Paul McCartney and the not-so-rich list

It is said you can tell all you need to know about someone from their bank statement. Are they generous or mean, reckless or careful? It will be there in the credits and debits.

So what are we to make of the news that Sir Paul McCartney is not nearly as rich as the rich lists claimed? Or that the late Queen Mother and Luciano Pavarotti, whom the world assumed were staggeringly wealthy, skated through life with overdrafts?

The judge handling McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills has accepted evidence from McCartney's accountants that he is worth only half the £800m often cited in the press. This may of course be a clever ploy by McCartney's team to reduce his payout to Mills. But it may well be true.

Papers recently released from the National Archives show that in 1959, the Queen Mother's treasurer went begging to Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister, for an increase in her £70,000 allowance. Her expenses included "an intensely busy household, ceaseless travelling... the items are endless." Macmillan said he could increase her allowance by no more than £8,000 without telling Parliament. Eventually the Queen bailed her out.

Pavarotti died last year with what was assumed to be a giant fortune. Yet earlier this month, it was reported that he left bank debts of £12m. He owned properties in Italy, New York, Monte Carlo and Modena, his home town, but all were mortgaged. His second wife and three daughters from his first marriage were steeling for a fight over a fortune they thought added up to £250m.

The public's fascination with rich lists has led to a tendency to overestimate people's fortunes. Donald Trump realised long ago that it was vital in his business to seem rich. During the 1980s and 1990s, he badgered the editors of Forbes magazine's annual list of the richest 400 Americans to improve his rank.

Even as his estimated wealth topped a billion dollars in the late 1990s, he argued he was worth three or four times as much. But in 2005, a well-researched book put Trump's worth at $200m, comfortable enough, but not even close to America's richest. Trump went ballistic.

The easiest fortunes to estimate are those linked to a public company. In Bill Gates's case, you take the number of shares he owns in Microsoft, multiply it by that day's share price and there you have it. You could probably add a few hundred million here or there to cover his art collection, his properties and non-Microsoft investments, but they're trivial compared to his Microsoft holdings.

Similarly with Warren Buffett, who just overtook Gates as the world's richest man: you can estimate his worth from the share price of his company, Berkshire Hathaway. You also know Buffett will never blow his fortune. He likes fast food, Cherry Coke and refuses to bet so much as a dollar on the golf course, saying it shows the wrong attitude to money.

For some whose fortune lies in stock, paper wealth does not equal cash. Rupert Murdoch has been loath to sell any of his stock. So while he has always drawn a large salary from News Corporation, he has not always lived like a multi-billionaire. He waited until he reached his 70s to buy his dream home in New York, an apartment once owned by a Rockefeller.

Then there are celebrities whose fame outshines their financial smarts. Michael Jackson has been saved repeatedly by a song catalogue including many Beatles hits, which he bought in 1985. He would have been bankrupt several times over without it. In 2006, after all but closing down his Californian ranch, Neverland, he used the catalogue to secure a loan of $300m which kept him afloat.

And now there is Britney Spears, whose fortune was once estimated at $125m and is now reckoned to have plummeted along with her reputation. Barring a career renaissance, she could soon make Pavarotti's debts look like a mere tiptoe in the red. ·