this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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People have a hard time conceptualizing really big numbers, and a billion is a really big number. If you put $1B into a fixed rate investment earning 5% annually, you'd be getting $50M a year just from that. Most investments in the market do much better than that. So if she kept just (just!) $10B of what she got, she could easily be getting back well over $500M without doing anything at all. Every year, forever. If she doesn't spend or give away that much, then what she gets back grows.
The difference between 1 million and 1 billion is about 1 billion.
$1M in $100 bills weighs 10 kilos. $1B in $100 bills weighs 10,000 kilos.
Yes, one thousand times one million is one billion.
Er...hmmm... freedom units plz!!
Like, 2 elephants, one asteroid, and 16 1998 cloth top convertible Miatas
I really like something similar; the proportional difference between one million and one billion is the same as one thousand and one million.
To imagine the huge difference between a billion and a million I always liked the example - a million seconds is roughly 11.7 days, a billion seconds is around 31.7 YEARS.
I prefer the "having 10,000$ is one step on the stairs" image.
Most people will never be on the first step, apart from people in industrialized countries and even then, not everyone.
A millionaire will be about 100 steps up, or about 4 floors. Ah ha! Look at you all small down there from my 4th floor vantage point!
Then a billionaire, in that same analogy, is 100,000 steps up, or 11 miles, somewhere in the fucking stratosphere. Think they can see the difference between you and the millionaire from up there?
Musk, at 680,000,000,000$? He's passed the fucking ISS, 750 miles from the Earth, basically wealth stops having any kind of meaning or human scale.
“You need to “earn” 1300 dollar per hour from the moment of birth to almost be a billionaire at 30 years old” - another way to perceive it.
You need to “earn” 317.10 dollar per second ($1.14 million per hour) around the clock to become a trillionaire at 100 years old.
Okay, it's early where I am, but 1300*24(hours)*365,25(days/year)*30(years) is not a billion. It's 341.874.000, so barely a third of the way. You need to 'earn' roughly 3803$ per hour to be over a billion in 30 years.
Yeah, that's a good one.
You are not 30 yet or you would know that there is almost no difference.
I'm 35 but this aged me another 20. But not as bad as when I realized that the 70s are closer to my date of birth than the present day is.
What about having $1bil and giving away $1mil is like having $1k and giving away a $1.
Also a good one
Except that the 1$ i give. I can imagine using it, just like i can imagine using the other 999$.
Billionaires have more money than they can imagine using, it's completely insane
What if you wanted to buy yourself something pretty, like Microsoft?
Then they'd have even MORE money they couldn't imagine using, and then they'll buy more companies, IPs and other shit that will give them even more money they couldn't imagine using and then they'd ha-DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?!
Musk literally did that when he bought Twitter though, and is still in n trajectory to being the first trillionaire. At the level of billionaires, it no longer matters what you do, everything generates money and doesn't actually use your assets anymore
Yeah, I was being sarcastic
Yeah to be fair, I'm still shocked that a single person could buy a global reaching company on a whim, and wanted to write about it, more than trying to counter anything you were saying.
I always say to people "how long is one million seconds?"
The answer is 11.5 days.
Then i say "how long is a billion seconds?"
The answer is 31.7 YEARS.
Nobody needs to be a billionaire.
i see this lame poem parroted all over the internet for the last few years and i am still baffled with why it should convey the message better than "it is 1000 times more". people are really not good at counting in 365-base number system. if anything, it obfuscates the situation.
I always phrase it like this:
A thousand seconds is a coffee break, a million is a vacation, a billion is a career and a trillion is over three hundred centuries.
really. well i am not really having casual conversations with people involving conversion of multiples of ten to random units. but i guess americans will really do anything to avoid metric system 😂 🤷♂️
Except you do so, twice
You should try talking about wealth inequality with strangers more. Maybe we’ll get somewhere.
you missed the point by thiiii ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... iiis much.
Nah, I was ignoring you being rude and staying focused on my point. We all need to do that if we want to get anything done about wealth inequality.
If you asked me on the spot how many years 1000 times 11 days was, I could not tell you.
Also, how many times in my life have I needed to count in a 365 base? What the fuck else uses a 365 base? Not every year is 365 days anyways.
Your comment is stupid and you should feel ashamed.
right? which is exactly my point. you are arguing in my favor and don't even know it, which is hilarious.
just because you don't understand something doesn't make it stupid. maybe the stupidity is on the side of the recipient. i will leave up to you whether you want to feel ashamed 😂.
50 million the first year. Each succesive year would be more because of compounding interest.
If you had $500k, you could buy an average house in my area. If you had $1M, you could buy two. If you had $1B, you could buy 2000 i.e. the entire neighborhood.
Now do $1B
This helps you visualise it
Holy shit, I knew it was a crazy scale, but that flabbergasted me...
Another way to think about this, if she invested the $10B as you said, she could spend $1M every DAY forever and still have about $130 left over each year.
How much would you need to spend in a day to have a very comfy life? I could maybe think of a way to spend 10k, I would struggle to spend 100k in a day. I have no idea how to spend 10x that much EVERY DAY.
If you put that $50 million in that same fixed rate investment you'd be getting $2.5 million a year. But wait, we want to keep up with inflation! Let's assume 3% inflation year over year. Your leftover 2% to live on is a measly salary of the equivalent of a million dollars a year growing with (historically standard) inflation.
To the ultra wealthy that's not much, and you certainly aren't living like a greater member of the House of Saud or buying everything you could possibly want off of it, but you can live a life of great comfort, travel every year, have a nice home, have plenty of comfort and hobbies, and never work.
And to get back to this, this is an amount of money a billionaire can give someone every year without touching the principal. If the billionaire wants to continue growing with inflation it reduces to them getting 20 million a year which translates to 400 thousand a year both matching 3% inflation. That's still a comfortable life in even very high cost of living cities.
I didn't follow this part
5% investment returns keeping up with 3% inflation leaves 2% to do with as you please. 2% of 1 billion is 20 million, and 2% of 20 million is 400 thousand. In this scenario each of those dollar numbers increases by 3% each year to match the expected inflation of normal times
I must have lost the thread; why are we doing 2% of what a billion dollars' earnings earn?
To show how ludicrous an amount of money it is. That sustainable harvesting of it gives an annual amount of money that any reasonable person would consider set for life, and then to show what that looks like, because it's not a "well if you live within your means you can retire young" amount, it's an annual amount that people who make it can budget wisely and retire young on. That vast fortune is every year's return on investment for a billionaire.
To frame it differently, it's to express just how ludicrous the amount of money you gave for the annual return is, because even that number is so big people don't really get it.
Okay, gotcha. I mean, I got the overall point, I guess I just missed the extension of the theme.
If I was a billionaire I'd like to think I'd be able to invest a few bn, and divvy up the income among a bunch of people. 150 people every year getting a gift of £1m would do more for society than all the current crop of billionaires combined.
And yes, I know it's not that simple, but a boy can dream.
every year, forever, and if she is lucky, it might even be slightly more than inflation... 😂