How Much Is A BILLION Dollars? (In Perspective)

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Normally my content is about marketing and advertising to help you promote your business.

But today I'm going off the beaten path a bit because I want to cover an interesting topic that I've been wanting to do for a while

And that is, "How big is a billion?" More specifically ...

How big is a billion dollars?

We see the number "billion" in the news all the time.

Taylor Swift's Eras tour, grossing a billion dollars.
According to Forbes Magazine, the Detroit Lions are worth $3.6 billion.
According to Wikipedia. Warren Buffett has a net worth over $119 billion.

For me (and I think a lot of people), it's hard to wrap our heads around how big these numbers actually are.

So let me offer the following mathematical example to try and put a billion dollars into perspective.

$10,000 A Day

Let's say I gave you $10,000 cash — that's one hundred $100 dollar bills.

Even with inflation, for the average person, $10,000 cash is still a pretty good day at the office.

Now, let's say I gave you a $10,000 wad of cash every single day.

So Monday you have $10,000. Tuesday you have $20,000. And by the end of the week you have $70,000.

My question to you is this ...

If we continue at this rate of me giving you $10,000 a day every single day, how many days would it take to reach a million dollars?

Answer: 100 days.

So, in just a little over three months, you're a millionaire. Congratulations!

How long to get to a $1 billion?

Let's keep our experiment going.

If I'm still giving you $10,000 a day every single day, how long would it take for you to accumulate a billion dollars?

Answer: Approximately 274 years!

That's nearly three centuries, which is INSANE!

What could you do with $1 billion?

Let's say you now have a billion dollars in your possession. What could you do with that amount of money?

If you did nothing and just parked it in a savings account at your bank (and yes, I know you can't just go down to your local bank and deposit a billion dollars ... we're just talking hypotheticals here). But if you are only collecting a measly 3% annual interest on your $1 billion, you'd collect $30 million a year in interest.
Let's look at this in terms of homes. In most places, you can get a pretty nice house for about $500,000. With $1 billion, you could buy 2000 of these half a million dollar homes and give 'em out as Christmas gifts.
Or you could do like Mr. Beast does and help those less fortunate — whether it be providing food, housing, clean drinking water (or whatever social cause you're passionate about) to make the world a better place. And you'd still have plenty left over for your garage full of expensive cars.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's how big $1 billion is.

So the next time you see a corporation reporting a $20 billion profit or the government wanting to invest $50 billion into some project, instead of looking at those figures like Monopoly money, hopefully you now have a better feel for how big those numbers actually are.

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Mark Brinker

Mark Brinker is president of Mark Brinker & Associates — a business website design and development firm in Sterling Heights, MI. Mark offers a FREE masterclass training, "The 5 Steps To Creating A Website That Consistently Attracts Ideal Clients", which you can watch here. Mark also publishes lots of great (and free!) content on his YouTube channel.