That Tesla boss Elon Musk is the world’s richest man is no secret. But did you know that before becoming the world’s most maverick billionaire, he was a child with the same ambition, determination, and risk tolerance? Proof lies in an incident that took place almost fifty years ago, when a six-year-old Musk, who had been grounded, refused to miss his five-year-old cousin’s birthday party. Any other kid would’ve obeyed and stayed home, but this was Musk, and he was no ordinary child.
The little boy grew up facing severe bullying, including a beating that once left him hospitalized. At the same time, he was a voracious reader who taught himself to program and devoured books endlessly. By the age of twelve, he sold the code for his shoot-’em-up game Blastar to a magazine for about $500. But even before that, he had already shown his relentless determination.
Grounded by his mother, Maye Musk, young Elon asked to ride his bike to the party. Instead of flatly refusing, May discouraged him with law and logic, she told him he needed a license to ride a bike and that the police would stop him. The law-abiding child from Pretoria decided to come up with a plan that would get him there without risking a run-in with the authorities.
So he chose to walk. In a 2013 Fresh Dialogues interview, Musk recalled, “So at first, I was going to take my bike and I told my mom this, which was a mistake and she told me some story about how you needed a license for a bike and the police would stop me. So I wasn’t 100% sure if that was true or not, but I thought I’d better walk just in case. I sort of thought I knew the way, but it was clear across town…10 or 12 miles really quite far, further than I realized actually…So I just started walking to my cousin’s house. It took me about four hours and just as my mom was leaving the party with my brother and sister, she saw me walking down the road and freaked out. I saw she saw me, so I then sprinted to my cousin’s house, just about two blocks away, and climbed a tree and refused to come down.”
At six years old, Musk managed to walk 10 to 12 miles in about four hours. Today, the father of 14 is worth an extraordinary $463 billion. The same four hours that once earned him sore feet have transformed into a value of more than $200 million. Today, with his hour worth over $50 million, it’s no wonder the Austin-based tycoon relies on his fleet of private jets to get from one place to another.
To put it in perspective: the four hours he once spent trudging across Pretoria today could buy him two brand-new Gulfstream G700s, worth about $80 million each, with another $55 million left for crews, hangars, and operations. Musk bought his first jet, a Dassault Falcon 900B, in 2004 and later upgraded to a Gulfstream G650ER, his primary long-range jet. His fleet also includes a Gulfstream G550.
As Musk climbed the ladder of success, so too did the frequency of his flights. From 250 flights in 2018, his tally rose to 355 flights in 2024, according to JetSpy. Skipping the pandemic years and 2025, he has already clocked nearly 1,200 flights. It’s a far cry from the little boy who once walked for hours to reach a party that was already over. What a remarkable twist of destiny: from a child sprinting to a cousin’s house in South Africa to the world’s richest man, whose four hours today equal over $200 million, roughly what an average American worker would earn in nearly 3,800 years.
