I already know that billionaires do not in fact have billions of dollars lying around, rather the money is assets in business, but how come they don’t get all the money when they rack it all up? And what can they do with this “asset” money if they don’t technically have it?
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Being an billionaire doesn’t mean that you have billions of dollars in actual cash.
It just means that, if you add up the value of all your assets, you’ll have a sum of at least one billion.
So, for example, someone like Jeff Bezos doesn’t have however many billions lying in his bank account. He may have a few million?
The rest of his worth is tied up in stuff like his homes, yachts, cars, stock holdings, patents, and whatever else he may have that’s worth money.
As for what they can do with their assets, they can sell them or borrow with them as collateral. Just like how you can take a loan with your car as collateral, Bezos could take out a loan with equivalent stock holdings as collateral.
That’s actually how Elon Musk is going about paying for Twitter – taking a loan (or several loans) with some of his assets acting as collateral.
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