Here’s How Long It Will Take For You to Hit the Forbes Billionaire List

The Forbes Rich List is out, and as we slice and dice the billionaires around the world, a few trends have emerged: the number of Chinese billionaires has doubled since last year; Moscow has more billionaires per capita than any other city; and 2010 was good to most really rich people! 648 billionaires saw an increase in wealth while only 160 saw decreases. {LA Times} Guess those gains had to come from somewhere.

What we really wanted to know though, is what gives you the best chance at making a future Forbes billionaire list, how long will it take to get there, and how stiff is the competition? Here are the number of billionaires in each industry tracked by Forbes, and the average age of the billionaires.

Industry	Number of Billionaires	Total Net Worth	Average Age
Automotive	18	$63.7 billion	64
Construction & Engineering	31	$76.6 billion	58
Diversified	83	$253.1 billion	60
Energy	91	$398.2 billion	59
Fashion and Retail	129	$628 billion	65
Finance	80	$215.8 billion	62
Food and Beverage	66	$210.5 billion	65
Gaming	14	$57.2 billion	67
Health care	57	$105.7 billion	61
Investments	139	$525.7 billion	62
Logistics	30	$94.4 billion	63
Manufacturing	87	$251.3 billion	61
Media	66	$244.2 billion	67
Metals & Mining	48	$335 billion	52
Real Estate	96	$305.1 billion	65
Service	49	$110.7 billion	67
Sports	17	$26.9 billion	66
Technology	89	$405.4 billion	52
Telecom	20	$137 billion	59

It’s worth noting that there is some overlap in categories, and some people who we might place in one category appear in another or more than one. For example, Peter Thiel is listed under investments, though we’d probably put him in the technology category. There’s also not a clean way to account for wealth inherited from family members, or divided among them. There are multiple Benettons who appear in the Fashion and Retail category individually, for example, but Gucci owner Francois Pinault’s family is grouped together even though multiple members of the family are billionaires.

That said, for the non-exact nature of figuring this out, if you don’t want to wait for your fortune it probably comes as no surprise that technology is your best bet and is tied for the lowest average billionaire age (thanks, Facebook billionaires) with metal and mining. So if it’s young money you’re after, pick up a mine or two while you wait for your social network or search engine to catch on. You’ll be making the other billionaires feel like slackers in no time.

That’s not where the biggest money is though. Perhaps surprising to some is that fashion and retail (which includes grocery stores), is the category that accounts for the most cumulative wealth. More than investments, more than finance and more than technology. Selling actual, physical stuff to consumers is still your best bet of making big money. Oh, and for those who noticed Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficking leader Joaquin Guzman Loera on the list? {Forbes} Stick to the legal, actual, physical stuff like fashion or food. Not only is the life expectancy better, in the long run so are the profits. You never know thought, maybe Loera’s diversified by blinging out weapons.

Now what if it’s easy (relatively speaking) wealth you’re after? Gaming has relatively few billionaires, and on average they’re kind of old. The amount of competition is relatively small, most will be retiring in general or retiring to that great casino in the sky, so this is a prime market to go after.

How to go after it? Well, that’s up to you and probably a bit of genetic fortune. If you missed out on being born into a dynasty, your next best bet is to marry into one. If that still doesn’t work, there’s always the do-it-yourself model. We’ll give you a few pointers on that once we appear on the list rather than doing the grunt work of analyzing it. Off to the single billionaires list it is then.