Elon Musk is a billionaire with the highest net worth in the world, according to Bloomberg Index. And after Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, the tech tycoon is close to breaking his wealth record (of $340 billion in 2021) following the rally of Tesla’s shares. The world’s richest person gained almost $21 billion on Monday as Tesla stock jumped 9 per cent, boosting his net worth to $335 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. So how long would it take for a salaried person to reach Musk levels of wealth?
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According to Forbes, the average annual salary in US is $59,428. It will take more than three million years for an average US resident to amass Mr Musk’s wealth by working a regular job, per Statista.
A study on UK’s working population claims it will take the average person 17 weeks and one hour to earn what Tesla’s founder and CEO does in five minutes. The research was done by mathematical modelling tool Gigacalculator.com that studied the earnings of the 10 highest paid bosses according to Bloomberg’s CEO pay index, and compared them to the average Briton’s full-time salary of 35,423 pounds.
In June, shareholders of Tesla voted in favour of restoring Mr Musk’s 10-year pay plan of $45 billion. According to the current exchange rate, this comes to about Rs 3.80 lakh crore in a year, or Rs 1,040 crore per day.
In September, a new report from Informa Connect Academy, a group that tracks wealth, said Mr Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027. The report further said the billionaire’s wealth has been growing at an average annual rate of 110 per cent.
In terms of his earnings from assets, Mr Musk’s wealth primarily comes from his stakes in various companies like Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and The Boring Company.
Mr Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door-do-door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter Eggs. According to the BBC, he developed his first computer game at the age of 12.
Mr Musk dropped out of Stanford University and founded two technology start-ups during the “dotcom boom” of the 1990s. His online banking company that eventually became PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
He bought X two years ago and since then, influence on the platform has skyrocketed with followers nearly doubling to 194 million.
