Clean and Simple.

HOW MUCH IS A TRILLION? (A Visualization)

In our society, our lives revolve around money.  We hear such a wide range of values these days.  A minimum wage worker (federal minimum wage) that works 40 hours a week will earn about $15,000 per year. The median household income is $55,700.  The average salary of a major league baseball player is $4,000,000 ($4 million). Donald Trump showed a $916,000,000 ($915 million) loss on his one public tax return.  The net worth of Bill Gates is about $87,000,000,000 ($87 billion).  The national debt of the US is $16,000,000,000,000 ($16 trillion).   Financial derivatives of the investment banks are estimated to be the order of $1,500,000,000,000,000 ($1.5 quadrillion).

How do these numbers compare?  How much is a thousand dollars compared to a million dollars, a billion dollars, a trillion dollars, and now we hear about a quadrillion dollars. How much more money does Bill Gates have than the median household makes in one year?

Let’s take a look at a visualization that will add some perspective. The visualization is based on how much volume is taken up by specific amounts of $1 bills. Here is a one dollar bill.   It’s a little smaller that the size of your wallet.










Here is a packet of 100 dollar bills.  It is about half an inch thick.








  $1,000 is the size of a quart of milk or an extra small fanny pack.











$10,000 is the size of a briefcase.   














The yearly wages of a minimum wage worker ($15,000) fit in a small backpack.













The median household income is $55,775 a year (for 2015).  This is the size of a small suitcase. 














If you make $100,000 a year, you could fill a regular size suitcase with one dollar bills.





















Now things start to get interesting.  How much is $1M ($1,000,000)?  $1M of dollar bills fits on a standard pallet and is 3 feet high.















$10M ($10,000,000) is 10 pallets. $100M ($100,000,000) is 100 pallets.  $1B is 1,000 pallets.  How much is that?  Well now we are starting to get really big.  To get $1B we need to cover half a floor of the Empire State Building in a single layer of pallets. 

















This is an important number to remember.  $1B of $1 bills covers half a floor of the empire state building with a single layer of pallets. 

Let’s keep going. So if $1B covers half a floor, then $2B will cover an entire floor of the Empire State Building with a single layer of pallets of $1 bills.  Now, let fill up an entire floor of the Empire State Building from the floor to the ceiling.  How much is that? $10B.  Yep, one solid floor of the Empire State Building filled with $1 bills is $10B. 



















So how much money is $1T?  It is the entire Empire State Building filled up with $1 bills. Yes, 1 Trillion one dollar bills are the size of the Empire State Building.












































 Compare your backpack, suitcase, or pallet to one floor of the Empire State Building.































Bill Gates has almost 9 full floors of money. The yearly military budget of the US is $600 billion or 60 floors.  The 2008 housing bubble that caused the recession of 2008 was estimated to be $800B to $4T or 80 floors to 4 buildings.

The yearly budget of the Federal government is $3.8T or almost 4 Empire State Buildings.  The total of the yearly budgets of the 50 states is about $1.9T or another 2 Empire State Buildings.  It takes a lot of suitcases of personal income to pay the taxes to fill 6 Empire State Buildings!!!  

The national debt is $16T. That is 16 Empire State Buildings.  16 Empire State Buildings lined up end to end would extend about a quarter of the way across the width of the island of Manhattan.

















The derivative bubble in the world of financial investments is $1.5 Quadrillion or 1,500 empire state buildings which is 7% of the size of the island of Manhattan.  The derivative bubble is the amount of investments made by the banks and investment firms that is based only on agreements and not backed by any financial instrument such as a mortgage or bond (security). 

Hopefully this visualization will be able to help you make judgments as we are inundated with the wide variation of financial terms that are common these days.  Visualizing in terms of luggage and pallets and buildings of money will help with some perspective. For those that are interested, the calculations used for the images in this vusualization can be found here.