A while back, I was wondering about what people buy when they have hundreds of millions of dollars, or billions. Peon and small thinker that I am, it always seemed inconceivable that you could spend that much money no matter how you tried. Why would anyone keep on crushing unions and threatening to break Senators' arms to get more if he had that much?
But I was so wrong. A little research revealed that in fact if you weren't careful you could blow right through a billion dollars on your personal needs in no time at all. Who knew?
How, you wonder, could you do that?
1. Well, to start you could buy a few houses for $100 million a piece. People in the top .1% don't just have one house, after all. This isn't particularly over the top - it's not, for example, the $ billion house in Mumbai. Your houses aren't even in the top 10 - which makes sense, now that I think about it, since your $ billion makes you not even the 1100th richest person in the world (see Forbes' 2011 list of all billionaires and Forbes' list of 400 Richest Americans). OK, scratch the $100 million houses - you can only afford to spend $50 million each for yours. But you still do need a few - your main estate, your little New York penthouse, your ski lodge, your beach house, and your place in Paris.
The Ten Most Expensive Houses in the World 2011 ($135 million-$1 billion)
2. You'll probably want a yacht. It seems you could spend as much as $4.8 billion for yours (see 15 of 15). But since you're not really that rich, maybe you keep it at $25 million.
The 15 Most Expensive Yachts in the World ($90 million-$4.6 billion)
3. Then of course you need your plane. No going overboard here either - $10 million might do it. But is one enough? I'm not sure. Other family members might need their own.
Top 5 Most Expensive Private Jets ($41 million-$60 million)
4. You need a number of cars, not just for yourself and your family members at every home but for your staff as well. But let's say only a few really billionaire-quality ones. You could get six maybe for under $5 million total. Not a big deal.
Most Expensive Cars In The World: Top 10 List 2011-2012 ($545k-$2.4 million)
5. The Little Woman (Little Women?) needs some bling. Maybe she'd like the $30 million diamond bikini. In any case she'll need several of these. And new ones all the time - birthdays, anniversaries, apologies for major offenses.
The Top Ten Most Expensive Jewelry in the World ($2 million-$30 million)
6. Art is going to be a BIG budget item. All those houses, all those empty walls. You need to be very careful with this - you could blow your entire $ billion right here without batting an eye. Since you're not Bill Gates, you can only afford maybe one really good one, but if you spend wisely you can put together a collection of quite nice second-tier items.
Most Valuable Paintings in Private Hands ($45 million-$200 million)
7. Your #1 favorite watch might set you back a few million $ (having good taste, of course, you go for the understated Patek Philippes, and skip the $25 million hideosity barnacled with gemstones).
The 10 Most Expensive Watches in the World ($740k-$25 million)
8. A trivial few million tops will satisfy all your cold weather needs for the whole family - your sables, your chinchillas, and so forth.
9. Here's some furniture you might want, and would you believe you could get the MOST COMFORTABLE OFFICE CHAIR IN THE WORLD for only $1.5 million?
Top Ten Most Expensive Furniture in the World ($11k-$36.7 million)
10. What's missing here? Oh, all the furniture for your hundred thousand square feet of homes. Your clothes. Entertaining. A few million for your wine cellars. Your collection of $ million Persian rugs . Your hand-crafted solid gold Christmas tree. Your gold shoelaces. Your kids, of course - their clothes, their cars, their $ million educations, their multi-$ million weddings, the houses you build to launch them. Your own full-time private physician. Your cryogenic expenses. Your adventure travel in outer space. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things here.
So, Little People, a $ billion doesn't go as far as you might think. And don't forget - we earned it.
P.S. Some readers might be wanting to point out that your invested wealth keeps growing almost as fast as you're spending it, plus the tens of millions in salary and bonuses that keep on coming, in good times and bad. True, I didn't take this into account. Maybe you can afford a few Picassos after all.