Here’s the thing . . . I don’ feel like writing fiction. Instead, I feel like putting down some thoughts about different stuff, and maybe a show a few photos.

That’s an American Goldfinch (LINK) . . . mooning us.

Anyway, while I have an idea for the Greed SDS story, I don’t have the wherewithal to write it, at least not at this moment.

Instead, while perusing some old posts, I came across one that made me want to update some information. Specifically, THIS<<link post. Don’t worry; you don’t have to click on it and read it because I’ll give you the salient points below.

In that post I had the following passage (remember, this was in 2017):

I think Bill Gates is currently the richest man in the US at something like $85 billion dollars. For them who don’t know, a billion is one thousand million.

To put that into perspective, I sold my house last year for a shade over $400K. I’m rich, right? I mean, I still have to buy another house, but hey . . . $400K.

Bill Gates could buy 200,000 homes like mine . . . and have $5B left over.

He could give $10 dollars to every man, woman, and child in the world and have more than $5B left for his living expenses. With $5B, he could spend $167M a year for 30-years before he ran out of money. That’s about $450K — more than I got for my house — every day of each year for the next 30 years.

So, that was four years ago, and poor Mr. Gates is no longer even in the top 3 (LINK). Don’t feel bad for him, though . . . he has a bit more than he had; his current worth is $124 billion.

Now, I gave some examples of what that much money means. Still, I don’t think most people can grasp the concept of large numbers. But they might if I could put it into more familiar terms. I mean, when I say one million, the majority of people have only a vague idea of what that means.

And, to tell the truth, most probably overestimate it. For instance, if you tell someone who makes $25,000 a year that they will make a million dollars, they won’t believe you . . . but they will if they work 40 years. It’s just that it’s a long road from here to there.

So, I thought I would give examples that might be easier to digest. Let’s say you spend a dollar per second. I know, that’s stupid, but imagine counting out a dollar bill every second.

Well, if you have a million dollars, you will run out of money in 11.57 days.
If you had a billion dollars and spent a dollar per second, you will run out of money in 31.71 years.

Think of it another way . . . if you were born with $1B to your name and lived to 80 years of age, you would have to budget (spend) no more than $11.7M per year to ensure you don’t die poor.

Jeff Bezos has $177B. Say he lives another 40 years … he’d have to spend no more than $4.4B per year (or $12.1M per day) or he would run out of money and die poor.

This is what else I wrote in that post:

Were I in his place, the question I would ask myself is . . . how much money do I really need? My net worth keeps growing by more than what I give away to charity each year. Am I OK with that?

I can’t answer for Mr. Gates Bezos. I mean, I know his answer. Certainly, I’m never going to be in his place. Heck, I really don’t know the answer even as far as I myself am concerned.

. . . but I think I would give away $80B $172B and keep only $5B for myself and try to get by on $167M per year (a shade less than half a million dollars a day). However, it could very well be that I would break out in a cold sweat and decide I really need to keep all $85B $177B . . . and however much I keep adding to it.

Now, at this point, someone will point out that money is not all liquid, and that people like Gates, Bezos, and others give out a lot of money.

Yes, they do . . . But not as much as McKenzie Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife. Click on this LINK and read an awesome article, and then ask yourself why all the other billionaires aren’t doing that.

Better yet, ask yourself what you would do if you had enough money to give everyone in the world $23.60.

I know, that doesn’t sound like much . . . but the collected wealth of all the billionaires in the world is $13.1 trillion . . . At a dollar a second, it would take 415,398 years to count it all.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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