A person is considered a trillionaire if their net worth is at least one trillion dollars or an equivalent amount in another currency, such as the euro or the British pound. No one has yet claimed trillionaire status, yet some of the world's wealthiest individuals may be only a few years away.
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| How Much Money Is a Trillionaire, and Who Will Be the First? |
Net Worth Calculation
Business interests, investments, real estate holdings, cash, and personal property are familiar sources of wealth for extremely wealthy people. To calculate your net worth, begin by adding up all of your assets. Then you subtract obligations, which include anything from personal loans to mortgages. A trillionaire has at least $1 trillion (or one trillion euros) in net assets.
Obtaining an accurate net worth calculation is difficult for individuals in the upper echelons of wealth. While certain assets are reasonably steady, the value of commercial interests, in particular, can change dramatically from day to day.
In reality, Forbes, which publishes the world's wealthiest individuals, has a "Real-Time Billionaires List" that is updated by the minute based on stock prices. Elon Musk ($264 billion), Jeff Bezos ($177 billion), and Bernard Arnault & family ($167 billion) are the top three, separated by $97 billion, as of April 15, 2022. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are behind them by around $35 billion in spots four and five.
Who's on top in terms of net worth?
Consider the French fashion mogul Arnault. The majority of his and his family's $167 billion fortune isn't in a bank account. His holding company, LVMH, which owns well-known brands including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Hennessy, is linked to the value of the investment.
A rapid increase in the value of LVMH shares relative to Musk's and Bezos' holdings might propel him back to first place, which he held in May 2021. And, certainly, the three males frequently switch places with one another.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, the value of Arnault's brands increased, as did his financial wealth. Forbes assessed it at $76 billion in March 2020. That amount has nearly doubled in less than two years, as of February 2022.
Musk now ranks first on the Forbes list, with a net worth of around $264 billion.
He owns around 23% of the electric vehicle maker Tesla and roughly 50% of the aerospace business SpaceX as of February 2022. Second place goes to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is worth $177 billion and holds 14% of the stock in the online retailer (AMZN on Nasdaq). Musk lost $8.9 billion in one day in December 2020, when a J.P. Morgan analyst judged that Tesla shares were highly overvalued, as an example of how unpredictable those personal worth estimations can be.
Who is the world's first billionaire?
Although Arnault and Bezos, with $167 billion and $177 billion, respectively, may appear to be a long way from being trillionaires. However, the rate at which some of the world's wealthiest people have been able to amass fortune implies that it may only be a matter of years until someone achieves that status.
For example, Arnault was able to more than six-fold his net worth in eight years, rising from $29 billion in 2013 to $185 billion in 2021. If he can replicate that feat, he will be a trillionaire by the end of the decade. In addition to his share in Amazon, Bezos controls The Washington Post and the aerospace business Blue Origin. Since 2017, Forbes has increased its estimate of Bezos' net worth from about $67 billion to $177 billion, a more than two-and-a-half-fold increase.
With Tesla in the field of electric automobiles and SpaceX in the field of commercial rockets, Musk, who has made his fortune via game-changing businesses, may have the best chance of winning. In 2017, the mysterious entrepreneur was reported to have a net worth of $13.9 billion. His net worth is estimated to be $264 billion as of April 15, 2022. If those enterprises continue on their present price trajectory, they may become a trillionaire in no time.
What Is the Value of a Trillion Dollars?
To put it gently, a $1 trillion fortune is a massive sum of money - so massive, in fact, that it's difficult to comprehend how much wealth it represents.
Consider the following context: The median net worth of US families in 2019 was $121,700, according to the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances.
A trillionaire would thus have 8.2 million times the wealth of the average American family.
Another way to put that amount of personal value into context: It took months of tough discussions for the United States Senate to agree on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, which was enacted in November 2021. That was largely due to Republican opposition to such substantial increases in federal spending (though, technically, the law only includes $550 billion in new spending). $1 trillion in net assets is more than the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria. In fact, $1 trillion is greater than all but 16 countries' current GDP.
