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Elon Musk is the richest man on the planet, and according to Forbes, he has an estimated fortune of $272.5 billion. With a fortune like that, many people would think the tech mogul owns multiple properties in the United States, castles in Europe, extravagant residences in Asia, or even a private island in the Caribbean.
But, in actuality, Musk seems to live a very different life. The billionaire recently revealed that he doesn’t even own a home right now. During an interview with Chris Anderson, the 50-year-old said he couch-surfs among friends when he’s in the Bay Area, living a much more modest life than many probably assume.
Throughout their conversation, Anderson asked the tech giant questions about his company Tesla, trips to space, climate change, and more. In the final part of the interview, Anderson asks about the psychological impact of beinig the richest man in the world, which Musk claims he really doesn’t think about much. According to Elon, he doesn’t even live a lifestyle that falls in line with how much money he has.
“For sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that is not the case,” he said before revealing that he currently doesn’t own a home. “In fact, I don’t even own a home right now. I’m literally staying at friends’ places — if I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.”
Musk went on to explain that he doesn’t make any huge luxury purchases as many people likely assume.
“I don’t have a yacht, I really don’t take vacations, so it’s not as though my personal consumption is high,” he said. “I mean, the one exception is a plane, but if I don’t use the plane, then I have less hours to work.”
These claims from Musk come following similarcomments from his on-again, off-again girlfriend Grimes, who faced backlash for saying the billionaire lives “below the poverty line.”
“Bro lives at times below the poverty line. To the point where I was like, can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there’s no security, and I’m eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?” she added.
The problem with his private jet
Last February, the Tesla founder’s safety was threatened after a Florida teenager named Jack Sweeney began tracking the location of his private plane. According to The Guardian, Musk approached the young man to ask him to stop tracking the aircraft, which was followed by closing the Twitter account where he posted the reports.
The initial conversations between the two began last fall through direct messages on Twitter. In November, the billionaire offered him $5,000 to delete the account @elonjet. However, the young man refused the offer and asked him for $45 thousand dollars more, for a total of $50 thousand dollars to cancel the account.
At the end of January, the 19-year-old told Musk that instead of the money, he wanted to take an internship at one of his companies in exchange for deleting the account.
“I understand your point of view, but I hope you see my interest in this because I have developed it since I was in high school,” Sweeney wrote to Musk. After that offer, Musk blocked the young man and he was left without the money or the internship.