How to Make a $1B Salary Just Sitting Around

It's nice work if you can get it: Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will make $1 billion in 2024 without actually working, reports CNN. It's all thanks to his Microsoft dividends: The company just announced it will pay $3 in dividends per share next year, and Ballmer has a boatload of them. By the calculation of Markets Insider, the 67-year-old will make at least $999.6 million, but it expects the total to be even higher when all is said and done because the company has been steadily increasing payouts for nearly two decades.

Ballmer is currently the fifth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $131 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. After becoming employee No. 30 at Microsoft in 1980, Ballmer rose to become CEO in 2000 before stepping down in 2014, per Markets Insider. One footnote to the big haul in 2024: CNN estimates he'll have to pay about $200 million in taxes on it. (More Steve Ballmer stories.)