Bill Gates' Not-So-Humble Brag Shows Why His Daughter Is So Out Of Touch

The children of tech billionaire Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates have an interesting relationship with wealth, to say the very least. For starters, Bill has long made it clear that when he eventually dies, his children will only inherit a small fraction of his vast fortune, with the overwhelming majority of it set to go towards charitable causes. Not only that, but Melinda had no interest in raising overly spoiled kids, and made a conscious effort to give hers a childhood reminiscent of her own middle-class upbringing. However, it doesn't really seem like that stuck. Bill and Melinda's daughter Jennifer Gates, for instance, lives a wildly lavish life that can make her seem pretty out of touch. And a not-so-humble brag from Bill makes it abundantly clear that he's feeding into that lifestyle, despite his and Melinda's alleged efforts to combat it.

Bill took a relatively laid-back tone while discussing his massive Seattle home in a January 2025 interview with The Times, but the details he chose to reveal betray just how accustomed he and his family are to living luxuriously, despite the air of modesty. "My house in Seattle, I admit, is gigantic," the Microsoft co-founder said, adding, "My sisters have downsized. I can't. I like the houses I have. My kids like to come back — that is a luxury. I don't cook, I don't make my own bed, but I don't mind if no one has made it — I wouldn't notice." In other words, though Bill doesn't plan on leaving his kids most of what he's worth when he passes away, he certainly doesn't seem to have too many qualms about enabling their expensive lifestyles in the meantime. And this is far from the only example of Bill undermining his ex-wife's middle-class philosophy.

If you want to talk about being "out of touch," you need only look at the wildly expensive graduation gift Bill Gates bought for eldest daughter Jennifer back in 2018. When the Gates heiress graduated from Stanford, her parents bought her a horse ranch in New York valued at just under $16 million, per Architectural Digest. Mind you, it was certainly a thoughtful gift, given that both Jennifer and her husband Nayel Nassar are professional equestrians (in fact, the couple's 2021 wedding took place on the property). Still, it's not exactly a gift that screams "we're raising our kids middle-class." Melinda French Gates can't even claim plausible deniability on this one, seeing as how she and Bill were still married at the time. So, if Jennifer and her siblings are a bit out of touch with the real world, it's hardly a wonder why.

This apparent contradiction aside, Bill has at least remained consistent in his belief that leaving all his money to his children would be a bridge too far. "I don't think that amount of money would be good for them," Bill, who had a personal net worth of about $56 billion at the time, told the Daily Mail in 2011. He added that while his children would be well taken care of in the meantime, they would only receive a "minuscule portion of my wealth," upon his death, meaning they would "have to find their own way." Bill doubled down on this mindset during a 2013 Reddit AMA, writing, "I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them. ... Some people disagree with this but Melinda and I feel good about it." But we suppose a horse farm or too wouldn't hurt.