There Are FAR More Billionaires Than We Think!

Get a 7-day free trial and 25% off Blinkist’s Annual Premium subscription by using my promo link ----- Sign up for my newsletter 👈 Edited By: Andrew Gonzales Music Courtesy of: Epidemic Sound Select Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images For sponsorship inquiries, please contact sponsors@ All materials in these videos are for educational purposes only and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. This video does not provide investment or financial advice of any kind. #wealth #billionaire #money ----- According to Forbes, America has seven hundred and thirty-five billionaires worth a combined four point five trillion dollars. But how many billionaires are there really? When Forbes publishes their list, they add a small qualifier that almost nobody notices, there are 735 LISTED billionaires in America, because nobody knows how many there are really. Forbes employs more than 50 people in 16 countries to compile their list. According to their methodology article they use public financial records, interviews with employees, rivals, attorneys and they attempt to validate the numbers by contacting the billionaires directly. Some co-operate and give Forbes access to their personal finances so they can report a more accurate number, but magazine admits that most don’t. Much of the list is an estimated guess, but there are also a lot of billionaires out there that will never show up on the list even though they should. One group are the crony government leaders using their countries central bank as their own personal credit card, but I think there is another group that is even more interesting than that. Forbes and Bloomberg who both get a lot of online attention from their billionaires list have behind closed doors admitted that they have no way of keeping track of the most common type of billionaire in America. In an interview with the New York Times, Kerry Dolan the editor who overseas the Forbes team responsible for the annual list gave the profile of a billionaire that they would never be able to find. She told the times that “it’s someone who quietly sold a stake in a business for, say, $250 million in the ’90s, then invested it well.”… That’s it, that’s all there is to it. Two hundred and fifty million dollars is a big exit especially back in the nineties, but it wouldn’t have made the news unless it was a well-known household brand. Most good businesses of this size are boring and only sell their products to other businesses. As a former investment banker who has worked on a lot of these deals personally, I can tell you that two hundred and fifty million dollar exits happen every day and sometimes it’s not even the founders who are walking away with all of the money. Silent early investors in a private company would only show up on the paperwork in the part that tells the acquirer where to send the money. If a person took their earnings from a sale in nineteen ninety-nine at the height of the dot com bubble and put it all into the market and then spent a meagre one point two million dollars a year ($1,200,000) or one hundred thousand dollars a month on themselves, they would now be worth three point three billion dollar’s ($3,300,000,000) and nobody would know unless they wanted them to. There are flashy individuals that want to show off their wealth and there are billionaires that couldn’t avoid attention because the companies they founded are too well known but most billionaires are invisible to everybody but their close family, their accountant and the IRS. There are three very important reasons why these billionaires do this and two fascinating strategies they use to make sure they stay under the radar. The first reason that most billionaires try very hard to stay off the Forbes list is because of the problems that come with public notoriety. Lottery winners are routinely harassed by people begging for money, filing frivolous lawsuits and family members pitching them a business idea over thanksgiving dinner. The average lottery winner is seven times more likely to declare bankruptcy than the average American and the public attention they get is a big reason why. Not only is getting chased for your money annoying and costly it can be dangerous. Known wealthy people are the logical target of kidnappings, burglaries and blackmail. High profile business leaders and celebrities employ personal security but it’s difficult for these teams to always cover all family members. Personal security is also expensive and inconvenient because they need to travel, work and live with you to remain effective. A nice relaxing life enjoying your riches can quickly turn into another job of managing a security team. The best defence is stealth, if nobody knows who you are or what you have in your Schwab account then all of these problems can be avoided, and that’s just the first reason.