Business

How Much Does Elon Musk Make?

Until late in 2022, Elon Musk was the world’s richest person. As a result of conflicts arising from his takeover of Twitter and falling Tesla stock prices, he dropped from that spot but just barely. By early December 2022, Musk’s net worth had fallen to $178.6 billion allowing French billionaire Bernard Arnault whose net worth sits at $188.6 billion.

Elon Musk’s Net Worth

 

In November 2021, Musk’s net worth peaked at its highest point so far in his career. That was when it was recorded at a nearly unbelievable $320 billion. Obviously, a lot has happened since then.

In January 2022 it was estimated that Musk’s worth was a staggering $304.2 billion, meaning he lost over $100 billion in just a single year. That said, Musk still makes an incredible sum of money from all of his various business ventures. Let’s break it down into some bite-sized chunks.

How Much Does Elon Musk Make in a Year?

In 2021, Elon pulled in $23.5 billion. It’s worth remembering that he has multiple income streams and a lot of that net worth is tied up in stocks, especially Tesla shares. He owns 423.6 million shares in the company, which works out to around $69 billion. But the thing about stock prices, as we know, is that they are hardly consistent which is a good part of the reason his net worth is very liquid and malleable, as is trying to pin down exactly what he makes in a single year from all sources.  We’ll do our best to narrow down Elon Musk’s income based on what we do know.

Musk makes money from a myriad of sources right now:

  • CEO of SpaceX
  • CEO of Twitter
  • CEO of Tesla
  • Co-Founder of OpenAI
  • Co-Founder of Neuralink
  • Founder of The Boring Company
  • Numerous investments
  • Digital assets including Dogecoin

In the first quarter of 2022 it looks like Musk also made another $22 billion, so the calculations for what he currently makes over any given period of time are definitely going to be different than they were in 2021. But, based on that figure we can make some calculations in a general sense.

To start with, if he makes $22 billion in a quarter then that translates to about $88 billion in a year if everything stays on track. Keep in mind, there’s no way it’s going to be that consistent and values will likely be a lot more or even a lot less, but we have to have some kind of a baseline.

How Much Does Elon Musk Earn in a Month?

Based on the $22 billion in a quarter figure we can get a rough estimate of Musk’s monthly payday just by dividing it by three. Obviously not every month has 30 days but since all of our numbers are a little loose, it’ll still work for a good guide. And with that in mind, Musk’s monthly income is sitting at about $7.333 billion.

How Much Does Elon Musk Make in a Day?

If Elon were getting paid like the rest of us, as in a salaried employee with a typical five day work week, then he’d be making $333.33 million dollars every day, based on that $22 billion quarter he enjoyed at the beginning of 2022. This is factoring 69 weekdays into the equation.

If you do away with trying to calculate only workdays and, let’s be honest, it’s not like Elon takes much time off then Musk made about $244.44 million per day each of the 90 days of the first quarter..

You’ll probably notice a lot of sites calculate his daily earnings much higher and they use a really weird calculation to do so. Many will take his net worth and divide it by the days in a year. But how could that be what you earn if it’s using as a base your entire amassed wealth? That doesn’t make sense.

You can’t take his entire net worth and divide it back as though he made his whole fortune just last year. That gives you skewed numbers that aren’t very reliable and, as we’ve already seen, it’s hard enough to figure this out when someone’s wealth and income can fluctuate so significantly in just a short period of time. The man lost $100 billion in a year, that’s an almost unimaginable shift in wealth.

How Much Money Does Elon Musk Make in a Minute?

We’re getting into the real fine details here. If you make $50,000 in a year, that works out to a minute by minute salary of $0.095. So if Elon made $22 billion in 90 days, then what’s he making every minute?

Let’s take the $244.44 million he makes every day and divide by the minutes, of which there are 1440. That works out to just about $169,753.09 every single minute of every day. That works out to a brand new 2023 Audi R8 convertible every single minute. Most people won’t make even close to that in a year. Not bad!

How Much Does Elon Musk Earn in a Second?

Now that we know what Musk is making every minute it’s easy enough to break that down on a second by second basis simply by dividing the number by 60. So, as every second of the day ticks by, Elon Musk makes about $2,829.22.

Again, that was based on the first quarter of 2022 data. Who knows if it’s even accurate any more, but it’s a good ballpark for understanding the financial life of one of the richest men in the world.

How Much Can Elon Musk Make Before He Retires?

At age 51, Elon’s got a lot of time left in him to keep working and there’s a good chance he’ll keep working for many, many years to come. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he decided to work until he reached mandatory retirement at age 65. Then he threw in the towel and maybe gave away everything so he had no income stream at all any longer. How much money could he make in the next 14 years?

If Elon Musk makes $22 billion in a quarter, that’s $88 billion in a year. But he’s 14 years away from retirement, which means he’s staring down a cool $1.232 trillion. Trillion!

This number is likely the wackiest of all the speculation here since 101 different things can happen to alter his income. He could buy 100 more companies. He could build a base on Mars. He could corner the cold fusion market. The true number could be infinitely higher or far, far less. But, based purely on where he’s at right now, it’s not a far-fetched estimate by any means.

Where Did Elon Musk’s Money Come From?

Elon started a company called Zip2 back in 1995 with his brother and $28,000 in seed money from their dad. In 4 years Musk sold the company for over $300 million and Elon took $22 million for his share.

Musk went on to found a payment company called X.com. It was an early foray into online finance and one of the first federally insured online banks. That company would go on to become Paypal and when eBay bought it in 2002. Elon got  nearly $176 million out of the deal.

Must taught himself what he needed to know about rocket science and would go on to found companies SpaceX and Starlink. He also became a huge investor in Tesla Motors, becoming the majority shareholder of the company and joining its board of directors. With Musk at the help, Tesla became the 6th company in US history to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization.

At one point Musk announced his plan to buy Twitter, though the deal took some time, especially with Musk accusing Twitter of being deceptive. The disagreement seemed like it might stand in the way of him acquiring the social media company, but Musk signed the contract regardless and is now CEO there as well, though he spent $44 billion to acquire it.

The majority of these businesses, but particularly Tesla, have greatly increased Musk’s wealth and continue to be sources of it.

Did Elon Musk Sell Paypal?

Musk was not in control of Paypal at the time it was sold, but he did own a large amount of stock which resulted in his getting a solid payout when eBay took over.

The Bottom Line

Elon Musk’s wealth has gone through some amazing ups and downs and though he is no longer the wealthiest person in the world, he’s still incredibly rich. At the end of 2022 he had slipped from being the wealthiest man in the world to the second wealthiest, well ahead of others like Mark Cuban and even Jeff Bezos. His net worth was around $178 billion. Based on his first quarter earnings, Musk was making somewhere around $88 billion per year which worked out to around $244 million every day, $169,000 every minutes and almost $3,000 per second.

 

 

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