A billionaire is someone with an income of more than $1 billion. Also that if you are able to sell all your assets in cash, pay off your debts and have one billion dollars in the bank then you’re billionaires.

One billion dollars as with many large numbers, may be hard to comprehend. It is said that J. Paul Getty, identified in Fortune magazine as the richest living American in 1957, once said “If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

Here are a few examples to assist you in wrapping your brain about the idea of one billion dollars. For instance, if you were to count $1 billion using the speed of a dollar bill per second could be a career that lasts for three individuals working for a typical 40-hour day. If you employed the three at the age of 21 and they completed the task over four decades later provided they worked for eight hours each day, without taking any sick days. The $1 bills that are counted could fill a room as big as football fields to the height that is 8.3 feet, and weight over 1,100 tons.

Common Characteristics and Experiences of Billionaires

While billionaires are individuals with their unique characteristics but a look at the Forbes list shows that many have the same experiences:

Achieving Billionaire Status Takes Time

The typical Forbes billionaire is 63 years old. of age. There are a few notable exceptions because younger people are entering the ranks, usually because of the services and products that are now made possible by technological advancements.

Some billionaires are younger than 30 years old, such as DoorDash the founders Andy Fang (number 1,549) and Stanley Tang (number 1,526) and Luminar Technologies’ founder Austin Russell (number 1,991). And the 37-year-old Mark Zuckerberg (number 7) has a fortune that is believed to be more than $121 billion. Facebook stock.

Education Is Important, But Not Required

Some, but not all of the billionaires named by Forbes have college degrees. It’s not surprising that many of the billionaires with the highest earnings do not have a college degree such as Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Zuckerberg (both Harvard University dropouts). Michael Dell (Dell Inc., University of Texas at Austin) and Larry Ellison (Oracle Corporation, University of Chicago) also did not graduate from the college.

Family Money Helps, But Is Not Critical

In the year the year 2020 Statista stated that just 207 of the 2,792 billionaires believed that they had acquired their wealth. Over 72% believed that they were “self-made” billionaires. Others have credited it to inheritance and the work.

Around one-quarter of the family’s wealth was inherited and then went on to build fortunes. Some of them include Carlos Slim Helu, also called “the Warren Buffett of Mexico” (number 16) and members of the Koch families, Mars the Mars family, along with Abigail Johnson of Fidelity Investments (number 85).

Around 15% of them are billionaires through inheritance in their own right (Sam Walton’s Legacy accounts account for many of them on this list). Forbes listing).

Marriage for Billionaires Is a Mixed Bag

It isn’t clear that marriage predicts the amount of wealth that exists, nor does it guarantee happiness in a wedding. As of May 20, 2021 46 of the top 50 richest Americans in the Forbes list of Forbes billionaires list were married at one point or another. 33 of the 50 were married at the time of writing, which included those who had been divorced or widowed.

A number of the most wealthy people in the world have multiple marriages like Oracle’s Larry Ellison with four past wives, and the Revlon’s Ronald Perelman with five marriages.

The marriages of billionaires that are quite long can be shattered by breakups, such as those from Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which ended after 26 and 27 years and 26 years, respectively. But Phil Knight of Nike Phil Knight (number 25) has been married to the same woman since 1968.

Careers in Tech, Finance, or Real Estate Can Pay Off Big

The reason for the wealth of many billionaires is their creation of a disruptive technology, and making it mainstream by launching an offering to the public of their business. For instance, Microsoft (Gates, Paul Allen as well as Steve Ballmer), Google (Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt), Amazon.com (Bezos) along with Facebook (Zuckerberg) can be described as businesses created by modern technology.

Other billionaires take part in the financial market and leverage their personal funds in conjunction with capitalists to earn remarkable gains. Warren Buffett is perhaps the most well-known Wall Street investor, but hedge fund managers like George Soros (number 288), Ray Dalio (number 88) as well as James Simons (number 68) represent 20 percent of billionaires who have chosen to call Wall Street home.

A third group of people -real estate magnates made their fortunes through the acquisition and development of real estate. They are what some refer to as the classic leverage model that requires a small down payment, and a massive mortgage. The group consists of Donald Bren (number 132), Donald Trump (number 1,325), Jeff Sutton (number 1,064) as well as David Walentas (number 1,444).