Did you hear?  The World’s 2010 Billionaire List  is out.  Considering they are human just like the rest of us I don’t consider them to be any more special than anyone else – they simply have a sh*tload more money and a certain way of facing money.  Here are a few excerpts that I found interesting in reading about them:

1. Amancio Ortega:  “Railway worker’s son started as a gofer in a shirt store.”
2. Larry Ellison: “Studied physics at U. of Chicago; didn’t graduate.”
3. Li-Ka Shing: “Humble origins: quit school at age 15 to support his family; made plastic flowers that he exported to U.S. in the 1950s.”
4. Sergey Brin – So like Google: “Introduced goats to Google campus lawn last year; animals less harmful to the environment than lawn mower.”
5. David Koch – “pledged $100 million to alma mater (MIT) for cancer research last year. “
6. Jeffrey Bezos – “Former Wall Streeter quit hedge funds before 30th birthday to sell books online from Seattle garage. Founded Amazon.com 1994, public 3 years later; didn’t turn profit until late 2001.”
7. Donald Bren – “Has permanently protected more than half of 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch, creating public parks and trails.” (I plan on doing this, buying large plots of green space in urban areas to stop urban sprawl AND having a good attorney who will win any emminant domain cases along the way)
8. Vladimir Potanin – “became the first Russian billionaire to announce he will transfer his fortune to charity and not his children.” (agreed – train your children to make their own billions and leave a legacy with charity)
9. George Kaiser – “George Kaiser Family Foundation battles cycle of poverty: champions fight against intergenerational poverty; supports community health, public education and incarceration alternatives.”
10. Mark Zuckerberg – (youngest billionaire at 25 and responsible for triggering Facebook addictions )”Fresh-faced entrepreneur launched Facebook from Harvard dorm room in 2004. Left school for Silicon Valley later that year”

The skeptic would argue that some have that money because they “screwed people over” or “they were just luckier than everyone else”.   I tried to find billionaires that were “self made” and I’ll leave their karma to work itself out.  Sadly, all the women I found (at least in the top 100 list) inherited their billions.  I wonder how long before a self-made female billionaire hits the top 100….

Right now “Millionaire” is my milestone objective, specifically, I have a target network worth focus of $50,000,000.  That’s what I am comfortable with setting as a goal.  Then again, recently one of my teachers reminded me that I need to add a zero to that number which then would make it $500,000,000 and then heck at that point I’m half way to a billion   

Don’t stop believing! ~Megha