Financial experts say that Microsoft founder and tech guru Bill Gates is worth about $133 billion as of early 2021. Investopedia confirms that while Gates doesn't necessarily have all his monies in a single bank account or buried under his doomsday bunker, not all of it is entirely fluid.
However diverse his investment profile, though, the fact remains that when Bill is gone, his cash would automatically go to his kids, right? Not necessarily.
Not only does Investopedia explain that lots of Gates' cash is tied up in the company he formerly owned (he's still got a couple of percent stake in it, which is worth a pile of cash), but he's got other toys he's bought with his billions, too.
The thing is, Bill doesn't plan to let his kids liquidate all his net worth once he's gone. Instead, he's planning to leave them a relatively meager $10 million when all is said and done.
That's not much cash for his three kids if you think about what they'd get if Bill divided up the $133B figure into equal parts for his wife Melinda plus their offspring, Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe.
And although Bill (plus Mark Zuckerberg) was fine with donating millions to help find a cure for coronavirus, he's not keen on sharing millions with his kids for no good reason.
As he explained in one of many Reddit AMAs he's participated in over the years, Bill doesn't plan to leave his kids "massive amounts of money" because it's not a "favor" to them. In fact, Gates explained, his inspiration in the matter was Warren Buffet, who decades ago said that leaving tons of cash to his kids wasn't a smart move.
Basically, Bill said, he thought about this before meeting Buffet, and later realized he was right. He elaborated further, "Some people disagree with this but Melinda and I feel good about it."
That's not to say he hasn't shared his wealth with his kids to date, though. Bill did say in one AMA that he liked to "tour interesting things with my kids," naming, among other things, power plants, the Large Hadron Collider, missile silos, and Antarctica.
Commenters noted with jealousy that Bill is able to "casually" tour places like a Hadron Collider without issue, not to mention going to Antarctica like it's a quick jet trip to Vegas for the weekend or something.
So clearly, Bill's kids probably don't need more than ten million each (if even that) because they've already been given so many more opportunities than other kids. The eldest, who's an "accomplished equestrian," has even given interviews where she points out the excessive privilege she's been given in life, but how she hopes to do good in the world as a result of having had those opportunities.
Here's hoping the Gates kids take their 10 million and do big things with it!