What does Elon Musk do with all his money?

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

Despite this, Musk has insisted he leads a largely unglamorous lifestyle. He said in 2021 that he lived in a Texas home valued at $50,000 (£38,000).

His former partner Grimes, with whom he has two children, told Vanity Fair in 2022 that he does not live the extravagant life of excess luxury many assume.

"Bro does not live like a billionaire. Bro lives at times below the poverty line," she told the magazine. Once, she said, he refused to buy a new mattress, despite her side having a hole in it.

While his day-to-day living quarters may not be as lavish as one might expect, he is known to have a love of unique cars, including one that can morph into a submarine. He also has a private jet collection, worth many millions of dollars.

And then there was that small splurge back in 2022, when he bought Twitter for a casual $44bn.

Musk once had an impressive real-estate portfolio. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 that he had spent $100m on seven houses in about seven years - most of them a stone's throw from each other in the prestigious neighbourhood of Bel-Air, California.

Collectively, the properties boasted swimming pools, a tennis court, wine cellar, private library and a ballroom. One was a ranch house once owned by legendary Willy Wonka actor Gene Wilder.

But in 2020, Musk had a change of heart - tweeting that he would be "selling almost all physical possessions" and "will own no house".

"Don't need the cash. Devoting myself to Mars and Earth. Possession just weigh you down," he wrote.

There was one stipulation - that Gene Wilder's house, "cannot be torn down or lose any [of] its soul".

He did indeed sell the three-bedroom property - to Wilder's nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, after giving him a multi-million dollar loan to buy it. But in June 2025, Musk reclaimed ownership, after Mr Walker-Pearlman reportedly fell behind on the repayments.

In 2021, Musk tweeted that his "primary home" was a modest prefabricated house that cost him about $50,000 on the southern tip of Texas, where his aerospace company SpaceX operates - an area that has officially become a city called Starbase.

"It's kinda awesome," Musk said about the humble dwelling.

The following year, Musk said he did not own a home at all, using it as an example of how low his consumption is, despite his enormous wealth.

"I'm literally staying at friends' places," he told head of media organisation TED, Chris Anderson. "If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms."

This is nothing new - in 2015, then-Google CEO Larry Page told author Ashlee Vance that Musk was "kind of homeless".

"He'll e-mail and say, 'I don't know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?'"

There has been various speculation over the years that Musk is buying up properties around the US, however the home in Texas appears to be the only official house he personally owns.

While Musk does not spend big on property, cars are a different matter.

As the owner of Tesla, it's not surprising that he has a large collection of unusual, and in some cases extraordinary, vehicles.

They have included a Ford Model T, the 20th Century car credited with being the first affordable vehicle, revolutionising the motor industry.

Others were a 1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster, which Musk is said to have coveted since he was a child; a 1997 McLaren F1, which he crashed and spent a lot of money repairing before selling; and a Tesla Roadster, which was the first Tesla model to go on sale and was famously fired into space by Musk 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 in an auction in 2013 for almost $1m with the aim of making its submarine transformation capabilities a reality once more.

Musk has admitted that planes are another thing he is happy to splurge on, but insists it is to do with his dedication to his work.

"If I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work," he said in the 2022 TED interview.

Among the private jets in his collection are a number of Gulfstream models, which cost tens of millions of dollars each.

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 charities, according to US regulatory documents, and has pledged many millions to various causes. But his philanthropy has been criticised.

The New York Times last year called it "haphazard and largely self-serving - making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses".

His charitable organisation, the Musk Foundation, says on its website that it is "dedicated to advancing humanity's progress through ground-breaking scientific research, technological innovation, and ambitious endeavours that push the boundaries of what is possible".

But the New York Times reported that the foundation fell short of the amount it was required to give away for three years in a row. The paper, which saw the foundation's tax filings, also found that many of its donations went to organisations with links to Musk.

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

When asked about philanthropy and charitable causes in the past, Musk appeared to be sceptical of traditional charitable gifts.

"I think if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult," he told Chris Anderson in 2022.

To Musk, the very existence of his business ventures is philanthropic: "If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy," he insisted.

Tesla is "accelerating 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 risk with AI".