Billions and trillions: understanding large amounts of money

Huge monetary numbers leave us numb.

Last year, a house in Clifton sold for R157-million. The first week of the war against Iran cost the US over 11-billion dollars. The Pentagon has requested 200-billion dollars for the war. Elon Musk’s net worth is estimated at 850-billion dollars by Forbes. NVIDIA’s market capitalisation has hovered around 5-trillion dollars. The US debt is 39-trillion dollars.

Most of us are more accustomed to amounts like R100 (about $6), about the price for a Nandos meal: quarter chicken, chips and roll.

You could buy nearly 1.7-million Nandos meals for the price of that Clifton house. Twenty people could buy the Nandos meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for their entire lives to spend that amount of money.

Elon Musk’s net worth fluctuates wildly and obviously he cannot instantly convert it to cash. Nevertheless, in theory, he has enough wealth to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner at Nandos for every human alive everyday for over two weeks

Today’s chart puts these numbers into context.

Chart produced by The Outlier in partnership with GroundUp

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