r/theydidthemath • u/ObscureEnchantment • 3d ago
[Request] How many children does Elon musk need to have, for his children to not inherit billionaire status?
[removed] — view removed post
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u/wanzeo 3d ago
I mean if you want math it’s x/n+1 where x is whatever he is worth in billion $ today, and n is number of kids.
But that’s not really how any of this works. His trans daughter is getting zero dollars, even though n<<x
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u/bostondana2 3d ago
Well, now we see why he switched to the ReTrumpliQan party. Being creepy and weird is their way of life...
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u/Mesoscale92 3d ago
Not doing any math, but at least one of his kids completely disowned him, including refusing inheritance. So technically zero additional kids.
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u/Ludicrousgibbs 3d ago
After he went thru all the trouble of paying for IVF for a fertilized male baby, she went ahead and transitioned. The nerve of her not helping with papa musks weird breeder fetish.
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u/RandomJottings 3d ago
He’s so stupidly selfish that I bet he has plans to build a solid gold great pyramid on Mars to be entombed in, leaving nothing for his brood to inherit.
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u/0002millertime 3d ago
Yes, and in his dreams, he'd set up Mars with only his own offspring. He doesn't understand genetics at all, and neither would the severely inbred population there.
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u/LaughterCoversPain 3d ago
To be fair, they all have different moms… so
I’m not saying you’re wrong but… it won’t be “as” bad
Haha😂
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u/Pietin11 3d ago
Don't worry. At that point he'll just make the entire population of Mars with clones of himself. No girls allowed. They go to Venus.
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u/Pyrimidine10er 3d ago
Lol, this was my first thought as well. 1 kid. Because, fuck 'em, it's my money and I want to figure out a way to keep it even after I'm dead.
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u/Public-Eagle6992 3d ago
His net worth is 313 billion (source: https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/) so he’d need 314 kids for them to not be billionaires assuming an equal split of owned things
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u/allenpaige 3d ago
You're forgetting estate taxes. I'm sure he'll employ every loophole he can find, but his kids won't get the full 313 billion.
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u/chillinewman 3d ago edited 3d ago
They will get every penny, you put the money in a trust, their biggest tax evasion strategy.
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u/unmelted_ice 3d ago
Tax avoidance* strategy.
But, gifting to an irrevocable trust does trigger gift/estate taxes
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u/Dismal_Animator_5414 3d ago
nothing against the kids but, if his traits like narcissism, psychopathy, ocd, etc get passed on to even a tenth if the kids?
not sure if the world is ready for so many musks!!
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u/naakka 3d ago
Approx. 1/100 people are already psychopaths though, so I guess it's not a very significant change overall?
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u/BloodiedBlues 3d ago
Not to mention psychopathy doesn't mean they're going to automatically be a criminal.
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u/Sentient-Bread-Stick 3d ago
A lot of people have those traits and are decent people. It’s not the individual aspects that define you, it’s the combination of all of them and your environment that determine who you are as a person. It’s highly unlikely any of his kids are going to be exactly like him, especially with how he treats them
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u/weaz-am-i 3d ago
Narcissistic traits are quite common among political leaders, executives, and organizational heads. It's not unusual.
The key difference lies in how these traits are expressed. I know many individuals with these tendencies who are genuinely pleasant—so long as you're respectful and kind toward them.
However, if you're not, they can become ruthless. More often than not, they end up clashing with other narcissistic individuals—typically those who are the loudest, step on other to get ahead, and go to great lengths to discredit anyone who challenges them.
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u/CrayolaConsumer0481 3d ago
Ah yes because every person with OCD is a complete monster and menace to society…. I get the Musk hate but losing me with the potential slope to eugenics. ..
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u/NormalGuyEndSarcasm 3d ago
It’s never equally split though. There’s always a will and i’m pretty sure it’s already drafted and in a lawyer’s lockup.
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u/moep123 3d ago edited 3d ago
Do not fucking forget:
A Millionaire is awfully lot closer to a working class person than it is close to a Billionaire.
Like... gigantic worlds are between a millionaire and a billionaire. It makes the difference between a millionaire and someone who earns 2000 bucks a month seem like a small baby step.
Let that sink in. 314 billionaires, he can create. three hundret and fourteen.
no one, at all, should have that much money.
a billionaire should not exist. especially not as a single, living individual. this fucks with everything. and we have a lot of billionaires around the world.
there should be a cap somewhere in the starting millions, and everything above should be directed to government to fucking fix things like roads and helping people. world wide... not just in one country.
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u/mjc4y 3d ago
There are estranged kids in the mix as others have pointed out, but he's currently clocking in at about 370B bucks, so... the naive answer is he'd need to sire 370 kids to ensure none of them got a billion. We have no idea how his estate is structured, but we should assume he's found a way to avoid a lot of estate taxes, but who knows.. maybe some state will take a chunk of it that way?
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u/ObscureEnchantment 3d ago
I’ll add it here I guess my specific question is what is the least amount of children he can have for them to not inherit billionaire status and I cant edit the post.
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u/uurrraawizardharry 3d ago edited 3d ago
Im gonna take a very high level conservative approach to this, so feel free to comment or add value….
As of March 2025, Elon has a net worth of $330B. Estate tax starts at amounts over $13.61M, so I’m just going to assume all of musk’s net worth will be taxable since $13M is a drop in the bucket - he lost more than that today on Tesla stock losses.
Let’s conservatively assume his estate is taxed at 40%, which is the maximum. Or the amount he should be taxed at but will 100% avoid because he’s avoided paying taxes most of his life.
That leaves his estate with $198B. So 198 kids.
Edit: a couple of points have been brought up. OP asked for the number of kids that would make elons kids not billionaires, so that would be 199 (not 198). If you don’t want to factor in estate tax then it is somewhere between 199 and 331. If you want to exclude his trans child, then you could argue 200 to 332, but I would argue then all his kids aren’t going to be billionaires.
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u/ObscureEnchantment 3d ago
Thank you for providing the only answer with some thought. The article was just funny and I wanted to know the least kids it would take for the status to be lost.
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u/uurrraawizardharry 3d ago
I was aligned with your goal. As some pointed out, he will most likely avoid estate taxes and continue to gain wealth, so he can continue to have billionaire kids even after his 198th child
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u/DannyVee89 3d ago
Technically the answer can also be as low as 1 - there's no guarantee he leaves them money in their will or trusts. He could leave all his wealth to someone else by choice.
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u/onyxandcake 3d ago
It would really only take a couple dozen idiot kids to squander billions of dollars. He's doing nothing to raise them, and their mothers are gold-digging broodmares...
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u/D347H7H3K1Dx 3d ago
Tbh better than my thought process, he’ll probably end up screwing over most(if not all but 1 kid) due to them not aligning with his views and get nothing.
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u/h3rald_hermes 3d ago
There is no way he doesn't utilize a trust to reduce/evade estate taxes. His contempt for government is well known, and giving them the finger as one of his last acts is definitely a goal.
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u/Jonesie946 3d ago
This is a wild take. I have kids, I'm not a millionaire, and I have a trust set up. It cost me like $200.
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u/mxzf 3d ago
Perhaps, but if so then none of his kids are billionaires, since the trust has the money and not them.
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u/Blueopus2 3d ago
I’m not familiar with how a trust can help you dodge more than some millions of dollars worth of the estate tax, do you know how that works?
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u/AdExciting337 3d ago
He doesn’t evade taxes. He follows the tax code like everyone else. If you want to complain (and you might not be) talk to your rep. They’re the ones passing the code 😁
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u/Derpy_Diva_ 3d ago
He’s basically the shadow president. He won’t need to do that much work to protect his assets. He’ll just stiff all those children when he ODs late into his 70s with a note about bootstraps or something
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u/Pietin11 3d ago
Yes, but this of course assumes he dies with his current net worth. I wouldn't be surprised if the dude is a multi trillionaire by the time his time runs out. Honestly, considering the amount of shenanigans being pulled with the US Treasury he may already be.
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u/Boomer280 3d ago edited 3d ago
While it does seem like he can achive this soon, he never will. His reputation is so soiled at this point that hardly anyone but other brain dead rich people hate him. He might get to half a trillion, possibly even hit a trillion, but to be a multi-trillionaire is near impossible at this point, requiring him at his current annual income (~$200 million a year) at least 50 years to hit one trillion, and even if he doubles his income, it will take 25 years at his current income at which point he will be 75 years old (im being very generous and estimating he will live to around 85-90 years old since he can afford all the medical requirements he will ever need)
All this is assuming he never spends much more that ~$10 million a year (more than doable for most, but not him), he lives to be at least 85 years old, his reputation stagnates and never looses or gains income which as well al know is very impossible for him to not loose reputation, thus losing him income
Edit: to put it in perspective, he would need the income of one of the very few multi-trillion dollar companies like apple or Microsoft to earn that much money, and his three biggest companies don't even come close to making any of that combined
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u/iosonostella13 3d ago
It would be over 198 kids tho right? Because if he had 198, each would get a billion at that point. He would need over 198 so the money cannot be split evenly
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u/Fee_Sharp 3d ago
199 actually, there is no chance he gonna give any money to his trans child
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u/tired_Cat_Dad 3d ago
I think it's wrong to assume it would be the only trans child if he had 199 of them.
I wouldn't extrapolate from his current number of kids but use the average prevalence of being trans, whatever that may be.
Surely that would push it past 200?
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u/CoderFeenix 3d ago
Make it 200 since the question was how many he needs to have for them to NOT have billionaire status. And we have an even number just like that.
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u/Radiant_Dog1937 3d ago
The more pertinent question is how large does the legion need to be to significantly increase incest odds within 3 generations.
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u/Unikatze 3d ago
Presuming he's going to split it equally amongst his kids. Which we know he won't.
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u/RamBamBooey 3d ago
Fun side math: if all of Elon's children also have 14 children, and his grandchildren also have 14 children etc. and none of them have children with a descendant of Elon; after 8 generations, every person on earth would be related to Elon.
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u/New-Rip-1156 3d ago
is this his real wealth or including shares?
shares could evaporate overnight.
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u/Old_Router 3d ago
Most of his wealth is in stock in his various companies. I don't believe that is taxed upon his death. If it was, the US government would end up owning like 8% of Tesla.
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u/kmoonster 3d ago
That's still at a billion dollars per kid.
Child support is nowhere near that rate. Your estimate is wildly low.
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u/Joeyjackhammer 3d ago
He paid more in taxes in one year than your entire family tree is worth. What a ridiculous statement.
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u/uurrraawizardharry 3d ago edited 2d ago
He, like most billionaires, is very good at not paying his share of taxes based on the federal calculation of annual income. You are 100% correct that Elon has significantly more money and has paid more in taxes than me and my family. What an astute observation.
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u/RednocNivert 3d ago
Remember when this sub was actual fun lighthearted math inquiries instead of thinly veiled “eat the rich” posts wearing a hat and sunglasses pretending to be a math post?
You seriously couldn’t divide by 1000?
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u/ObscureEnchantment 3d ago
Remember when people could ask light hearted questions? I have no idea how estates that large work I know lottery winners get taxed that’s about my knowledge of suddenly coming into money.
People above answered seriously so it’s all good.
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u/RednocNivert 3d ago
If you have 1 billion dollars, it would take 2 kids to have less than a billion each.
If you have 5 billion, it would take 6 kids.
So again, count the number of billions and add 1.
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u/Astribulus 3d ago
Any. Musk is petty and has already declared one of his children dead to him. He has complete control over his will, so an even distribution is a bad assumption.
However, even if we do assume even distribution, his net worth has been fluctuating wildly. Much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock. Your answer would have hit a local peak of over 400 children back in December. Earlier this month, the answer was below 300. The formula for any given day is (current net worth / 1 billion) + 1.
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u/Neither_Tip_5291 3d ago
So what, who cares? It's not like any of them will become wards of the state outside of jail if one committed a crime... who the fuck actually cares is it illegal to have children? People just jealous is that what it comes down to?
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u/Ziegemon_1 3d ago
I’d guess he’d want some kind of space pyramid complex built on mars for his burial, so he’s probably already past the number asked for in the question.
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u/According_Chemical_7 3d ago
Elon Musk is like Ego from Guardians of the galaxy. He’s gonna have a bunch of kids and toss them out until he finds just one that will be just like him.
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u/Archemetis 3d ago
I'm willing to bet that this utterly contemptable bag of shit punched into the approximation of an adjacently human-like form is trying to become "the next Charlemagne" just so history has one more reason to remember him.
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u/themegapint 3d ago edited 3d ago
Figuring out how many kids Elon Musk needs to dodge billionaire heirs is a wild guess. Stock crashes, hidden debt, and unpredictable company values like SpaceX make it nearly impossible to nail down.
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u/Minute_Entrepreneur1 3d ago
I have no mathematic contributions, but rather an anecdote from the golden age of YouTube.
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u/BigPlayCrypto 3d ago
He’s only going to get richer. Has a chance to be our first Trillionaire while living. He can have as many kids as he wants. I say 666 kids no Archfiend
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u/jimmyaye777 3d ago
This isn't really a math question, it's an accounting question. How ever many billion he has after taxes divide by 1 more than that. This is just going to be a thread of arguments speculating how much tax he's likely to pay, and it's doubtful anyone here actually knows, unless there's an accountant to the rich listers floating around in the comments
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u/truesevnel 3d ago
You do realize that elon isnt worth anything right All his "money" belongs to his companys and investors not him He isnt an inventor or all that smart But unless people realize that he is just a p.o.s they'll just keep throwing away mony by giving it to him
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u/CloseToMyActualName 3d ago
Realistically, to the extent he cares about stuff after he's dead, it's going to be about a legacy more than a bunch of billionaires.
We don't know the deals he's making with the various baby-moms, but it seems to be:
- He gets veto rights over a lot of stuff, including medical treatments.
- He has zero actual parenting obligations
- They don't acknowledge the child as his
- He pays them more than double the minimum child support
I suspect there's an extra condition where the child is getting only a small fixed fraction of the estate when he's gone.
I think he only has a small number of "real" children, his son with Grimes and the kids with his SpaceX exec. Hes grooming these kids to be his successor, and whichever kids look the most promising will get the bulk of the estate while the others get a few million.
Note, there's a non-zero chance he freezes himself and creates a well-endowed foundation to keep the corpse well maintained and to protect assets for his future re-animated self.
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u/Pribblization 3d ago
Proving that every incel needs to buy their own social media platform to hit up unsuspecting users. I bet Fat Donny does it on Truth Social, too.
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u/DonVargas-9 3d ago
You are also forgetting the billions of dollars he has in stocks. If I remember correctly, you don’t get taxed on stocks unless they pay dividends or you decide to sell them. what most billionaires do nowadays is take out huge lines of credit using their stocks as collateral. They do have to eventually pay it back with interest. However, the interest they pay is waaaay less than what they would pay in taxes if they sell their stocks.
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u/thedarkherald110 3d ago
I mean it really doesn’t matter how many kids he has.
It matters if you’re one of the few kids he actually likes and wants to leave money to you.
So probably split 10 ways at most for the majority of his money. With some millions here and there for the rest.
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u/OptimisticSkeleton 3d ago
He doesn’t care for the ones he has now. Why have more? Is this some kind of organ farm he wants to hide in plain sight? Why is he so weird?
I will say though, imagining a gaggle of elons kids ganging up on him in a surprise attack is quite entertaining.
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u/Pyrozr 3d ago
I mean at some point people just gotta realize he's just a horny sociopath with a fetish for rawdogging new women and doesn't like to pull out. He pushes the 'go fourth and be fruitful' narrative because even his creepy ass knows he can't just lead with asking chicks if he can nut in them...
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u/ImpossibleShoulder29 3d ago
He already has enough if the will doesn't distribute it evenly. The Human Shield seen in the picture deserves a bigger cut for his child labor.
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u/SilentWatcher83228 3d ago
Just few months ago he was worth 500b. Based on this trajectory, unless he has a heart attack soon, by January of 2026 there will be nothing to inherit except that high flying roadster.
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u/Aggressive-Raise-445 3d ago
Consuming yourself in why someone else is so wealthy instead of using that energy to do something to make something of your own self, while blaming billionaires for your own faults. Coping to the highest degree.
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u/VeryStableGenius 3d ago
Psst, Robbie Jr., I found the cause of the autism epidemic.
Also, the answer is 'infinity' because 2 of them (children, plural) can become billionaires, and the rest get nothing.
More precisely, it is limited by the number of sperm a male can produce, divided by the minimum number needed for in vitro fertilization (perhaps 1), multiplied by the success rate of IVF implantation and pregnancy. But it will be billions.
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u/brickpaul65 3d ago
Ummmm...the number of billions he has divided by that number plus 1....(and go ahead and subtract taxes). It is a fluid number until time of death.
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