Kim Kardashian is Now a Billionaire on Paper

It’s hard to keep up with the Kardashians’ relationship with Forbes. The magazine once declared Kylie Jenner a billionaire before famously rescinding it. Then, last year, they went ahead and crowned estranged in-law Kanye West an official billionaire, and now they’ve decided his soon-to-be-ex-wife Kim Kardashian is a billionaire, too.

Kim, the keystone of the Kardashian-Jenner industrial complex, was added to the mag’s World’s Billionaire List this morning, after increasing her net worth from an estimated $870 million in October. That’s right, if you’re doing the math at home, in just about five months, Kim’s net worth increased by about 9300 times an average American under-35’s total net worth.

The estimate comes from the success of her two companies, KKW Beauty and Skims. While Kardashian completed a sale of a 20 percent share of KKW Beauty to Coty for $200 million earlier this year, Forbes reported the deal was a bit bloated, but still estimates Kardashian’s remaining 72 percent share is worth about $500 million. Meanwhile, the publication states her stake in Skims is worth about $250 million. Forbes praised the company’s quick decision to pivot to offering more loungewear products during the pandemic. Put together with all of Kim’s other earnings, stocks, investments, and real estate portfolio, that puts her over the $1 billion mark, apparently.

But Forbes’s estimates are notoriously just that: estimates. (See the magazine’s ongoing saga with trying to estimate Donald Trump’s actual net worth, for example). Plus, just because Kardashian’s companies are estimated to be worth that much now, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee she’ll be able to cash out for that amount one day. In other words, there’s no telling what Kardashian’s exact financial situation is at any given moment (though we doubt she’s hurting for cash).

Interestingly, Kardashian has not celebrated or even acknowledged her Forbes status update on social yet. Perhaps because reaching billionaire status doesn’t exactly endear you to the masses at the moment. Just look to Kylie Jenner’s recent Twitter dust-up over a GoFundMe donation for an example of how the designation can backfire.

Obviously, the milestone does set up a rather tantalizing gossip column storyline: Kardashian and West are now both billionaires (by Forbes’s standards anyway) as they head into their divorce. By all accounts, however, the couple seems to be trying their best to avoid a public financial battle.