I like to think about it like this: With a wealth of 92.3B, even earning a moderate 8% net return on that wealth, Jeff Bezos needs to spend $20.2M per day just to not get any richer.
Now I've spent a lot of time daydreaming about how awesome it would be to be rich. One day I added up what it would take to have the most obscene, ridiculously opulent lifestyle imaginable...private jets, presidential suites, chauffers, megayachts, basically anything and everything imaginable that I would possibly want if money were no object. I never surpassed a requirement for more than $20M per year. $20M per day is ludicrous...and that's just what it would take for him to not get any richer.
> One day I added up what it would take to have the most obscene, ridiculously opulent lifestyle imaginable...private jets, presidential suites, chauffers, megayachts... I never surpassed a requirement for more than $20M per year.
Then you grossly underestimated your requirement. The first Google result on the subject of megayachts, for example, tells me that they cost tens or hundreds of millions to build (the record is 600M) and that their yearly upkeep can be on the order of 10% their build cost.
So that alone would eat a good chunk of your 20M. Now consider how much more you could spend on palaces (plural, because they don't move) than you could on your humble dinghy.
Nope. A $30M yacht is more than I would ever want, and with a 15 year loan will set me back around $3-3.5M per year, including maintenance. Nobody buys with cash in the yacht industry.
Yeah, I only included things that I'd actually want. If I didn't want something (like a trip around the moon, or a patek philippe watch), it wasn't included. Maybe I'm pretty low maintenance, but everything I added up seemed unmaintainably ridiculous to me.
Now I've spent a lot of time daydreaming about how awesome it would be to be rich. One day I added up what it would take to have the most obscene, ridiculously opulent lifestyle imaginable...private jets, presidential suites, chauffers, megayachts, basically anything and everything imaginable that I would possibly want if money were no object. I never surpassed a requirement for more than $20M per year. $20M per day is ludicrous...and that's just what it would take for him to not get any richer.