Does Rick Ross Really Have $92 Million In His Checking Account?

By on March 5, 2014 in ArticlesEntertainment

No.

What? That wasn't a good enough answer for you? What more do you need to know? You're really gonna make us get into this??? Ughhh. OK fine.

Over the last few days we've received a few angry emails and comments from Celebrity Net Worth visitors who believe our estimate for Rick Ross' net worth is way too low. We currently have Mr. Ross at $28 million. Not exactly a pittance, but according to the angry emails, this number should be raised to $92 million. More precisely, they think the number should be raised to $92,153,183.28. Where are people getting this number? None other than Ricky Rozay himself! Here's what's going on…

On March 3, 2014, Rick Ross released his sixth studio album "Mastermind". The third track of the album is called "Drug Dealers Dream". Not to be picky, but the word "Dealers" in that song title should technically be "Dealer's". That's a possessive noun. This track starts out with an audio recording of one of those automated voices reading a bank checking account balance. The automated voice dryly states: "Please hold while I locate your information. Your checking account balance is $92,153,183.28. This reflects the most current information available on your account." You can hear the track and the song opening on this Spotify embed:

(For this to work you need to have a spotify account, and the app will open if it isn't already)

Clearly the implication here is that Rick Ross called up his bank, selected the option to check his account balance and then recorded the results. All $92 million worth of results. But is this possible? Could Rick Ross really have this much money sitting in checking? Is he following the Floyd Mayweather savings and investment plan? (A few months back, Floyd Mayweather showed a reporter his ATM receipt that had a checking account balance of $125 million.) Or is this just a run-of-the-mill rapper exaggeration?

Rick Ross

Rick Ross / Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

First off, if somehow this brag is true, keeping $92 million in a checking account would be a colossally stupid way to allocate money. Checking accounts might AT MOST earn around 0.50% interest nowadays. The national average is probably closer to 0.10%. Splitting the difference, Rick would be earning just $184,000 in interest per year off his massive wealth. That's not nothing, but as any basic financial planner would explain, taking the money out of checking and putting it into mutual funds, ETFs, maybe a few stocks, should conservatively be able to yield a 5% rate. That would bring Mr. Ross $4.6 million a year from interest alone. If he got lucky with the right hedge fund, Rick might be looking at $10-$15 million.

The second big problem with keeping that much money in checking is the fact that only $500,000 is insured by the FDIC. If Rick's bank goes under, which as we all know isn't exactly impossible nowadays, Rick's money would evaporate overnight without any recourse.

Ok so we've established that keeping $92 million in checking is clearly a bad idea. The more important question is whether or not Rick Ross actually has $92 million in the first place. Our current estimation of Rick's net worth is $28 million. That number might go up in a few weeks when we release our annual list of the richest rappers on the planet, but we're talking about a bump of maybe $5-6 million. Definitely not $62 million. Don't trust us? Well according to Forbes, which we think is a little too conservative with their estimates, Rick earned $6 million in 2012 and $9 million in 2013. That's a grand total of $15 million during what were arguably Rick's peak earning years to date.

Let's also keep in mind that in order to have a checking account balance of $92 million, Rick would conceivably needed to earn a little less than twice that amount before taxes. And that's before he spent a dime on cars, jewelry, houses, private jets, vacations… and biggest expense of them all for Rick: Food. Even if Rick was the most penny-pinching saver in the world, we're still talking about $200-$250 million in earnings over the last 3-4 years, in order to be left with such a gargantuan bank account. Unfortunately, this isn't reality. Even for Mr. Maybach Music himself.

In conclusion, it's pretty safe to say that this is simply one rapper making an extremely over-exaggerated brag.

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