Becoming a billionaire is a lofty goal, often unobtainable for most individuals. Some find their success through economic, educational, or opportunistic advantages. Others learn to take calculated risks, develop their personal creativity, and deploy their capital advantageously.
MILLIONS TO BILLIONS
This puts the average time period to go from millionaire to billionaire at 14 years.
The Boston studies have consistently found respondents to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose vast fortunes have contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. They are often even dissatisfied with the size of their fortunes.
The median age of the world's billionaires is 67, according to a new report from data firm Altrata. Only 10% of the world's billionaires are younger than 50 — and over 40% are older than 70.
The ATO classifies those who control a net wealth of $5 million or more as 'wealthy individuals'2. Those with a net wealth of $30 million or more are classified as 'high-wealth individuals'. The wealthiest person in Australia is currently Gina Rinehart, with a net worth of around US$14.8 billion.
Austin Russell, the 28-year-old CEO of California-based Luminar Technologies, remains the world's youngest self-made billionaire, with a net worth of US$1.
In broader terms, the finance and investment profession has the most millionaires. It also has the most billionaires, with 371.
Some of the billionaires are or were forced to file for bankruptcy in their lives. Many of these served jail time because of money laundering and severe debts, such as Allen Stanford, Eike Batista, and many more. To make you familiar with this, we rounded up these above-mentioned billionaires who filed for bankruptcy.
The rich live longer and are healthier
A study from the US shows that the difference in life expectancy between the poorest and richest one per cent of the income distribution was nearly 15 years for men and 10 years for women. While rich men lived to an average of 87.3 years, the poor lived to 72.7 years.
Becoming a trillionaire is no easy job. Having this much money is equivalent to unbelievable amount of wealth. A trillion is such a huge number, followed by twelve zeros. That is one thousand times a billion (nine zeros followed by 1).
Funds and stocks are the bread-and-butter of investment portfolios. Billionaires use these investments to ensure their money grows steadily. Billionaires typically hold onto these investments, instead of trying to time the market for a quick buck.
Most billionaires work long days between 10 to 12 hours.
The Hurun Global Rich List 2023 showed that 70% of the billionaires are self-made and only 30% are legacy. Some of the self-made billionaires include Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Gautam Adani and others.
Bill Gates: 26
Microsoft's cofounder became a self-made millionaire in 1981 at age 26, thanks to Microsoft's IPO. The value in his shares surpassed $1 billion by the time he was 31, making him the youngest billionaire ever at the time. Today,Gates is the richest man in the world.
But Son's fairytale didn't last long. After the dot-com bubble burst, his company Softbank's shares plunged 75 percent in two months and was 93 percent lower by the end of 2000. The business almost went bankrupt and Son ended up losing USD 70 billion, the highest ever recorded financial loss for a person in history.
In this bestselling book, Conor O'Clery reveals the inspiring life story of Chuck Feeney, known as the "James Bond of philanthropy." Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression.
Others cited by Approve as potential trillionaire candidates include Zhang Yiming, the founder of Chinese tech company ByteDance Technology, who is valued at $55 billion, and Mukesh Ambani, an Indian mogul and the chairman of conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited, who is valued at $83 billion.
When Ramsey's National Study of Millionaires asked where the riches came from, they found that a whopping 79% didn't receive any inheritance from parents or other family members. Not one cent. Unpaid bills perhaps (though the study didn't ask).
Maria Franca Fissolo is not the richest, but she tops the list as the oldest billionaire. At age 99 and with a net worth estimated at $25.2 billion, Maria Franca Fissolo is now the oldest billionaire in the world.