For the 20th year in a row, Bill Gates has been named Forbes' richest man in America, according to its annual list published on Monday. With the latest numbers in, Bill Gates is not only the man with the most money in the U.S. but he took his spot back as the richest man in the world from Mixico's Carlos Slim. Gates' net worth is placed somewhere around $72 billion.
While many believe that Gates' fortune comes from his hugely successful software company Microsoft, that revnue makes up only one-fifth of his total earnings. The bulk of his money comes from other companies that he is attached to. His investment firm Cascade owns a big chunk of tractor maker Deere & Co., as well as Canadian National Railway and Mexican Coke bottler Femsa, according to Yahoo Finance.
This is not to say that Microsoft is not accounting for a significant sum of Gates' wealth and a big helper in getting him back to his number one position as wealthiest man in the world. Microsoft shares jumped to over $36 following the news of Steve Ballmer's resignation at the end of the year. Those shares are still about $32.
Since diversifying from Microsoft, Gates has made $9.8 billion more since the start of 2013 according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index. It's worth noting that at the beginning of 2013 he was $7 billion richer than he was at the beginning of 2012.
Despite his very generous donations to philanthropic ventures and a recent promise to give most of his wealth away to charity, it seems the tech genius can't seem to stop making wealthy amounts of money.
Gates was one of the founding members of a project called "Giving Pledge," where wealthy people vow to give away the majority of their wealth. Some estimates indicate that Gates has given away at least $28 billion to charitable causes between 2007 and 2012. It's a rare occasion for someone's wealth to grow faster than he or she can give it away, but that seems to be the case for the, now, world's richest man.
