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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 171 Johann Rupert|# 173 David Velez ➡

# 172 Ernest Garcia II 

$11.7B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/25/2024
$473.4M (4.04%)

# 172 Ernest Garcia II 

$11.7B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/25/2024
$473.4M (4.04%)
Source of WealthUsed Cars
Age67
ResidenceTempe, Arizona
Marital StatusMarried
EducationDrop Out, University of Arizona
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$7.30B
Ernest Garcia II
Ernest Garcia II
United States
Net worth: $11.7B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Early Life

Ernest García II was born on May 1, 1957, in the United States.
He is the son of Ernest Garcia, a former mayor of Gallup, New Mexico, and a co-owner of a liquor store.
García dropped out of college but later earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona.

Career

In 1990, at the age of 33, García pleaded guilty to a felony bank fraud charge related to the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.
He acquired Ugly Duckling, a bankrupt rent-a-car franchise, in 1991 and merged it with his finance company, transforming it into a company selling and financing used cars for sub-prime buyers.
García took Ugly Duckling public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1996.
In 2002, García and the former CEO took the company private and renamed it DriveTime.
He is the owner and operator of DriveTime Automotive, one of the nation's largest used car retailers, and a major shareholder of Carvana, an online platform for selling used cars.

DriveTime Automotive Group

Operations
Business Model: Focuses on selling previously owned vehicles to car-buyers and providing in-house financing, including subprime lending, using a proprietary credit scoring model.
Vehicle Acquisition: Purchases approximately 150,000 cars annually at auctions.
Quality Control: Subjects purchased cars to a 14-day inspection process at 24 inspection centers, with necessary repairs made before sending vehicles to dealerships.
Rejection Rate: About 8% of cars bought at auction do not pass inspection and are not sold through dealerships.

History
Origins: Started as Ugly Duckling, a rent-a-car business in Tucson, Arizona, in 1977.
Renaming: Rebranded as DriveTime in 2002.
Expansion: Expanded from 75 to 100 locations over two years, mostly in the Southwestern United States and in Florida, Georgia, and Virginia, by 2004.
Achievements: Ranked 3,793 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in 2014. Ranked No. 15 on Computerworld's 100 Best Places to Work in IT list in 2015.

Spin Offs
Bridgecrest Acceptance Corporation: Launched in April 2016 to service installment contracts for DriveTime and affiliated companies.
Carvana: Majority-owned by DriveTime, Carvana is an online used car retailer founded in 2012.
GO Financial: Founded in 2011 as a DriveTime division, offering subprime retail financing, before becoming its own business in 2013.
SilverRock Group: Spun off in June 2015, providing auto insurance, vehicle service contracts, and extended warranties.

Legal Issues and Controversies

In 1990, García pleaded guilty to a bank fraud charge related to his dealings with Lincoln Savings & Loan, spending three years on probation.
In 1999, he was involved in lawsuits alleging abuse of his position to profit from a real estate deal.

Personal Life

Ernest García II is married and resides in Tempe, Arizona.
His son, Ernest Garcia III, serves as the CEO of Carvana.
He owns an apartment in New York's Trump Tower.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Ernest Garcia II?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.11% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Ernest Garcia II's net worth of $11.7B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 52.22% compared to 16.62% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Ernest Garcia II is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Ernest Garcia II, Used Cars is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey