World's new richest man made $38,000 a minute in six years to secure title

While most of us are stuck in the conundrum of 'needing to save money' and 'only living once', here's a gentle reminder that the new richest man in the world makes around $38,000 (£31,058) a minute.

Fashion tycoon Bernard Arnault overtook Elon Musk as the world's richest person on Wednesday (7 December).

The Twitter CEO jumped back up to first place, only to then fall back down to second.

It really is hard to keep up.

All we can confirm is, at the time of writing, Forbes' 'Real-Time Billionaires List' states that Bernard Arnault & Family currently sit in first place with $186.2 billion, as Musk's net worth drops by 1.38 percent to $182.8 billion.

Frenchman Arnault has a successful ownership stake in Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy which reportedly brought in $17 billion in revenue during its first quarter of 2021 - a 32 percent increase from the same quarter of the prior year.

The company also owns the likes of Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Bulgari and Tiffany & Co.

Although it seems that the global covid pandemic worked in Arnault's favour.

When the world reopened and travel restrictions were lifted, the company brought in record revenues, with people itching to spend their hard-earned money.

ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

As one would expect, Elon Musk's fall to second place prompted a unsympathetic response from social media.

"If anyone have ever been worthy of the title 'Number 2' it's definitely Elon!!" one person joked.

"Anyway, he is not poor," said another, while a third added, "Poor guy. He must be heartbroken. Where do I send the $8?"

Not everyone was quite so scathing, a another person who said: "Elon Musk would still be the richest man on earth right now if he didn’t spend 44 billion on Twitter to save free speech.

"He did that for us!"

Musk purchased Twitter, earlier this year, for a whopping $44 billion (£38 billion).

At the time, he tweeted: "I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong.

"The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.

"There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society."