Things Jeff Bezos Could Do With His Money (if they were possible)

R. James Miller
3 min readJul 24, 2020

Trying to Make 188.2 Billion Slightly More Comprehensible

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

According to a recent Forbes article, Jeff Bezos's personal net worth reached as high as $188.2 billion as of July 9, 2020. Now, Amazon stock took a little bit of hit today so it’s probably down from that number. However, I wanted to take a look at how big this number actually is because it is impossible for most people to actually comprehend $188,200,000,000. So here goes:

  • If Bezos was able to liquidate his entire fortune today for the full value, he could cut a check to every person in the U.S. for $572.04 (assuming a current population of 329 million people). Or if he really wanted to flex he could send every person on Earth $24.44 (extrapolating a 7.7 billion population based on 2018 data).
  • If he decided he wanted to liquidate everything in exchange for physical currency he could singlehandedly remove 15.7% of all U.S. currency currently in circulation. (188.2 billion of the 1.2 trillion dollars)
  • If he wanted all of his money in gold it would be 6,226,840 pounds or to get rid of another large number 3,113 tons of gold. (As I write this gold is currently $1,889 per ounce. There is 16 oz in a pound so one pound of gold has a value of $30,224. 188.2 billion divided by 30,224 equals 6,226,839.6)

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R. James Miller

Mental health, emotional wellness, opinion, & travel-focused writer. Writing about my weight struggles, personal growth, and wanderlust.