Billionaires have so much money, it’s hard for regular people to comprehend. “Our human brains are pretty bad at comprehending large numbers,” Elizabeth Toomarian, Ph.D., an educational neuroscientist at Stanford University, said in an NPR article. She explained that we process larger numbers in different ways.
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For instance, when people were given a timeline beginning at 1,000 and ending at 1 billion, many guessed (incorrectly) that 1 million would fall somewhere in the center of those two numbers. In fact, 1 million is much closer to 1,000 than 1 billion. Take a number more than 240 times that size, such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ net worth of almost $240 billion, and it’s virtually impossible to visualize.
Also see the top five facts about Bezos’ wealth that will melt your brain.
Visualizing Wealth
It can be easier to grasp larger numbers when we use analogies or visualizations, according to NPR.
For instance, if you had $1 billion, you could spend $5,000 every day for 500 years and still have about $85 million left.
Five years ago, money expert Humphrey Yang made a TikTok video visualizing Jeff Bezos’ then-net worth of $122 billion as grains of rice. One grain of rice represented $100,000, and $1 million was 10 grains of rice. The pile of rice, representing $122 billion, weighed roughly 58 pounds, according to the video.
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Using Analogies and Comparisons
Another way to conceptualize billionaire wealth is to think about how much Bezos earns per hour. That’s a relatable concept, since the median hourly wage in the U.S. was roughly $30 per hour in July 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But when you’re breaking down billionaire wealth, it helps to think in terms of earnings per minute instead.
How Much Money Did Bezos Make Just Now?
This article is roughly 380 words and would take the average person roughly 1 1/2 to two minutes to read, assuming people read 200 to 250 words per minute. According to the Bezos Calculator, the billionaire earns $320,000 in one minute and 28 seconds.
That means, while you were reading this article, Bezos earned more than $320,000, or roughly the price for a middle-class couple in the U.S. to raise a child through age 18, per Northwestern Mutual.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How Much Money Jeff Bezos Makes While You Read This Article
