Wealth Blog | Julius Baer luxury lifestyle index

Rich parents with smart children are feeling the pinch across Asia, with top-flight overseas university fees rising a whopping 18 per cent a year, to US$60,000, for establishments such as Harvard and Oxford.

Something called a sculpted liquid facelift, under the heading "facial aesthetics", costs US$19,370, while the Cohiba Siglo VI - a coveted Cuban cigar - comes in at the relative bargain price of US$772.

This and more is revealed in the 2012 Julius Baer Lifestyle Index, which tracks changes in the cost of luxury items in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Mumbai.

The report acts as a kind of inflation tracker for the very rich. A rise in MTR fares will not make it into this survey. It does, however, track the cost of Louboutin ladies' pumps (which, at US$1,753, are the only index item to actually drop in price this year).

The index equally serves as a kind of lifestyle voyeurism - a look at a type of hyper status-oriented consumption for which, the more expensive it is, the more people like it. Indeed, for this kind of spending, inflation could be seen as a positive. High prices keep out the riff-raff.

Chanel quilted handbags cost an average of US$4,583. That's a rise of 9.5 per cent from last year. But if you are dropping four Gs on a handbag, do you care?