How Forbes crunches the numbers to define the richest Americans: Forbes400
of America’s wealthiest people. Though we’ve been at it a long time, our reporters always dig deep to unearth new details.
When possible, we met with Forbes 400 members in person or spoke with them virtually or by phone. We also interviewed their employees, handlers, asset managers and financial advisers, rivals, peers and attorneys. Uncovering their fortunes required us to pore over thousands of Securities and Exchange Commission documents, court filings, probate records and news articles.
While some billionaires provided documentation for their assets and companies, others were less forthcoming. To value private businesses, we coupled revenue or profit estimates with prevailing price-to-sales, price-to-earnings, or similar ratios for similar public companies and applied a 10% liquidity discount.
Every year we seek to improve our methodology, looking for ways to more accurately uncover and measure the wealth of the country’s richest people. This year we spoke to dozens of experts to adjust how we estimate billionaires’ investment returns, tax rates and dividend payments. To better reflect the money management strategies used by the ultra-wealthy, we adjusted our models to estimate higher returns than previously assumed.
We also amended rules on who is eligible for the list. As in years’ past, we purposely exclude dispersed family fortunes. We continue to list wealth belonging to the immediate family of the living founder of a fortune under the founder’s name. In those cases you’ll see “& family.” But now we’ve also moved to further break up shared fortunes to better focus on individual wealth.
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