Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He has all the money to enjoy anything. However, he distinguished himself from his affluent peers by not owning material things.
Jeff Bezos owns several mansions and several million-dollar yachts. Moreover, Jeff Bezos has several private planes and multi-million-dollar support vessels for his luxury yacht.
On the contrary, Elon Musk doesn’t own a house, has no apartment, no private planes, no yacht, and has no luxury vehicles in his name.
Currently, Elon Musk lives in a $50,000 home that SpaceX owns in Boca Chica. However, he had several mansions in California before coming to this house. Over the years, he sold all of his homes and apartments when he moved to Texas. Currently, he partially lives in SpaceX-owned homes in Boca Chica and a rented house in Austin, Texas.
In a Twitter reply, Elon confirmed, “My primary home is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX.“
Elon publicly announced that he would get rid of all physical possessions and property to focus on Tesla and Mars. Elon believes worldly goods distract people from focusing on work.
Elon Musk lives a frugal life where luxury goods are unnecessary for happiness. In an interview Grimes — Elon Musk’s girlfriend — said that sometimes Elon lives below the poverty line. He doesn’t even change the broken mattress he sleeps on and sometimes eats the same food at the house for weeks.
Grimes has two babies with Elon Musk. Therefore, this interview shows Elon lives a thrifty life where he doesn’t care about luxury goods.
Before selling all of his houses, Elon announced, “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
His girlfriend Grimes wasn’t happy about this decision. And the interview we referenced previously echoes this sentiment.
Not interested in Homes
Zip2 was Elon’s first company. He and his brother established it. Later, Compaq Computer Corporation acquired Zip2 and Elon got a large chunk of cash from the proceeds. Elon didn’t spend all of his money on expensive real estate at that time.
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Elon Musk is not interested in luxury homes and apartments. During his lifetime, he bought multiple properties, but every one of them was an investment.
“19 years ago, when my 1st company got bought, I had to decide between buying a house in Palo Alto or a McLaren F1 (best car ever, imo). [It] was no contest. I bought F1 & a small condo that was much cheaper than the car. New Tesla Roadster will exceed all gas sports cars in every way.” Elon said in a Twitter post.
Even though he bought multiple homes over the years, most of them were party houses or rentals. But as we now know, he got rid of all of them.
Busy Life
Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Boring Company, and Neuralink. Each of these companies is rapidly expanding with numerous products in the line. SpaceX is developing the next generation Mars rocket — Starship, and working on creating a global satellite internet service — Starlink.
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Tesla has a lot of products in its pipeline, such as Cybertruck, Semi, Roadster, Humanoid Robot, FSD software, etc. Moreover, multiple factories worldwide are in construction and ramping up production.
Neuralink is working on developing a machine to interface the human brain to a computer. And the Boring Company is working to solve traffic problems.
Therefore, Elon Musk is extremely busy and has a tight schedule. He has no time to enjoy earthly goods.
Tesla has numerous facilities in the US. Four of the factories are in Texas, California, Nevada, and New York. SpaceX also has multiple facilities from Washington state to Florida.
Elon moves around these work facilities daily. Therefore, he doesn’t live in a single place for work. So, in his view, owning a luxury home is a waste of money.
On Twitter, Elon once said, “You should ask why I would want money. The reason is not what you think. Very little time for recreation. Don’t have vacation homes or yachts or anything like that.”
Possessions Weigh Down Progress
Elon wants to go to Mars. Since the sale of X.com (now known as Paypal), he has been obsessing over it. First, he tried to buy a decommissioned ICBM from Russia to send a small greenhouse to Mars. When Russian’s refused it, he started SpaceX to fulfill his dream to reach Mars.
Even though he has all the money to buy anything, he pledged all his wealth for humanity’s future benefit. According to his statement, “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure [the] continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves.”
However, when Elon announced that he would sell all of his houses, many speculated that Elon needed cash and it’s why he was selling all of his homes. According to him, “Don’t need the cash. Devoting myself to Mars and Earth. Possession just weigh[s] you down.”
Not Worth The Return
Even though Elon said on multiple occasions that he sold all of his houses to focus on his work, many experts, however, disagree with him partially.
Every home needs maintenance. For a million-dollar rental property, the maintenance is substantial. Moreover, the property taxes on these houses are gigantic, sometimes exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As previously mentioned, Elon is already busy with too many projects and companies. He doesn’t have time to look after his house finances. The amount of money he earned from these properties was not worthy of his time. Even though a third party used to look after these houses, Elon still had to look after the financials because he loves micromanaging.
When Elon said that earthly possessions weigh you down, he meant it’s taking too much of his valuable time, and the return is not worth it. If he invests the same amount of time on Tesla and SpaceX, his earnings would be billions. However, the earnings from his houses were only a few million. Therefore, owning those homes wasn’t worth it for Elon Musk. It’s why he sold all of his houses.
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