In this article we have featured, How Did Gatsby Make His Money In 2022? In the roaring twenties, Jay Gatsby is a young man who is classified as “new money.” He is referred to as “new money” since he built his own wealth instead of inheriting it from his family, as is the case with “old money.”
Jay Gatsby, on the other hand, did not accrue his wealth in a morally upright manner. A lot of it came from bootlegging, which was illegal at the time due to the prohibition of alcohol, and he also made some money by selling bogus stocks.
Jay Gatsby, despite the fact that he didn’t work hard to obtain his money, was a very honest person when it came to his desires. He wasn’t content despite his considerable wealth. He could not be content unless he had his one and only Daisy at his side.
When Gatsby wanted to see Daisy, he’d throw parties full of his illicit liquor, which is why his parties were so popular. Carraway, the book’s narrator, and Gatsby’s closest neighbor reveal that most of the visitors at his parties have no idea who Gatsby is or what he looks like. Their only option is to tell Nick what they’ve heard. Unlike us, these individuals had not had access to modern technology that allows them to determine an individual’s appearance or occupation.
Even illegal activities can be used as a way to get wealth in order to achieve a fantasy life in the 1920s, as demonstrated by Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.
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In order to buy his house, How Did Gatsby Make His Money?
Twelve-bedroom West Egg home would have been one of the most costly purchases of Gatsby’s life.
The mansion contained “Marie Antoinette music rooms and Restoration salons,” as well as “period bedrooms, dressing rooms, poolrooms, and baths,” according to the information we have. (The toilet set was described as “pure dull gold.”)
A year and a half before the events of The Great Gatsby took place, Gatsby claims it took him “three years” to save up enough money to buy his house.
According to a real-life data point, we may estimate how much Gatsby spent on the house. The Kings Point Estate in Long Island, which is claimed to have inspired Gatsby’s West Egg mansion, was put on the market for $29.5 million in 2010.
This is equivalent to nearly $2.7 million in 1920 dollars, according to the official CPI inflation calculator maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Assume Gatsby was a skilled negotiator and was able to bring the price down to $2 million. A home in Westchester, New York, was built in 1919 for $2 million, which was a lot of money in 1922, but it wasn’t outlandish by today’s standards:
If Gatsby had a mortgage, we don’t know what the terms were. According to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Kenneth A. Snowden, “loans were generally made for no more than 50 percent of property value” and “were confined to maturities between three and five years.
” For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that Gatsby saved up enough money for a 50% down payment on his home and secured the remainder with a 5-percent loan over the course of four years.
His monthly payment, assuming no property taxes or private mortgage insurance, would have been around $23,000.
Let’s suppose that Gatsby bought the house in January of 1922 and paid seven monthly installments before Labor Day, which would put him in West Egg around the time of Fitzgerald’s novel.
A total of $1,161,000 was spent. For the sake of this discussion, let us disregard whatever housing charges Gatsby may have had before moving to West Egg.
How Did Gatsby Make His Money?
The Great Gatsby Story is engrossing and gripping from beginning to end. The plot transports you back to the opulence and decadence of the 1920s. That type of money just makes you want to keep throwing parties and having a good time, doesn’t it?
What happened to Gatsby’s money, then?
There is no indication of his source of income in either the novel or the film. When questioned about how he acquired his enormous money, he is consistently evasive, leading one to wonder if he did it unlawfully.
That’s how it looks.
Daisy Fay’s attraction to Gatsby was based on his desire to become as wealthy as Tom Buchanan.
His fortune, on the other hand, was obtained through a variety of plausibly criminal methods. Tom points out Gatsby’s business dealings with Wolfsheim during an altercation with Gatsby.
Tom claims to have heard that Gatsby sold grain alcohol in New York and Chicago drugstores over the counter. In the end, he didn’t deny it. It is further supported by the fact that he responds to the question by claiming that it is none of our concern how he gets his money.
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Conclusion: How Did Gatsby Make His Money?
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a literary masterpiece. It’s not quite clear how Gatsby got his money, but there are plenty of phrases throughout the novel that might help us make a guess.
During Prohibition, Jay Gatsby made money by selling booze over the counter at drugstores. In addition, there is a lot of money to be made by selling fake stocks.
It was all because he craved Daisy Fay’s love, but she never reciprocated. If you’re curious about the origins of The Great Gatsby’s fame and fortune, keep reading!
