What does Elon Musk do with all his money?

Tesla boss Elon Musk has been one of the richest people in the world for several years now, and that wealth recently reached stratospheric heights when he became the first half-trillionaire.

Despite this, Musk insists that he lives a very unglamorous lifestyle. In 2021, he said he lived in a house in Texas worth $50,000 (£38,000).

His ex-partner Grimes, with whom he has two children, spoke about this. Vanity Fair in 2022 that he does not live the extravagant life of luxury that many assume.

“Bro doesn't live like a billionaire. Bro sometimes lives below the poverty line,” she told the magazine. One day, she said, he refused to buy a new mattress even though there was a hole in the side.

While his everyday living quarters may not be as luxurious as one might expect, he is known to have a penchant for unique cars, including ones that can transform into a submarine. He also has a collection of private jets worth many millions of dollars.

And then in 2022 there was a small waste of money. when he bought Twitter for a random $44 billion.

Musk once had an impressive real estate portfolio. Wall Street Journal In 2019, he reported that he had spent $100 million in about seven years on seven homes — most of which are within walking distance of each other in the upscale Bel Air, California neighborhood.

Collectively, the hotel's grounds included swimming pools, a tennis court, a wine cellar, a private library and a ballroom. One of them was a ranch that once belonged to legendary actor Willy Wonka Gene Wilder.

But in 2020, Musk changed his mind. tweeted that he would “I will sell almost all my physical possessions” and “I will not own a home.”

“You don’t need money. I dedicate myself to Mars and Earth. Possession just weighs you down,” he wrote.

There was one condition: Gene Wilder's house “must not be demolished or lost [of] his soul.”

He did sell the three-bedroom home to Wilder's nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, giving him a multimillion-dollar loan to buy it. But Musk regained ownership in June 2025 after Walker-Pearlman reportedly fell behind on payments.

In 2021, Musk tweeted that his “primary home” was a modest prefab home that cost him about $50,000 on the southern tip of Texas, where his aerospace company SpaceX operates, an area that officially became a town called Starbase.

“It’s absolutely amazing,” Musk said of the modest abode.

The following year, Musk said he didn't own a home at all, using this as an example of how low his consumption is despite his enormous wealth.

“I literally stay with friends,” he told TED media organization head Chris Anderson. “If I go to the Bay Area, where most of Tesla's engineering is located, I basically rotate between friends' spare bedrooms.”

This is nothing new: In 2015, then-Google CEO Larry Page told author Ashley Vance that Musk was “sort of homeless.”

“He'll email and say, 'I don't know where to stay tonight. Can I come?”

There have been various speculations over the years about Musk buying up real estate in the US, but the Texas home appears to be the only official home he personally owns.

While Musk doesn't spend a lot of money on real estate, cars are a different matter.

As a Tesla owner, it's no surprise that he has a large collection of unusual, and in some cases, extraordinary cars.

These include the Ford Model T, a 20th-century car considered the first affordable car that revolutionized the automobile industry.

The others were the 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, which Musk is said to have dreamed of since childhood; a 1997 McLaren F1, which he crashed and spent a lot of money on repairing before selling it; and the Tesla Roadster, which was the first Tesla model to go on sale and Musk's famous space launch in 2018.

The most unusual, however, is the 1976 Lotus Esprit driven by James Bond in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.

In the film, the car, nicknamed Wet Nellie, could transform into a submarine. Musk bought the car at auction in 2013 for nearly $1 million with the goal of once again bringing transformative submarine capabilities to life.

Musk has admitted that planes are another thing he enjoys spending money on, but insists it is due to his dedication to his job.

“If I don't take the plane, I have less time to work,” he said in a 2022 TED interview.

Among the private jets in his collection are several Gulfstream models, each worth tens of millions of dollars.

He uses them to travel between SpaceX and Tesla sites in the US, as well as for international travel.

Musk has donated billions of dollars in shares to charityaccording to US regulations, and has pledged multimillion-dollar sums for various purposes. But his philanthropy has come under criticism.

New York Times Last year he called it “coincidental and largely self-serving, which entitled him to huge tax breaks and helped his business.”

His charity, the Musk Foundation, states on its website that it “strives to advance human progress through groundbreaking scientific research, technological innovation and ambitious efforts that push the boundaries of what is possible.”

But the New York Times reported that the fund the amount required to be paid was not enough for three years in a row. The newspaper, which reviewed the foundation's tax returns, also found that many of its donations went to organizations linked to Musk.

Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation have been contacted for comment.

When asked about philanthropy and giving in the past, Musk seemed skeptical about traditional charitable gifts.

“I think if you care about the reality of good rather than the perception of it, doing charity is extremely difficult,” he told Chris Anderson in 2022.

For Musk, the very existence of his business ventures is philanthropic: “If you say philanthropy is love for humanity, that is philanthropy,” he insisted.

Tesla is “accelerating the development of sustainable energy,” he said, while Space X is “trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity” and Neuralink is “trying to help solve brain injuries and existential risks with AI.”