Centibillionaire Bill Gates has always been a man of his word. How do we know that? Because in a 1994 Playboy interview, years before his first child was born in April 1996, Gates said he would give away 95% of his wealth and leave about 1% to his children. Now, more than three decades later, he’s kept that promise. Despite having a net worth of about $107 billion and three children, Jennifer, Phoebe, and Rory, there’s no chance of any of them receiving more than 1% as inheritance. This was first made public by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2014. Earlier this year he put it on the Figuring Out with Raj Shamani podcast, “In my case, my kids got a great upbringing and education, but [they will get] less than 1 percent of the total wealth, because I decided it wouldn’t be a favor to them.”
On the TED stage, the then power couple said they were clear with their kids that most of the money would go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, not to them. The Microsoft cofounder had already made that personal decision nearly a decade earlier, and Melinda shared his conviction. “It’s a ridiculous figure,” Gates had said back in 1994. “But remember, I’m going to give 95% of it away. Don’t tell people to write me letters. I’m saving it for when I’m 50. That’s a lot to give away, and it’s going to take time.”
Of course, Gates understood that even 1% of his wealth, which comes to about $1.07 billion, would more than suffice. Divided among his three children, that’s roughly $350 million each. He was a billionaire long before they were born, and while his heart was set on philanthropy, he made sure his children never lacked anything. “I don’t believe in burdening my children with that,” he once said. “They’ll have enough. They’ll be comfortable.” And comfortable they certainly were. The Gates children grew up in the family’s spectacular $130 million home, nicknamed Xanadu 2.0, which features a trampoline room, a stream stocked with salmon, and tech-laden amenities throughout.
His firstborn, Jennifer Gates, received a graduation gift worthy of her passion, a 124-acre equestrian estate in North Salem, New York, purchased off-market in 2018 via a family trust for nearly $16 million. Meanwhile, the youngest, Phoebe, inherited her father’s entrepreneurial drive rather than his fortune. She co-founded the fashion-tech platform Phia with her former Stanford roommate, Sophia Kianni, and has proudly taken no financial help from her billionaire parents.
The only help Bill offered Phoebe came in the form of encouragement and presence. The 69-year-old happily donned a worker’s hat and spent a day handling customer-service requests for Phia. “When your daughter asks if you’ll work a customer-support shift, the only right answer is yes,” Gates shared. True to form, that “yes” has never extended to money.
Gates believes his real legacy isn’t measured in dollars but in impact. “Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point,” he once told The Telegraph. “Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.” And that’s exactly what he has done, proving that some fortunes are best spent, not passed down.
