Here’s the Salary You’d Need To Retire as Rich as Jeff Bezos
Written by
Jacob Wade
Edited by
Jenna Klaverweiden
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Becoming a billionaire is not a milestone that many of us will reach. In most cases, you’d need to build a business that grows to become one of the largest companies in the world while still holding a large portion of equity to amass that kind of wealth.
While most of us won’t get to $1 billion with our salary, it’s kind of fun to think about how much you’d need to make per year to get there, right? Even better — let’s break down how much you’d need to make each year from now until retirement to retire as rich as Jeff Bezos.
Also see Bezos’ six top strategies for building wealth.
What Is Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth?
Bezos is one of the richest people in the world, with a staggering net worth of around $250 billion, per Forbes. His wealth comes primarily from his large stake in the company he founded, Amazon.
He still owns about 9% of the giant online retailer, which equates to about billions of his massive fortune.
Bezos also owns Blue Origin, a space exploration company, as well as media giant The Washington Post. He has also privately invested in massive companies such as Uber, Workday, Nextdoor, Airbnb and more.
And his real estate portfolio holds around $500 million in property as of mid-2024, per Architectural Digest. That is still just a small fraction of his overall net worth.
How Much Would You Need To Make per Year To Be as Rich as Jeff Bezos?
So if you wanted to retire with $250 billion in the bank, how much would you need to make each year to get there?
While your salary each year is important in this calculation, what’s more important is how much you save from that salary. So let’s simply look at how much money you need to put away each year to retire with $250 billion in the bank.
How Much You Need To Save Each Year To Retire With $250 Billion
| Salary per Year | Years Until Retirement |
| $6,250,000,000.00 | 40 |
| $7,142,857,142.86 | 35 |
| $8,333,333,333.33 | 30 |
| $10,000,000,000.00 | 25 |
| $12,500,000,000.00 | 20 |
| $16,666,666,666.67 | 15 |
| $25,000,000,000.00 | 10 |
The numbers are ridiculous.Â
If you work a normal 40-year career, you’d need to save at least $6.25 billion each year to end up with $250 billion by the time you retire.
If you’re nearly halfway to retirement and have only 25 years left until you retire, you’ll have to up your game and start saving $10 billion per year to retire as rich as Bezos.
And if you only have 15 years left, you’ll need to save nearly $17 billion per year to catch up!
Now, this is just based on your savings rate. If you make billions per year and can live on just 10% of your income, here’s how the income numbers break down.
Salary Needed Each Year To Retire With $250 Billion
| Salary per Year | Years Until Retirement |
| $6,875,000,000.00 | 40 |
| $7,857,142,857.14 | 35 |
| $9,166,666,666.67 | 30 |
| $11,000,000,000.00 | 25 |
| $13,750,000,000.00 | 20 |
| $18,333,333,333.33 | 15 |
| $27,500,000,000.00 | 10 |
As you can see, even working a full career and saving 90% of your income, you’d need to make nearly $7 billion per year for 40 years to retire as rich as Bezos is right now. That would net you $247.5 billion — just shy of Bezos’ $250 billion net worth.
If you’re working a regular 40-hour workweek full time, that’s about 2,080 hours worked per year.
You’d have to earn around $3,365,385 per hour to make $7 billion per year — for 40 years! And that’s just to retire as rich as Bezos is right now!
Is It Possible?
Of course, none of these figures include investing any money or compounding. If you invested part of what you earned and compounded the money, it would grow more quickly.
That being said, there is a very finite chance that you’ll earn $7 billion per year for the next 40 years until you build the next Amazon, Microsoft or Tesla.
That shouldn’t stop you from trying, though.
And even if you don’t retire with hundreds of billions of dollars, you can still have a healthy retirement through saving, investing and continually increasing your income throughout your career.
A mega-yacht may not be in your future — but financial freedom can be.
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