Ever wonder how much Jim Cramer is actually worth? The guy's everywhere on CNBC with all this energy and confidence, and most people assume he must be absolutely loaded. Turns out his net worth sits around a hundred million dollars, which sounds crazy until you look at what other hedge fund guys are pulling in.

Here's the wild part though. Cramer's story is basically the opposite of the typical Wall Street trajectory. He went to Harvard to study government, not finance. Spent his early years as a journalist making barely anything, and at one point was so broke he literally lived out of his car. His apartment got robbed and he lost what little he had. Most people would've given up, but he went back to school, got his law degree from Harvard Law, and somewhere in that process discovered his real passion: the stock market.

Once he caught the investing bug, this guy became obsessed. He was leaving stock tips on his answering machine and got so good that someone handed him half a million dollars to manage. That led to Goldman Sachs picking him up, and after a few years there he started his own hedge fund. Between 1988 and 2000, he had only one negative year. His average annual returns? 24% over 14 years. That's actually beating Warren Buffett's track record from 1965 to 2012, where Berkshire Hathaway pulled in 19.7% annually.

But here's where it gets interesting. Even though Cramer's returns were comparable to Buffett's, his net worth tells a completely different story. Buffett turned his success into $67.8 billion. Cramer? A hundred million. Meanwhile, other hedge fund managers like George Soros are sitting on $24 billion, and guys like Steve Cohen, David Tepper, and James Simons are all worth over $10 billion each. Even Carl Icahn's at $25.8 billion. They're making Cramer's wealth look like pocket change.

The question everyone asks is whether he got out too early. In his prime, Cramer was pulling in over $10 million a year from his hedge fund. That's serious money. But compare that to the top 25 hedge fund managers last year who collectively made $24.3 billion, with the lowest earner on that list pulling in $280 million annually. That's nearly three times what Cramer's entire net worth is.

These days he's basically locked out of the game. His CNBC contract restricts him from trading stocks personally except for TheStreet, General Electric, and Comcast. So his hundred million dollar fortune isn't really growing the way it could if he was still actively managing money. Which actually says something about his commitment to his audience over himself.

The real lesson from looking at how much Jim Cramer is worth isn't about the specific number. It's that you don't need a fancy finance degree to make serious money in markets. You just need the hunger to learn and the discipline to stick with it. Not everyone becomes a billionaire, but the stock market can definitely be your path to real wealth if you approach it the right way.