Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

How are people able to spend more than what they make, without going into debt?
That's just his base salary for last year.  Keep reading in the article: He also received $1.6 million worth of securit[ies]. Plus, he's probably earned plenty in salary, bonuses, and other compensation in previous years to more than keep up his lifestyle.  He can also sell (relatively) small amounts of the stock he already owns to get millions in cash without raising an eyebrow. how are people able to spend more than what they make, without going into debt? Well, people can't spend more than they have without going into debt. Certainly money can be saved, won, inherited, whatever without being "earned".  Other than that, debt is the only option. That said, MANY "wealthy" people will spend WAY more than they have by going into debt.  This can be done through huge mortgages, personal loans using stock, real estate, or other assets as collateral, etc.  I don't know about Bezos specifically, but it's not uncommon for "wealthy" people to live beyond their means - they just have more assets behind them to secure personal loans, or bankers are more willing to lend them unsecured money because of the large interest rates they can charge.  Their assumption is presumably that the interest they'll pay on these loans is less than the earnings they'll get from the asset (e.g. stock, real estate).  While it may be true in some cases, it can also go bad and cause you to lose everything.