Estimates of Bill Gates’s wealth vary. It was said to have hit a high of $100 billion in 1998 but dropped a little.
Give or take a few hundred million, it’s still a staggering sum. The following examples are graphic illustrations of his fortune.
Bill the Working Man
A workaholic, it’s been reported that he works up to 12 hours a day.
Assume he worked 12 to 14 hours every business day since 1975 (when Microsoft was founded). Mr. Gates would be making $1 million per hour. That’s about $300 per second.
Of course, that rate is assuming that Bill Gates’s wealth doesn’t move. In 1998 he made about $45 billion. At $45 billion a year, that meant he was earning nearly $4,000 per second.
Higher than Country GDPs
The $45 billion he made is better than the GDP of Egypt, Guatemala, Chile, and Sri Lanka. In 1998, he accumulated more money than the Sultan of Brunei, the sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
That income eclipsed what IBM, Ford, and Intel made. In fact, Gates’ fortune is good enough for 76th place in terms of the country’s GDP.
Another demonstration of his wealth: if he gave $4 dollars to all 5 billion Earthlings, he would still have several thousand dollars left.
This estimate of Bill Gates’s wealth was done with his value at $40 billion. If the stocks go up, he’ll have more money to spare.
Other Examples
Bill Gates loves playing Pac-Man. Assume he bets 25 cents and each game goes on for no more than 10 minutes. To use up all his money, he’ll have to play for nearly 2 million years.
If he turns all his money into $1 bills and places them side by side, it will stretch from the Earth to the Moon five times over. It will cover an area almost 600 times the size of the Vatican.
Your Money Compared to Gates
This is how much Bill Gates’s wealth compares with yours. A well-off American may have $80,000 or so. Gates is worth over 780,000 more. To be more specific: your $100,000 is worth about 10 cents to him.
That Ferrari may cost you $250,000, but to Bill, it is worth less than 30 cents. A top-of-the-line notebook PC (or Mac) will set Gates back a penny.
An upper-class town house in California is worth a couple of dollars. A typical million-dollar mansion is worth about $60 to him.
More Facts and Figures
He can also buy all the teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, and Major League Baseball and still keep 60% of his fortune. Lining up all his money will create a highway 4 million miles long.
The money can be piled up vertically and reach a height of 3,000 miles. It can cover Manhattan with money seven times over. It would weigh over 42,000 tons. By the time you finish reading this, Gates would have earned over $60,000.
The extent of Bill Gates’s wealth is staggering. With computers becoming more important, this fortune will likely get bigger.