Elon Musk turned a roughly $22 million startup payday into an estimated $1 trillion fortune in less than three decades, and the road between those two numbers included a stretch where he was out of cash. This infographic tracks his approximate net worth year by year, from age 28 to age 55. The early climb came from two exits. Musk walked away with about $22 million when Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999, then about $180 million when eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in October 2002. For the next several years his estimated wealth sat between roughly $150 million and $210 million as he funneled that PayPal money into SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. By 2008, at age 37, that bet had nearly wiped him out. Tesla and SpaceX were both burning through money during the financial crisis, and Musk later stated in a court filing that he had run out of cash. On paper he still owned stakes in his companies, but his liquid fortune was essentially gone. The rebound started with Tesla's June 2010 IPO, which ...