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. He's the author of "The Modern Website Makeover", which you can download free here. You're also invited to Mark's NEW (and FREE!) "Boost Your Brand" video challenge and you can sign up here.