Elon Musk's Wealth in Numbers: $656 Every Single Second

So we did the math on Elon’s cash flow, and it’s absolutely bonkers. The guy makes roughly $656 per second, which breaks down to over $43,000 per minute. That’s basically the average American annual salary ($53,490) earned in just 60 seconds.

His current net worth sits at around $194.4 billion (as of March 2024), though it peaked at a wild $340 billion back in November 2021. Most of that wealth is locked up in his companies—Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/X, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. The thing is, this isn’t liquid cash he can just spend; it’s mostly stock holdings, which means he needs to pre-announce any sales and deal with the regulatory hassle.

Here’s where it gets spicy: Musk promised a $6 billion donation to address world hunger back in 2022, but instead of handing it over to the UN, he moved approximately $5.7 billion in Tesla shares into his own donor-advised fund (DAF). Legally sound? Sure. Ethically clean? That’s the conversation everyone’s having.

Currently ranked #3 richest person globally (behind Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault), Musk’s wealth shows how absurdly large the gap has become between billionaire earnings and regular worker income. The dude makes in one week what most people won’t see in a lifetime.