Jeff Bezos’ net worth of $209.6 billion has earned him a second-place spot on The Real-Time Billionaires List from Forbes. Most of Bezos’ wealth comes from owning 909.41 million shares — worth about $176.54 billion as of March 13 — in Amazon, the company he founded in 1994, took public in 1997 and helmed until 2021.
Bezos’ Amazon holdings have fluctuated over the years as he has acquired and sold shares. As per Yahoo Finance, the most recently reported sale of Amazon stock by Bezos was in November. This marked the completion of a planned divestment of 25 million shares announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last spring, per Barron’s.
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The way Bezos handled his early stock sales set the path for decades of wealth accumulation that ultimately positioned him as the world’s second-wealthiest person. You can use lessons from his early years and more recent business activities to help secure your own financial future.
Bezos presumably used cash from Amazon stock sales to launch Blue Origin in 2000. And in 2017, Bezos said at an event that he sells around $1 billion worth of Amazon stock each year and uses it to fund the space company.
The company is private, so its financials aren’t available to the public. But even though it’s entirely possible that Bezos won’t live to see people colonize space, Blue Origin seems to at least be holding its own as it develops rockets and engines for commercial and government use. NASA alone has awarded Blue Origin more than half a billion dollars in contracts over the last several years.
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Bezos’ salary is the same today as it was two decades ago — less than $82,000. But he’s been selling Amazon shares since shortly after its initial public offering, according to a 2021 Forbes analysis of Bezos’ stock sales. That means he has relied on money from stock sales to support his lifestyle and other business activities almost since day one.
Meanwhile, his wealth keeps on growing because it comes mostly from his Amazon holdings. Those holdings have appreciated far more over time than a savings account balance would have, ultimately providing Bezos with more cash than he could ever hope to spend.
Bezos has sold Amazon shares fairly consistently over the years, so he always has had plenty of cash to spend and invest in other businesses despite a modest salary. But as Amazon shares have increased in value, Bezos has been able to draw increasingly more cash from fewer shares, leaving all those extra shares to continue building his wealth.
