What does Elon Musk do with all his money?

Tesla boss Elon Musk has been one of the richest people in the world for several years now, and that fortune grew exponentially when he recently became the first half-trillionaire.

Despite this, Musk insisted that he lives a largely low-key lifestyle. In 2021, he said he was living in a house worth $50,000 (£38,000) in Texas.

His former partner Grimes, with whom he has two children, said: Vanity Fair in 2022 he does not live the extravagant life of extreme luxury that most people assume.

“Brother doesn’t live like a billionaire. My brother lives below the poverty line sometimes,” he told the magazine. He said he once refused to buy a new mattress even though it had a hole in the side.

Although his daily living space is not as luxurious as expected, he is known to have a love for unique cars, including ones that can transform into submarines. He also has a private jet collection worth millions of dollars.

And in 2022, that little splurge happened. When you bought Twitter for a modest $44 billion.

Musk once had an impressive real estate portfolio. Wall StreetJournal In 2019, he reported spending $100 million on seven homes over nearly seven years; most of them were a stone’s throw away from each other in California’s prestigious Bel-Air neighborhood.

The properties collectively included swimming pools, a tennis court, a wine cellar, a private library and a ballroom. One of them was a farmhouse that once belonged to legendary Willy Wonka actor Gene Wilder.

But in 2020, Musk changed his mind: He tweets that it will happen. He will “sell almost all his physical belongings” and “will not own any home.”

“I don’t need money. I’m devoted to Mars and Earth. Having it only burdens you,” he wrote.

There was only one condition: Gene Wilder’s house “may not be destroyed or anything lost.” [of] its soul”.

He actually sold the three-bedroom property to Wilder’s nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, after giving him a multimillion-dollar loan to buy it. But in June 2025, after Mr. Walker-Pearlman was reported to be behind on repayments, Musk regained ownership.

In 2021, Musk tweeted that his “main home” was a modest prefabricated house costing about $50,000 in the area of ​​what has officially become a city called Starbase, at the southern tip of Texas where aerospace company SpaceX operates.

“It’s kind of cool,” Musk said of the modest residence.

The following year, Musk said he didn’t own a home at all, using it as an example of how low his consumption was despite his enormous wealth.

“I’m literally staying at friends’ houses,” he told Chris Anderson, president of media outlet TED. “If I travel to the Bay Area, where most of Tesla’s engineering is located, I basically tour my friends’ spare bedrooms.”

This is nothing new; In 2015, Google CEO Larry Page told author Ashlee Vance that Musk was “kind of homeless.”

“I emailed and said, ‘I don’t know where I’m staying tonight. Can I come?’ ” he will say.

There have been various speculations over the years that Musk has purchased property in the US, but the house in Texas appears to be the only official home he personally owns.

While Musk doesn’t spend big on properties, cars are a different matter.

As the owner of Tesla, it’s no surprise that he has a large collection of unusual and, in some cases, extraordinary vehicles.

These include the Ford Model T, a 20th-century automobile that is considered the first affordable vehicle to revolutionize the motor industry.

The others were the 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, which Musk is said to have coveted since childhood; a 1997 McLaren F1 that he crashed and spent a lot of money repairing before selling it; and the Tesla Roadster, the first Tesla model to go on sale. Celebrity launched into space by Musk In 2018.

But the most unusual is the 1976 Lotus Esprit driven by James Bond in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.

In the movie, the car nicknamed Wet Nellie could transform into a submarine. Musk purchased the car at an auction in 2013 for almost $1 million, with the aim of making submarine conversion capabilities a reality once again.

Musk acknowledged that planes were another thing he was happy to splurge on, but insisted it was down to his dedication to his job.

“If I don’t fly, I have fewer hours to work,” he said in a 2022 TED interview.

Among the private jets in his collection are Gulfstream models, each worth tens of millions of dollars.

He uses them to travel between SpaceX and Tesla facilities in the US, as well as for international travel.

owned by Musk donated billions of dollars of shares to charitiesHe donated millions to various causes, according to U.S. regulatory filings. However, his philanthropy has been criticized.

New York Times he described it as “casual and largely self-serving – making him eligible to benefit from enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.”

The charity Musk Foundation says on its website that it is “dedicated to advancing human progress through groundbreaking scientific research, technological innovations, and ambitious efforts that push the boundaries of what is possible.”

However, the New York Times reported that the foundation fell below the required amount three years in a row. Examining the foundation’s tax returns, the newspaper also revealed that most of its donations went to organizations affiliated with Musk.

Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation have been contacted for comment.

When asked about his philanthropy and philanthropic causes in the past, Musk has been skeptical of traditional philanthropic gifts.

“I think philanthropy is extremely difficult if you are concerned with the reality of goodness rather than its perception,” he told Chris Anderson in 2022.

According to Musk, the existence of his business ventures is philanthropy: “If you say philanthropy is the love of humanity, they are philanthropy,” he insisted.

He said Tesla is “accelerating sustainable energy,” Space