Joe Rogan once contrasted Elon Musk’s minimalist lifestyle with Jeff Bezos’ over-the-top luxury, but a closer look at what the world’s two richest men actually own today reveals a much more nuanced reality.
What Happened: On an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the podcast host shared his admiration—and amusement—about the wildly different ways Musk and Bezos live their billionaire lives.
“When I look at billionaires and how I like billionaires to behave, there’s two I really love,” Rogan said. “I love Elon because he’s f***ing crazy and he lives in a $50,000 house and he has people drive him around everywhere—he doesn’t own anything… And then Jeff Bezos, who’s balling out of control… They have to take a f***ing bridge apart because he wants to get his giant yacht through it.”
Rogan was referring to reports about Bezos’ $500 million megayacht, Koru, which made headlines in 2022 when builders requested to dismantle a historic bridge in the Netherlands to allow it to pass.
Meanwhile, Musk was gaining attention for pledging in 2020 to “own no house” and selling off his multi-million-dollar real estate portfolio to focus on SpaceX and his Mars ambitions.
But while Rogan’s admiration paints Musk as a wandering billionaire without a home and Bezos as a superyacht-owning magnate, reports from the last couple of years tell a different story.
Court filings from December 2023, uncovered during Musk’s custody dispute with former partner Grimes, revealed that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had quietly bought a nearly $7 million home in Austin, Texas, in February 2022, reported Business Insider.
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Musk said in the filings that he purchased the property after the location of his previous rental became public.
“In February 2022, I bought the home on [redacted] where [redacted] and I still live,” Musk stated in the filing. Grimes and their children also lived at the residence from April to August 2023, according to the documents.
Though the property was purchased through an LLC and never publicly listed, real estate records and local accounts point to a nearly 7,000-square-foot home, built in 2017 and previously valued at around $4.5 million before being sold in 2022.
As for Bezos, the billionaire’s shift from Honda-driving CEO to luxury connoisseur is well-documented. In a 1999 60 Minutes interview, Bezos—then worth billions—was still driving a 1997 Honda Accord. “This is a perfectly good car,” he told the interviewer.
But over the years, Bezos has significantly upgraded his lifestyle. In addition to Koru, Bezos also owns a growing real estate empire. In 2023, he purchased a $79 million mansion in South Florida’s exclusive “Billionaire Bunker,” just months after buying a neighboring $68 million property.
His car collection is also worth an estimated $20 million and includes rare and exotic models such as the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, Bugatti Veyron Mansory, and W Motors Lykan HyperSport.
Musk and Bezos currently hold the top two ranks on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, with the Tesla CEO having a net worth of $312 billion and the Amazon founder $217 billion.
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