Jordan Rosenfeld
3 min read
It’s hard not to imagine all the ways the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, could use his vast wealth to make other people’s lives easier. While the perks of free-market capitalism don’t require him to do so, such thought experiments are hard to avoid.
Find Out: If Trump Eliminates the Department of Education, Do You Still Have To Pay Your Student Loans?
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Take student loan debt, for example. While federal student loans are not as predatory as private lenders, with the average interest rate currently holding at around 6.8% for a federal loan versus a private loan, which can hit as high as 15% or more, many feel that students should not be saddled with ever-mounting interest to get a good education.
To take this thought experiment further, GOBankingRates figured out how much student loan debt Elon Musk could pay off (and for how many people) and still remain a billionaire.
As of Jun. 20, 2025, Elon Musk’s net worth weighed in at $410.5 billion, according to Forbes. That’s more money than almost anyone can conceive of or remotely spend! To put this in context, it would take a person earning $100,000 per year over four million years to earn that much money, if such a thing were possible.
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In the U.S., as of the end of 2024, outstanding student loan debt totaled over $1.77 trillion dollars. Trillion is a number so big it almost sounds fake, like something a child made up. Around 42.7 million people collectively hold that debt. Now, outstanding debt doesn’t mean it’s in default, only that it’s being paid slowly, monthly and sometimes in forbearance. Some of it may be in collections, however.
Of that $1.77 trillion, 92.2% is comprised of federal student loans, according to the Education Data Initiative, with another nearly 8% in privately held loans.
If you carve away 92.2% of $1.77 trillion you get around $1.63 trillion. And with 42.7 million people carrying federal debt, the average federal student loan debt balance is around $38,375 per person. For easier math, let’s round down to $38,000.
If Elon Musk kept just $1.5 billion of his fortune, maintaining billionaire status, he could pay off 10,789,473 people’s federal loans.
Given recent attempts by the U.S. government to forgive or even forestall student loans, it’s nice to imagine a world in which the world’s richest man puts his money toward making life more affordable for the average American in service of education. A person can dream.
