Small Habit That Changed Their Finances: Elon Musk saved up money as a child to buy a gadget that taught him a life changing business lesson

Before Elon Musk built Tesla and SpaceX and became one of the world's most closely watched entrepreneurs, he was a child in South Africa saving money for something he wanted badly, a computer. According to Walter Isaacson's biography 'Elon Musk', Musk saved his allowance for months and persuaded his father to pay the remaining half of the cost.

The purchase gave the young Musk access to a Commodore VIC-20, a computer with about eight kilobytes of memory and he also bought books that taught him how to write programs.

Years later, Musk recalled the purchase and what followed in a 2009 interview with Knowledge at Wharton. His account offers an early glimpse into how he began turning an interest in computers into something that could make money.

Elon Musk's early entrepreneurship

Musk said personal computers were only beginning to become available when he was growing up in South Africa. He had already developed an interest in computer games and wanted to learn how to create them himself.

“I saved up money, some combination of saved money and bugging my father,” Musk told Knowledge at Wharton.

That eventually allowed him to buy the Commodore VIC-20 and programming books. Rather than simply using the computer for games, Musk taught himself programming from the books.

The purchase therefore became more than a childhood indulgence. It gave him the tools to experiment with software and eventually create something he could sell.

Money making lessons

At around 12, Musk created a video game called Blastar and The game was based on a space battle and involved players navigating a dangerous environment while fighting alien spacecraft.

Musk later told Knowledge at Wharton that he discovered there was a way to make money from programming. He wrote and sold two programs, saying they were not worth very much by adult standards but represented “several hundred dollars effectively in spending power” to him as a child.

Blastar also became a documented early example of his programming ability. In 1984, its source code was published in PC and Office Technology, and Musk received $500 for creating it, according to the supplied reporting.

Technology reporter Ashlee Vance later highlighted the forgotten game in his 2015 biography of Musk. Software engineer Tomas Lloret subsequently revived the code and made Blastar playable online.

Musk's own lesson from his first sale

When asked whether the experience had taught him anything that stayed with him during his entrepreneurial career, Musk initially played down its importance.

But he did identify one lesson from selling his early programs.

“If you make something that people want, they’ll pay you for it. That’s probably it,” Musk said in the Knowledge at Wharton interview.

That principle would later become relevant to a career spanning multiple businesses, although Musk himself did not describe his childhood programming experience as the direct blueprint for his later companies.

His early years also included other ways of earning and handling money. Musk said he had odd jobs such as delivering newspapers and experimented with stocks at around 15 or 16, eventually tripling a small initial stake before losing interest in the activity.

Childhood finances have also been debated

Musk's account of saving for his first computer comes amid long-running disputes over how much financial support he received from his family.

In a 2023 post, Musk rejected claims that he inherited significant wealth or received a large financial gift from his father. He said he grew up in a “lower, transitioning to upper, middle-income situation” and that his father did not provide meaningful financial support after high school.

Musk has also disputed claims surrounding an alleged emerald mine linked to his father. He said there was no objective evidence that the mine existed.

His mother, Maye Musk, separately has stated that when the family moved to Toronto in 1989, they initially lived in a one-bedroom apartment before moving into a rent-controlled apartment.

From a childhood computer to a vast business empire

Musk's fortune would eventually come from businesses including Tesla and SpaceX, alongside other ventures. Reuters reported in June 2026 that he had become the world's first trillionaire, with Forbes at that point estimating his fortune at roughly $1.1 trillion following SpaceX's public listing.

The value of his wealth has since fluctuated with company share prices and changes to how his holdings are calculated. But the childhood episode remains striking for a simpler reason: one of Musk's earliest major purchases was a computer he had to save for, and that computer became the tool through which he taught himself to code, created software and made his first money from programming.