Top 5 Facts About Jeff Bezos’ Wealth That Will Melt Your Brain
Written by
Caitlyn Moorhead
Edited by
Gary Dudak
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If you are looking to believe in billionaires again, and the sheer weight of their wallet has you thinking anything is possible, then you’ll be absolutely gobsmacked by how much money Jeff Bezos has and what he’s capable of buying.
With a whopping estimated net worth of about $249 billion — currently the fourth highest in the world — the Amazon founder has the potential to reach comic book supervillain status. Somewhere between graduating from Princeton, telling everyone he went to Princeton, and deep space exploration, Bezos has accumulated about a quarter trillion dollars.
With that in mind, here are the top five facts about his wealth that will simply blow your mind.
No. 5: He Made the Ultimate Sacrifice of Getting Paid a Fair Salary at Amazon
Though he stepped down as CEO of Amazon in July 2021, Bezos remains Amazon’s executive chairman and biggest shareholder just for bragging rights. However, while he was CEO, he probably wasn’t bringing in the paycheck you would expect. Don’t worry, he was still able to put food on the table and buy a private jet or two.
For example, his stipend salary from Amazon in 2020 was $81,840, which qualifies as a middle-income wage in his home state of California. Some other CEOs may have wondered why he wasn’t collecting unemployment. However, his Amazon stock investment is another story altogether.
No. 4: What He Makes in a Second Would Cover Your Mortgage Payment
Just to make you feel more like you are living in a dystopian future, here is a breakdown of what it looks like to make Bezos’ money:
- Some estimates have him making about $8.9 billion per month, $2.25 billion per week or $321 million per day over the last few years. Mere chump change.
- Other experts estimate that between the years 2023 and 2025, Bezos made about $8 million per hour, which is well above minimum wage, to say the least.
- With the above numbers in mind, you can calculate how much Bezos makes in a second, which is about $3,715. That’s more than many Americans make working full-time for a weekly wage. Take that, everyone else trying to make a living.
No. 3: Na Na Na Na Nah — Bezos Beat Everyone to $200 Billion
In August 2020, Bezos became the first person to achieve a net worth of $200 billion He exceeded French billionaire Bernard Arnault and Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, also known as every other super-rich person’s arch nemesis.
Since then, you can hear him tell any financial professional who will listen how much he’s been crushing it, bro. Like it or lump it, he is worth over $249 billion and rising, so apparently, the proof is in putting your money into online bookstores and hoping for the best.
No. 2: Newsflash, Buddy — He Can Literally Buy the News
Buying a major news syndicate can’t be done for just any pocket change. In 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million for giggles and just a small percentage of his fortune.
Locally known as “The Post,” he scooped up this and other local publications, websites and real estate for that whopping price tag and successfully transferred ownership to Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos’s private investment company.
No. 1: His Budget Is Out of This World
And now, the number one fact about Jeff Bezos’ wealth that will melt your brain is … the sheer amount of money he has spent on space exploration. Like, billions and billions of dollars to let everyone know his finances aren’t contained to this planet.
So yes, men may be from Mars, women from Venus, but Bezos’ budget is stupider than trying to get to Jupiter.
Bezos founded private space travel company Blue Origin in 2000 and has reportedly been spending more than $1 billion of his own money per year on the company. In 2021, Bezos and three other passengers took an 11-minute flight on the Blue Origin vessel, New Glenn, crossing the 62-mile-high boundary, commonly accepted as the border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
The flight costs more than $2.5 million per minute. The highest-priced ticket went to Oliver Daemen, who secured the fourth seat for a price of $28 million in a charity auction. To date, it is estimated that Bezos has sunk around $15-20 billion of his own money into the space exploration company.
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