Published 17:24 IST, January 12th 2021
World's richest man Elon Musk once didn't have enough to pay for car repairs
Elon Musk is now world's richest person, however, there was a time when he couldn't even afford to pay for a mechanic to repair his car.
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Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now world's richest person, however, there was a time when he couldn't even afford to pay for a mechanic to repair his car. Recently, a Twitter user had shared a throwback picture where young Musk is seen fixing a car window. While the user wrote that Musk couldn't even afford to pay for repairs, the 49-year-old responded to the tweet saying that he had bought replacement glass from a junkyard for $20.
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In a bid to fix his first car, which was an old 1978 BMW 320i, Musk had bought a replacement glass from a junkyard. The throwback picture was first shared by Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, back in 2019. Maye revealed that the image was captured in 1995. She had further confronted people's claims that Musk knew nothing about cars, in an apparent dig at critics and naysayers. While replying to his mother, Musk revealed that he had fixed everything on that old BMW, which he bought in 1993, as he could not afford professional repairs. Further, he said that he had bought the BMW for $1,400.
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Musk overtakes Amazon’s Bezos
Last week, Musk overtook Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person. A 6 per cent rise in Tesla shares on January 7 lifted the value of Musk’s stock holdings and options by $10 billion, taking his net worth to about $191 billion. A more modest rise of less than 2 per cent lifted Bezos’ Amazon shares by about $3 billion, putting his net worth at approximately $187 billion.
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Musk, earlier this year, had overtaken Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world’s second-richest person after a sizeable increase of $100 billion with raid ascend of Tesla’s share prices and his space agency SpaceX’s success. Musk’s wealth in 2019 jumped a decent share of $150 billion due to the unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share cost that surged by an estimated 743 per cent towards the final year as per the S&P 500 Index. Just last month, Tesla’s manufacturing boosted the constant earnings for the firm, leaving behind Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co-leading to about $40 billion on paper gain for SpaceX CEO.
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17:24 IST, January 12th 2021