Who Is The Richest Person In The World?

One of the more interesting questions people have always asked has been who is the richest person on the world? There are instant visuals one gets from imagining having such immense wealth. The exact opposite is actually true about the richest person on the planet, Carlos Slim, a 71 year old telecommunications business man, with a massive 74 Billion dollars to his credit. He owns or has interests in many fortune 500 businesses, including the New York Times, and the Telmex Foundation.  Even though he is the wealthiest man on the planet, he is renowned for his thriftiness, driving an old Mercedes Benz that’s been armored, and living in the same house for over 40 years. He is also famed for having dinner with his family every Monday night, and remaining very family oriented.

In his early years before he became the richest man on earth, at the age of 10, Slim would sell snacks to his friends and family, saving all of the money he made. Later he went to school for engineering and graduated with honors at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. Before his graduation he began to teach math and linear programming. While he was teaching, he acquired his first business venture, a stock brokerage called Inversora Bursatil. The next twenty years consisted of buying companies he thought were underestimated financially, and brining them back to life. He started with real estate, then construction equipment, and later on he dipped his toes into mining and mining equipment. These were his first steps to becoming the richest man on the planet.

In 1982, the Mexican government basically folded, and all of their monopolies faltered. When every other Mexican investor group grabbed their cash and ran, Carlos Slim instead bought many companies including General Tire, a chain of stores and cafeterias, and Reynolds Aluminum, which all brought him in millions of dollars after the economy recovered. His business acumen increased even further, as he bought the Mexican interests in large US businesses including Firestone tires, Hershey’s chocolate, and Denny’s coffee shop to name a few. However, his biggest accomplishment came when he bought a cellphone company, but instead of actually sending the customer’s monthly bills, he pushed for pre-paid cards that allowed the users to use their minutes as they saw fit. This strategy brought the company millions of dollars, and when the internet market crashed in 2000 and many of the cellphone companies fell as well, Carlos Slim again bought up these companies, adding them to his own. This is one of the ways that Slim became the richest man on the planet.

In 1986 Carlos Slim began the Carso Foundation, a charitable foundation that helps impoverished people from all around Latin America, in education and by suring up the infrastructure of Mexico’s economy. A $4 Billion dollar endowment increased its size in 2007, and helped create training systems for the people in Latin America so that they can work in many different fields around the world. Slim also personally donated his money to revitalize the downtown area of Mexico City called Centro Historico. Because of his philanthropy and his charitable ways, he has risen past many American and Arabic billionaires to become the richest person on the planet.

As the richest person in the world, he has slowed down slightly over the years. He still runs the businesses and is consistently buying devalued companies as well, but has allowed his two sons to take over the day-to-day operations of the Carso Foundation. Even though he is the richest person on the planet, everyone always regards him as one of the most down to earth and normal billionaires that has ever lived.