How does the richest person in the world want to spend money?

At the end of October, Elon Musk “pocketed” more than 36 billion USD in just one day, becoming the first person to have a net worth of 340 billion USD. Although Tesla’s recent stock price drop has significantly reduced this huge fortune, as of November 17, the billionaire is still nearly 100 billion USD richer than Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

However, Elon Musk’s road to success was not all roses. Growing up in a well-off family in South Africa, Elon Musk’s childhood, as described by the New York Times, was “extremely painful”. His mother said that as a child, he was an introvert, often lost in thought, spending most of his time reading. Because Elon did not respond when people talked to him, she even thought he had a hearing problem. From a boy who was constantly bullied by his friends during his childhood, in less than half of his life, Elon Musk became a millionaire, then a billionaire, and finally the richest person in human history.

As of today, Elon Musk's net worth is so large that it has surpassed the market capitalization, which is valued at about 283 billion USD. Some people even calculated that if we spent 1 billion VND every day, it would take 7.16 million days - about more than 19.7 thousand years to use up all of Elon Musk's assets.

But the world’s richest man obviously doesn’t acquire (and spend) money in the same way we do. “Some people think I have a lot of cash,” Musk told investor Cathie Wood on a podcast last year. “I don’t.” Like many high-powered executives, he still relies on mortgages and lines of credit day-to-day. So what does all that wealth do?

Elon Musk uses money to pursue luxury passions, create his own empire, and even build the unthinkable.

"BURNING" MONEY FOR PASSION FOR VINTAGE CARS

Despite being the owner of a modern electric car company, and possessing a mind that is always looking to the future, Elon Musk has a special passion for classic cars.

According to The Guardian, Elon Musk spent $997,000 to buy the Lotus Esprit S1 sports car that appeared in the 1977 James Bond movie. He said that when he was a boy in South Africa, he was extremely impressed when watching the scene where spy 007 drove the Lotus Esprit on the pier and pressed the button to turn it into a submarine. And so, he did not hesitate to spend money to buy the car, just because he liked it.

Elon Musk also owns several gas-powered cars, such as a 1920 Ford Model T - a classic car produced by Ford from 1908-1927, a 1967 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 Roadster, a McLaren F1, an Audi Q7, a Hamann BMW M5, and a Porsche 911.

Among them, the Jaguar Series 1 E-Type Roadster was a gift that Elon Musk bought for himself as a reward. He loved this car since he was 17 years old, after reading a book about classic convertibles. When he received his first bonus of 40,000 USD at Zip2, he immediately bought this dream car for himself.

Despite his willingness to spend a lot of money on his favorite cars, this is arguably the billionaire's only money-burning hobby. Elon Musk is not a fan of lavish vacations—or any vacations, for that matter. In 2015, he shared that in the 12 years since founding SpaceX, he has only taken about two weeks off. At the end of the day, the billionaire enjoys relatively inexpensive hobbies like listening to music, playing video games, and reading. "Hanging out with kids, seeing friends, doing normal things," he said. "Sometimes saying crazy things on Twitter. But usually I just talk about work."

SELL OUT ALL VILLAS TO BUILD HOUSES ON MARS

With the huge amount of money earned, Elon Musk also owned many villas and valuable real estate in the US. However, in May 2020, he announced that he would sell all his houses and other tangible assets, as a way to counter criticism aimed at his wealth, and because, according to him, "wealth is something that holds you back".

In June 2020, he sold his first home on Chalon Street, Los Angeles for $29 million. In October, he sold his 350 m2 ranch-style home.²for $7 million. In December 2020, he sold four homes in Bel Air for a total of $61.89 million. This year alone, Elon Musk made a profit of $19.2 million from the sale of six homes in California. In June of this year, he continued to sell his last mansion in Hillsborough, California for $37.5 million.

In addition, the main reason this billionaire sold all his houses and land was to... save money to build a city on Mars. In October 2018, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter: "The reason I make money is not what you think. I have very little time for entertainment, no vacation villas, yachts or anything like that. Half of my assets will be used to solve problems in the world, the other half will be used to build a self-sufficient city on Mars, in case our planet is hit by a meteorite, or World War III happens and humans destroy each other."

With this alien settlement project, Elon Musk announced that he wants to send one million people to Mars by 2050. It costs 100,000 USD to send one ton of cargo to Mars. A self-sufficient city would need about one million tons of cargo, costing between 100-10 trillion USD for the project. But he also said that this plan is not as expensive as many people think. In a 2019 debate with Jack Ma, Elon Musk said that the project actually only requires about 0.5%-1% of the world's GDP, a little more than the amount of money people spend on cosmetics and almost equal to the cost of health care.

Elon Musk also does not spend much money on charity. Although he signed The Giving Pledge, an organization that encourages the wealthy to give most of their wealth to charity, Musk's foundation has only given away about $100 million. According to analysis, Elon Musk only spends less than 1% of his assets on charity.

Ambition to BUILD A CITY OF THE FUTURE

After selling all his houses, Elon Musk moved from California to a rented house in December 2020. Texas currently has no state income tax, while California has the highest tax rate in the US. Moving to Texas could save Elon Musk billions of dollars. In addition, this is also the location of Tesla's new factory, and is about to "welcome" Elon Musk's own city, serving his space ambitions: Starbase City.

Since 2016,SpaceX aerospace companySpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has accelerated the construction of a large space launch site in Boca Chica, a village in Cameron County, south Texas. The billionaire has an idea to turn this village into a new city, where all employees at the SpaceX launch site live and work. He also announced that he wants to turn this place into a tourist destination for those who want to witness the terrible power of space launches.

That means Starbase will be the starting point for those who want to travel to Mars. When preparing for their flight, passengers will need good living space and infrastructure to be healthy enough to exercise, something that only a town or city can provide. Therefore, perhaps converting Boca Chica into Starbase City is a necessary step, to bring Elon Musk one step closer to his goal of space exploration. In fact, in NASA's Artemis program (the goal of returning humans to the Moon by 2025), the spacecraft that will take astronauts back to the Moon is also expected to be launched from this Starbase City.

Many people - includingPrince Williamof the UK - thinks that what Elon Musk is doing is “unrealistic”, and that he should “focus on the problems on Earth rather than throwing dreams into space”. But for someone with money, especially a lot of money - the most in the world, aiming for “utopian” and “unrealistic” things seems to be the most practical action?

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