But – in plain English – what exactly is a trillion? A trillion is a number that has twelve zero’s (14 if you include the decimals!) - $1,000,000,000,000.00 . It is a bunch of money. It is hard to grasp. In terms of money, it is incredibly hard to really, truly understand how much it is.
Let’s break it down some more. A trillion is:
1,000 Billion
1,000,000 Million
1,000,000,000 Thousand
1,000 Billion
1,000,000 Million
1,000,000,000 Thousand
Or, let’s put it into another perspective. If I gave you $1.00 every second, how many years would you have to live before I had given you a trillion dollars?
Well, let’s see: One minute = 60 seconds
1 hour (60 seconds x 60 mintes) = 3,600 seconds
1 day (3,600 x 24 hours) = 86,400 seconds
1 year (86,400 x 365.25 days) = 31,557,600 seconds
One Trillion/31,557,600 = 31,688years!!!!!!!
(Obviously, neither one of us would live long enough for you to collect the trillion dollars!)
Let’s break it down another way. If you won the largest jackpot in the world, and you won $1 Trillion, how much money would you have to spend daily to spend it all in one year? More than $2.73 Billion. Can you truly immagine spending $2.73 Billion in one day, let alone one year, or even during the rest of your life? It is truly hard to fathom.
Yet, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on March 22, 2009 said its latest budget deficit estimate for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, would amount to US$1.845 trillion, or 13.1 percent of the country’s entire economic output. Notice this is a budget deficit. This is money that we don’t have, and money that will have to be paid back at some point in time. According to the US Census Bureau (www.census.gov), as of July 1, 2008, we had an estimated 304,059,724 citizens. That means we have a deficit of $6068 for every man, woman, and child living in the US today. Or, looking at it from this perspective, a family of four would have ownership of more than $24,000 of debt…..
And, what my greatest concern is, this is just the budget deficit. This does not include the money that is being printed by the Fed, money going into the TARP, the TALF, or any other recent government package. And what is even more harmful to my sleep, is that someone, at some time, is going to have to pay for this…..Do I have any answers? No, but this is just one more reason why we like anything that says "Roth" on it right now. If you are unfamiliar with "roth" style of investing, please send me an email at: jclark@yourlifeafterwork.com, and I’ll be happy to give you some information. Of course, those are just my thoughts. Clark’s Thoughts.