Nonsense. What the hell would you do with 1B? Give it to charities maybe. Maybe set up an investment where dividends are paid to charity. Running out of ideas
Set up a nice investment vehicle with maybe 400m so I can get 1.6m in dividends a year which would be better enough to comfortably travel the world, have a private chef, someone who organized travel so I don't have to..
A nice 12 person yacht on the Mediterranean is 400k eur for 2 weeks (with staff) so I'd realize it's not enough and invest the rest so I could get comfy.
Along the way help friends and family, pay off mortgages, usually good stuff.
What's the point of that? That sounds like the most boring life. You want to rot away on a yacht? Private chef? Are you kidding?
Help family? Sure, although you don't need that much money for that. Friends? Ehh not very smart, just think about the changes in the friendships' authenticity.
Private chef, absolutely. Like some people rot away managing Linux as a desktop or putting together 3D printers instead of buying one that works and using a Mac, I enjoy food.
You've run out of ideas already? Try harder!
What charities? Why? How much, to which ones? How involved with those charities are you going to be? What dent in history are you going to make with that billion? With or without your name attached. Build housing, cure cancer, feed the hungry, buy this simulator https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/liquidation-of-simulato...
I could be wrong but I think you could get started with all of that with a fraction of $1B.
Sure there is leisure and entertainment but if you want to use it to do something meaningful, with only 24 hours in a day you'll probably have much more money than time to use it well.
On the other hand 1B is really an arbitrary choice of number, so I think the reason he would choose this specific number definitely has more to do with arbitrary reasons (class, status), perhaps subconciously.
Personally I don't agree with the parent that everyone wants that much money. I think I can safely say not only am I content with much less but I also don't ever want to have the responsibility of having to manage that. Though I'm already saying that from a place of privilege where I don't need to worry about survival.
Furthermore, a lot of money almost certainly places you in an outlier group where normal laws and rights as formulated by humans don't apply the same. Assuming everyone has some empathy and sense of justice/righteousness, that should make them intrinsically not want to be in that group.
Completely missing the other costs associated with any of these things. If money was enough to “feed the hungry” Musk or Gates would have already done it. The real problem is systemic injustice, like governments stealing foreign aid that’s meant to go to the poor. Money can’t always solve these.
Time is more valuable than money and unless you have tons of time and space that simulator is just an expensive paperweight.
My point was that there isn't anything I could do with that money, and neither can the vast majority of people in the world. So I would immediately try to pass it on to people who have better use for it
Wishing for 1B is completely nonsensical if you understand what kind of money that is.
If anything less than $1B isn't enough then it is never enough. $1B is the new $100M thanks to ongoing currency debasement.
Also, there is something called "taxes" which is what makes anyone who has millions or billions to want even more money and the IRS will still come after you anywhere in the world.
Otherwise they have to renounce their citizenship and move to a tax haven.
A nice 12 person yacht on the Mediterranean is 400k eur for 2 weeks (with staff) so I'd realize it's not enough and invest the rest so I could get comfy.
Along the way help friends and family, pay off mortgages, usually good stuff.
It's not that hard to spend 4% a year of that.