Reading is the most commonly cited habit tied to the success of some of the world’s wealthiest families, according to a new JPMorgan report that surveyed more than 100 billionaire principals whose collective net worth exceeds $500 billion.

The wealth management firm found that exercise, consistency, and waking up early are also top contributors to long-term success. But across interviews, one theme dominated: extreme intentionality about how time is spent. 

“The currency of life is time,” wrote one anonymous billionaire family leader in the report. “It is not money. You think carefully about how you spend one dollar. You should think just as carefully as how you spend one hour.”

Forget an MBA—dust off a book if you want to become a billionaire

In a technology-driven era where tools like ChatGPT can summarize hundreds of pages in seconds, sitting down with a book may feel inefficient. But many of the world’s most successful business leaders have long argued the opposite: deep reading remains one of the fastest ways to build durable knowledge.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has credited reading as the backbone of his learning routine. At one point, Gates said he read about 50 books a year to stay intellectually sharp.

“It is one of the chief ways that I learn, and has been since I was a kid,” Gates told The New York Times in 2016. “These days, I also get to visit interesting places, meet with scientists and watch a lot of lectures online. But reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.”

The best book he had ever read at the time was Business Adventures by John Brooks, the first book Warren Buffett ever recommended to him after they met.

Buffett, for his part, is also an avid reader. 

“I just read and read and read,” Buffett said when asked how he keeps up with what’s going on in the world. “I probably read five to six hours a day. I don’t read as fast now as when I was younger, but I read five daily newspapers, I read a fair number of magazines, I read 10Ks, I read annual reports, and I read a lot of other things.”

His advice for aspiring business leaders is ambitious: read 500 pages each day. 

“That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

The top 7 habits attributing to success of the world’s wealthiest families

1. Reading
2. Exercise
3. Consistency
4. Waking up early
5. Prioritizing tasks
6. Goal setting
7. Deep thinking time

According to JPMorgan’s latest Principal Discussions report.

How the ultra-wealthy spend their free time

Even though reading is cited as a major driver of long-term success, it isn’t how most ultra-wealthy families prefer to spend all their downtime. 

In the JPMorgan report, reading ranked No. 7 among hobbits and interests principals said they were most passionate about—trailing outdoor activities, time with family and friends, and even work itself.

The top 10 hobbies or interests wealthy families are passionate about

1. Outdoors and nature
2. Work
3. Time with family and friends
4. Tennis
5. Snow sports
6. Golf
7. Reading
8. Gym and working out
9. Fishing
10. Cycling and biking

That gap highlights a key distinction: while reading may not be the top pastime, its value means it’s treated as a strategic discipline—a pattern that’s likely to become even more notable as AI reshapes how information is consumed.

AI use is already widespread among the ultra-wealthy. Nearly 8 in 10 principals said they use AI in their personal lives, and 69% reported using it in business. In a world where information is easier than ever to access, being intentional about how you learn—and how you spend your time—may matter more than ever.

JPMorgan’s own 2026 book list “to inspire big thinking and bold exploration” reflects that focus. Recommendations include Bobbi Brown’s memoir, Still Bobbi, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the 1929 Wall Street crash, and Air Jordan, a look at Michael Jordan’s successes in the business world.

Tinkov, the founder of Tinkoff Bank, was once celebrated as one of Russia’s wealthiest bankers. That status changed dramatically in April 2022, when he used Instagram to denounce the war as “insane” and to criticize Russia’s military as poorly prepared and riddled with corruption. As CNBC reported at the time, Tinkov claimed 90% of Russians opposed the war, and the remaining 10% were “morons.” He urged an immediate and “face-saving” end to the war.​

Tinkov told the BBC recently that within a day of that post, senior executives at his bank received a call from officials linked to the Kremlin, delivering a stark ultimatum. Either Tinkov’s stake would be sold and his name scrubbed from the brand, or the bank—then one of Russia’s largest lenders—would be nationalized.

A forced fire sale

Tinkov said that what followed was not a negotiation but coercion under threat. He claimed he was told to accept whatever price was offered for his roughly 35% stake in TCS Group, the owner of Tinkoff Bank, or risk losing everything. “I couldn’t negotiate the price. I was like a hostage,” he told The New York Times. He ultimately sold the stake in April 2022, shortly after his Instagram post.​

Within a week of this conversation, Tinkov said, a firm linked to metals magnate Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s richest men and a key supplier of nickel used in military hardware, stepped in to buy the stake. Tinkov told the BBC that the deal valued his holding at just about 3% of its true market worth, wiping out almost $9 billion of the wealth he had built over decades in business.​

Exile and erasure

After the sale, Tinkov left Russia, eventually renouncing his Russian citizenship and becoming one of the few high-profile businessmen to publicly break with the Kremlin over the war. He alleged that the campaign against him extended beyond the balance sheet, including pressure to remove his name from the bank brand and efforts to erase his role in building the institution that once carried it.​

In his telling, the episode shows how quickly loyalty is enforced when oligarchs step out of line. Public criticism of the invasion, even from a figure whose bank helped power Russia’s consumer boom, was treated as a direct challenge to the state in wartime. There are numerous examples from the recent past, including the erstwhile oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia’s richest man, who spent 10 years in jail after launching a pro-democracy organization in 2001.​ Like Tinkov, he has since become an exile, residing in London.

For his part, Tinkov has taken a few years to retrench and is newly visible in 2025, recently emerging as a backer of Plata, a Mexican fintech led by former Tinkoff Bank executives.

But the former oligarch’s experience sits within a wider pattern described by analysts who say the Kremlin now relies on a mix of fear and opportunity to keep Russia’s wealthy elite compliant. Sanctions, war-time controls and the threat of asset seizures have made fortunes inside Russia highly contingent on political loyalty, while the departure of Western firms has opened up bargain acquisitions for trusted allies.​

The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, has rumbled on, with President Trump holding meetings and calls with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After the 2025 Christmas holiday, Trump met with Zelensky at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida while fielding phone calls with Putin, claiming a peace deal is “closer than ever,” more than three years after Tinkov made his fateful Instagram post.