Is Bill Gates' net worth over 82 billion?

Answer 1

No, at his highest net worth he was worth around $100bil. It is now invested mostly into charities but he doesn't have access to that money so that's not part of his net worth... His net worth as of 2008 is US$58 Billion.

Actually technically he is. He has about $53 billion dollars left in Microsoft & a few small investments but his charity Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or something like that is worth about about 30 -40 billion dollars of his money from selling stock over the years. Because he has donated about half his fortune to his charity it technically is no longer under his control for person use as least & thus not officially counted as part of his net worth anymore. But since he still does control the money you could make a case that he still is worth more then $83 billion since he owns & controls the charity too but again he can't use it's money anymore for personal use. The charity of course does invest to help fund more causes & has some administrative costs namely the fact that Bill's father runs the charity on Bill's behalf but the costs are small for any charity but especially one as large as it is. Warren Buffets donation assuming he died in the next few months would about double the Charity's value. Its hard to know exactly how much money is in the charity since they are private & not regulated to announce publicly how much they have or spend each year. But for years Bill has sold shares I believe on a daily basis to help diversify but also to help fund the charity. I read somewhere where Bill has a personal broker who's sole job is to sell X amount of shares regularly regardless of price to fund the charity & other smaller investments. Though if he does like Buffet all but a minor fraction of his wealth would go directly to the charity. Many CEOs regularly sell to diversify their holdings though they must be approved by regulator bodies before hand.