourth series of Being Human (UK), Tom asks Hal why he doesn't have any money seeing as "vampires are always loaded". Hal tells him he lost it all due to bad investments.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Averted. The majority of vampires seen in the series live in dank squalor such as crypts or abandoned buildings.
  • This makes sense since most vampires are legally dead and cannot pick up resources from their human lives. For instance, after being chipped so that he can't harm human beings, Spike has to resort to scaring people into giving him money. Sunnydale being what it is, it doesn't exactly make him rich.
  • Vampires are at the bottom of the monster pecking order in this setting. Demons may pretend at aristocracy, but vampires will more likely serve as Mooks.
  • Dracula, however, lives in a portable medieval castle.
• On Doctor Who in the episode "Vampires of Venice", the "vampires" run an exclusive boarding school for young women that is the envy of the city.
• The eponymous count in the Netflix mini-series Dracula (2020) is, naturally, a wealthy aristocrat who resides in an enormous castle when the story begins in the late 19th century. After the Time Skip into the 21st century he already has fancy digs set up for him in England via a law firm he's been a client of for at least a century, and it takes him only a few more months at most to become part of London's upper class. Van Helsing actually exploits this to track him down by simply looking for the largest, most expensive apartment high-rise with the best view that doesn't have churches in sight.
• The legacy vampires in First Kill, who can trace their lineage to the first of their kind, are all old money families.
• Forever Knight: Subverted where LaCroix actually argues against Nick's accumulation of material wealth, denouncing it as a useless burden (of course, LaCroix's no Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, so could always rob someone he's feeding on if he does find a use for cash). In one episode, Nick's human partner gets a look at his bank account figure, and his eyes are seen to widen visibly.
• Hearbeat2023: Played with. Seon Woo-hyeol is a long living vampire who is shown to have always been fairly well off. In the 1920s he owned a trendy night club and a mansion. When he decided to go to sleep for 100 years, he made sure to have a large stash of gold and jewels hidden for when he wakes up. However, his vampire sidekicks are not good with money and and up losing all his money, including his stash of gold, in bad investments and get-rich-quick schemes. When Seon Woo-hyeol wakes up in 1923, the only thing he really owns is the clothes on his back. His sidekicks are working blue collar jobs in order to earn enough money to buy human blood on the black market. With no knowledge of modern culture or economics, Seon Woo-hyeol quickly gets in financial trouble through the reckless use of a credit card. In order to repay his debt, he starts working jobs like food delivery and janitor.
• Hemlock Grove: Most vampires seen in the show are pretty wealthy. Olivia Godfrey comes from actual European nobility and married an American bioscience tycoon. Roman inherits his father's empire when he turns 18 and becomes the youngest CEO alive. In season 3 Roman runs into other vampires, who are all upper class or bourgeois.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • Vampire couple Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt both have sizeable incomes. This allows them to enjoy a very comfortable, opulent lifestyle in New Orleans, and they're part of the city's high society. Louis owns his family's mansion (his household is served by at least one maid, a butler, and presumably a cook), and Lestat's magnificent townhouse has many rooms and a large courtyard. While getting to know her new vampire dads, Claudia observes that "Uncle Les and Daddy Lou were rich. They had nice clothes and a nice auto carriage." (This scene takes place in 1917, when only the wealthy can afford to own cars.) She later writes in her journal that "you wouldn't believe how time flies when there's people to eat and money to spend," and summarizes her vampiric existence as "Kill, spend, kill, spend."
  • Louis and his vampire boyfriend Armand reside in a spacious penthouse apartment in Dubai (it's located in "the most desired real estate in the country") with human servants, and one of the artistic masterpieces hanging on the walls is Rembrandt van Rijn's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a stolen painting worth around $100 million. Daniel Molloy observes that it costs a fortune to maintain such a high level of privacy.
    Daniel: And you've got your own hangar at the airport, privileges on the Royal Meydan Bridge, and zero presence online. [...] I know the Emirates are big on privacy, and that's probably important to you, but I gotta ask, what does it cost, this haven't-aged-in-half-a-century, killer-views-in-all-directions anonymity?
    Louis: Quite a lot.
  • Averted with Bruce, who once worked in a car factory owned by Henry Ford when he was human, and vampirism hasn't improved his economic situation because when Claudia meets him, he's a vagabond who aimlessly travels from place to place on his motorcycle.
• Moonlight has Josef, Nick's Mick's best vampire friend, who is the head of a major corporation. Mick himself is not rich and makes a living as a private investigator. Then again, he is fairly young by vampire standards (about 90). However, his LA apartment is pretty nice, and he even has a secret room where he keeps his freezer (vampires prefer freezers to coffins). The show has plenty of vamps both rich and poor, just like humans. Late in the series Coraline, Mick's sire, turns out to be a French noblewoman and claims most of the French aristocracy were vampires before the Revolution (Madam Guillotine being designed specifically to kill them).
• Lily Munster and her father Dracula on The Munsters. It's implied that the two came from some money being descended from an old line of nobility, but became working-class when they immigrated to America with Herman in the mid-1800s.
• The Count, on Sesame Street, lives in a big mansion and drives a fancy car, called The Countmobile.
• Zigzagging Trope in Supernatural. Most vampires are actually poor, feral monsters who live in squalor if they're not part of a larger "nest", which have more resources but often hide in abandoned warehouses, bunkers, and similar dingy locations. However, these nests are highly connected and trade information and victims among each other. The Alpha Vampire is so ancient and revered among his kind that he has many different villas and mansions at his disposal, and his bank account is steep enough to bribe a hunter.
• True Blood plays this straight with the oldest vampires like Eric and especially Russell Edginton. The younger ones tend to be poorer, though, as they haven't had as much time to build up money. Subverted when Sophie Anne loses all her money through poor business dealings.
• While never explicitly stated, the Salvatores of The Vampire Diaries were among the town's elite before they were embraced and appear to still be wealthy. The Originals/Mikaelsons are definitely rich and Tyler after he becomes hybrid also qualifies. Since vampires can compel people into obedience, often a vampire will simply compel people into letting the vampire live in their houses and support the vampire financially.
• Played with in What We Do in the Shadows (2019).
  • Sure, the main vampires have a lavish New York mansion, but it's never properly explained how exactly they managed to accumulate such wealth, especially when they do things like try to pay by throwing ancient coins at cashiers.
  • Subverted with Nadja's backstory before she was embraced; she was so poor her family had to burn their donkey to survive, and Laszlo's buddies in England shunned him when he married her due to her background.

Sports

• Canadian figure skater Roman Sadovsky evokes this trope with his elegant, gentlemanly costume for his short program from the 2017-2018 competitive season which is set to Peter Gundry's "The Vampire Masquerade." The vampire he portrays is a Man of Wealth and Taste who attends a grand, old-fashioned masquerade ball in order to seduce a victim with his masterful waltzing skills.

Tabletop Games

• Averted in Bleak World. Vampire characters start out so poor they have to use their blood as money with vampire weapons dealers.
• Dungeons & Dragons: The progenitor of vampirism, and well-known Magnificent Bastard, Strahd von Zarovich is the last "living" member of his noble family. He lives in a gigantic spooky castle, rules over his own demiplane and has his face printed on Barovia's coins. While this trope can also apply to his four consorts, it does not apply to everyone else that gets turned.
• Magic: The Gathering: The vampires in the Innistrad block (and world) are aristocratic and walk around like they own the joint wherever they go.
  • The 2021-22 sets really lean into this, between Innistrad: Crimson Vow focusing on an extremely lavish vampire wedding and Streets of New Capenna introducing the Maestros as vampiric/demonic crime bosses and art collectors.
• Night Life: Vampyres and other Kin in the RPG have to work and/or steal to get money, in keeping with the grungy motif of the game.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: the Requiem, this can be played straight or averted depending entirely on how many dots in the "Resources" merit a vampire has. Stereotypically, vampires tend to get richer with age and certain clans are more inclined to collect wealth and earthly goods than others. Some clans, like the Ventrue, tend to embrace people who were already rich while still alive and will put their neonates through a financial Training from Hell called "the agoge." Other clans, like Gangrel, tend (or even prefer) to live in destitution. Anarchs prefer to give a down-market vibe because they're stereotypically working class or worked for their money. The Nosferatu tend to be fantastically wealthy as the Knowledge Brokers of the vampire society, but prefer to live in places like sewers and caves for their safety and seclusion.
  • Requiem carries this on with the Invictus Covenant, which is all about old money, old blood, and status. In 1e, one of their benefits was being able to buy up dots of Resources at half-price.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Vampires belong to a faction called the Vampire Counts, which often are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Zig-zagged in that vampires belong to one of five major bloodlines, of which only two (the Lahmia and the Von Carstein bloodlines) tend to take on the trappings of actual aristocracy. The Blood Dragon bloodline creates vampires exclusively from nobleborn warriors, but are also driven Blood Knights and therefore favour spending as much time as possible on the road in search of their next Worthy Opponent. The Necrachs all Looks Like Orlok and have to live far away from civilization; whatever riches they own they can't flaunt nor enjoy. Finally, the Strigoi are Feral Vampires and tend to live in graveyards and mausoleums, averting the trope entirely.

Theatre

• The Krolocks of Tanz Der Vampire live in a castle, wear richly embroidered clothing, and throw balls. They also have a running tab at Chagal's inn that they haven't paid for a long time, and probably never would.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: Subverted with Astarion. He carries himself and dresses like an aristocrat, even claiming to be a magistrate, but his character background is Charlatan. Once the party knows he's a vampire, he quickly reveals that he is the slave of a more powerful vampire. His fancy clothes and elegant bearing are just part of a veneer to lure victims for his master; none of it is his.
  Astarion: I had nothing for so long. Nothing. Not even my own body.
• Played with Dracula from Castlevania. He's a God of Evil who is beyond material possessions. That huge castle and everything in it? They are simply an extension of his own evil power. One of the levels in Super Castlevania IV is a massive treasure vault in which everything, up to and including the boss, is made out of gold and jewels.
• The vampires from the Darkest Dungeon expansion "The Crimson Court" were all wealthy elites who all got embraced at a fancy party. Their wealthy clothes and behavior is strikingly at odds with their new frightening insectoid visages.
• In Dragon's Crown, the Flavor Text of the Blood Countess Treasure Art revolves around the immense wealth vampires could accrue and mentions how some of the kidnapped girls that were turned into vampires were able to adapt to their new lifestyle, escape from poverty, grow into powerful leaders of their vampire clans, and infiltrate human society as members of the nobility.
• The Elder Scrolls: This is usually averted, and most vampires live on the fringes of society as little better than bandits due to how vampires are shunned, but occasionally you do get vampires who've finagled high places in human society.
  • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion:
    • Lord Janus Hassildor, Count Skingrad. It's not quite clear how rich he is, but his town is likely the most prosperous in Cyrodiil after the Imperial City itself, and he has an extremely well-appointed castle. Also likely applies to the Player Character if they get embraced, given that there's not much worth buying after a while.
    • Jakben, Earl of Imbel, is another vampire who's managed to hold a noble position, though he's not quite as rich as Lord Hassildor.
  • The Volkihar vampires from the next game, on the other hand, are more evocative of fallen nobility, since they live in a rather dilapidated Big Fancy Castle which is now full of both old luxury and new scrap, debris and general yuck. This may be due to their leader Lord Harkon's obsession with chasing an old prophecy at the expense of everything else. Unfortunately, you can't renovate the castle once you take over (save for unblocking the entrance into the courtyard), though there are some mods to turn the castle fancy again. Like in the previous game, a long-time player is also likely to become comfortably loaded with gold, vampire or not. However, the trope is completely averted by all non-Volkihar vampires in the game, who tend to live in damp caves and other dark lairs.
• Subverted in the Show Within a Show of Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location: Vlad works the graveyard shift at a taco joint and claims he can't afford to make child support payments for the son he denies is his despite all the evidence to the contrary.
• In Golden Krone Hotel, the eponymous golden krone represents the vampires' values, contrasting with the humans' steel krone made from a smelted weapon.
• In the Legacy of Kain series, Vorador lives in sweet Victorian style mansion, where as by Soul Reaver, Kain's empire has conquered all of Nosgoth, and thus he lives in a grand palace.
• In Loop Hero, before the world's destruction, vampires were the nobility of the planet who protected villages from monsters and are summoned by building their elaborate manors. They fed on the local populace as payment in what they presented as a mutually beneficial arrangement, but had a tendency to lose control and go into feeding frenzies which could decimate villages.
• Zig-Zagged in Runescape which has a wide variation of vampire wealth, from feral and low class vampires to Count Draynor all the way up to Lord Draken and his family.
• Jurgen in Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space is living in a Gothic-looking German castle. The Devil's Playhouse reveals that, prior to being bitten, he was an amateur archaeologist and a follower of Yog-Soggoth. He was either already a wealthy aristocrat or made his money after becoming a vamp.
• The Sims 2: In the Night Life expansion vampires are introduced, with vampires NPCs that fit this trope (since they are obvious parodies of Dracula, even being counts) adding them to your household can give around 50 thousand simoleons.
• In Touhou Project, Remilia and Flandre seem comfortable in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Complete with a Ninja Maid with Time Hax that helps her speed up chores, and a Kung Fu master for a gate keeper. According to Perfect Memento in a Strict Sense, the mansion often holds parties at night and invites other people in Gensokyo.
  • Not that anybody seems to get paid beyond having a place to live, and there's a reference in the PCB manual that Sakuya's the only reason the mansion is even heated in the winter. The Scarlet sisters seem to prefer being mostly self-sufficient to having a full treasure vault.
• LaCroix, Ming Xao, Strauss and Isaac in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (who are old vampire leaders who are 'upper class') play this straight. Other vampires, like Bertram, Nines (and his crew) and Beckett, not so much.

Visual Novels

• In Diabolik Lovers, the cast is made up mostly of young vampire aristocrats, and the most common settings are drearily opulent mansions and castles that are ideal places for romantic vampire boys with lots of emotional baggage and behavioral issues to brood. The second most common setting is high school, and while the school is actually pretty normal, the vampires are chaufeurred there in limousines.
• Tsukihime: Arcueid Brunestud can rent out entire floors of hotels and apartment complexes despite having no obvious source of income. Subverted though, she just hypnotizes the staff into giving her the space. Her real income source comes from being an elemental who can create gold from thin air. A fanboy of hers in the Mage's Association (probably Gransurg Blackmore) also gives her extra fairy gold, which Merem Solomon then sells via the Church and gives Arc the loot. Presumably Arcueid does this in small enough amounts that there's no risk of crashing the gold market.

Webcomics

• All of the vampires in Bite Me! fit this except Claire, and even that's ultimately arguable. For those whose backstories are given, they were aristocrats before becoming vampires.
• Subverted in an arc of Does Not Play Well With Others where Nikki gets caught using her vampire powers to cheat at craps and her "mentor" Jian has to bail her out. Jian actually gets a bit offended when Fran assumes that he's rich just because he's a few hundred years old, apparently he invested in Blockbuster.
• Dracula: Ruler of the Night: Drac secured his wealth a long time ago after he became a vampire through helping in wars and from family stockade as well as "tributes" a local village gives him to keep his castle at least maintenance and more then enough when he moves to London. It's only by sheer coincidence his first victim, Lucy, is likewise well off. Even after he loses Carfax Abby, having Lucy and her mother as socialites had his brides and him just visit a fellow one's manor, turn her and take her manor as his own.
• Leif & Thorn: There's no Masquerade for the vampires in Sønheim, aristocrats who collectively have enough money that it nearly unbalanced the whole country's economy until the mortals put in some regulations.
• Zig-Zagged in The Night Belongs to Us where some vampires, such as crime lord Gustav von Heiden, are rich beyond measure, while others are less well off. The most notable nigh-inversion is the comic's deuteragonist, Ada Argyle, who dresses like a slob and lives in a run-down old trailer park.
• Nosfera: Nosfera has her own castle complete with servants.
• Total Undead Drama: Storm state his family invest in real estate and, being long lived, has gotten good at it enough to have a good chunk of money on them. Likewise helps in having places to hide or feed in peace.

Web Original

• Metamor City: Malcom ard'Valos is a well-known investor and one of the wealthiest men in Metamor, as well as Vampire Prince of The Syndicate. Morgan Drauling on the other hand is nobility, but was cut off from the family fortune years before she was turned so she works as a coroner for the police.

Web Video

• Parodied by Maven of the Eventide in her review of Kindred: The Embraced, where she's writing a vampire novel that employs Our Vampires Are Different by having their powers and weaknesses be ham-fisted metaphors for greed and elitism.
• LA By Night: Of the main party, Victor (A Ventrue) and Nelli (A Toreador) fit this; Victor is famous rap media mogul with his own nightclub while Nelli is a well-known fashion designer. Both regularly solve problems with their money and influence as much as they do their vampiric powers.

Western Animation

• In Monster High, Draculaura says she lives in “either a small castle or a huge mansion. I guess you’d have to go with mansion, but only because there isn’t a moat.”
  • Her adopted sister, Princess Fangelica Van Bat, was born to the royal Van Bat family. When the Ghoul Squad went to rescue her, they found that she had been orphaned and was living in the castle by herself for a long time. She becomes Draculaura’s sister in the Christmas special, although she called Dracula “Dad” before then.
    • Queen Elissabat Stoker is also an actress. She goes by the stage name Veronica Von Vamp, and stars in the Vampire Majesty movies.
    • Kieran Valentine lives in a mansion with his overbearing mother. When he fell in the Pit of 1000 Odors on Draculaura’s birthday, his mother put him in quarantine.

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