A Billion Here, a Billion There and Pretty Soon It Adds Up to Real Money

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates may be wealthier than you or I, but he’s not wealthier than Warren Buffett. The Berkshire Hathaway boss has overtaken Gates as the world’s wealthiest man.

According to Forbes, Buffett is worth $62 billion. Gates is worth just $58 billion, which puts him in third place on the publication’s billionaires list behind Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú (but 782 billionaires ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg–YAY!). Interestingly, Gates might have remained richest man in the world had Microsoft not made its hostile bid for Yahoo. (Damn you, Jerry Yang.)

Anyway … for Gates, who’s never really been comfortable with his ranking in Forbes’s annual encomium to obscene wealth, this is likely a welcome dethronement. Asked once if he would be upset if someday he were no longer the world’s richest man, Gates replied, “I wish I wasn’t. There’s nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it.”