How much ready-on-hand cash do people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have at any moment?

Factual Questions
41

BTW, I think it was a stretch Bentley. It was brand spanking new and it was really big. Maybe it was a Bentley standard and not a stretch.

Adding on to my previous post. The manufacturing company CEO with the Bentley above is a multi billionaire. When I was walking him from his meeting to the Bentley, he stopped at the cashier’s and broke a couple of hundreds for twenties. He commented that he needed to give out little tips. So, he carried around some cash. Sorry to say I can’t remember if he had a money clip or a wallet.

For context, he’s Asian (most countries still use a lot of cash), a self made billionaire, and runs a manufacturing company with razor thin margins that watches every penny like a hawk.

42

Mulsanne Grand Limousine:

43

And when he visits the “three-dollar theater” like he was occasionally known to do when I too lived in Seattle, he’s got to have 3 bucks on him.

44

Over the course of the past 13 years, I’ve worked on many helicopters belonging to high net worth individuals… at least one of whom was named previously in this thread. It’s been almost 50-50 on the number that are owned by a corporation (almost always a Delaware corporation, sometimes simply named “Nxxxxx, LLC” [where Nxxxxx is the FAA registration of the aircraft]), and the number that are owned by a bank (Wells Fargo is the one that I recall seeing most frequently).

Currently, the two helicopters my employer maintains for HNWIs are both owned by Delaware corporations. Both of them also own bizjets, which are owned by Delaware corporations that are separate from the ones that own the helicopters.

45

Delaware has interestingly generous rules for corporations. (oops, almost type coprorations).

Plus, assets like aircraft and yachts don’t depreciate much compared to other assets. So it makes sense to finance them and reap the capital gains when they sell. So, keep their finances separate from the rest of your typical billionaire’s wallet, it’s cleaner that way. Pay your corporation when you do take a flight. If necessary, leas it to a service that rents it out to others when you won’t need it and make more money. (IIRC, when he was still in the primaries, Trump had the campaign and the RNC pay him to use his big jet. Political comments aside, it was making money for the jet’s corporation.)

46

I have a couple of non-peon friends, and I end up bailing them out with cash when they’ve forgotten that the local greasy spoon diners take… greenback dollars only. And all they have is some pretentious Molybdenum Amex card.

47

It’s been a long long long long time since I ran across an established business that doesn’t take plastic. Typically that’s only pop-up things like street fairs and special event parking. (But then. the Canadian banking system is usually a few years ahead of the USA)

But again, to be repetitive, billionaires don’t need ready cash. They use their assets to offset any money they need someone to front them, and banks are happy to oblige. To see how this works out, take a lesson from Michael Jackson. He made money hand over fist, spent like a drunken sailor. Some spending was quite useful - he bought the Beatles’ catalog which was an on-going money-maker. He had a back catalog of his own songs, which to this day continue to make money. For any big purchase, he went to some banks somewhere and they were happy to advance him cash against future income.

However, he went too far. As I mentioned - in that first documentary, they not only showed Neverland in all its extravagance, but showed him walking through some artsy schlock shop buying this and that (African masks, 3-foot brass elephant, that sort of thing). He said “I want that, that, that…” and the store boxed it up, sent it to Neverland along with the bill. The banks began to get worried he owed too much. They started demanding specific security - i.e. we won’t actually buy the Beatles’ music rights, but you agree their income will be directed specifically to our loans first until they are paid off; about as close to a mortgage as one gets.

(When I was in Dubai and took a boat tour around the Palm, the tour guide mentioned that the room over the arch in the Atlantis cost $79,000 a night and Michael Jackson stayed there once for a while…)

Once he died (and so stopped spending like crazy) trustees sorted out his debts and income, paid down his loans, and his(?) kids are well off.

That’s how billionaires spend when they want to. They say what they want, and someone makes the arrangements for them, and unless they want to get involved, they are not bothered with the details unless it means significant changes in the character of their holdings.

48

Old joke - accountant comes to billionaire and says “sir, your son lost a million dollars playing cards in Vegas last year. How long can you let him do this?”

Billionaire: [thinks for a moment] " About 1200 years?"

49

Oh God! A world collapses. I am sorry to see that, they would really go that far for money? Yucks!
I will never buy a Bentley now that I know. Guess I should be thanful, but it feels hard. I thought Bentleys were classier than R&R. How naive…

50

That’s pretty tame compared to the block-long Expeditions and Hummers I’ve seen even in back-water cities.

51

You thought VWAG was classier than BMW? :wink:

I’ll concede I think the Phantom is nicer than that thing, though.

52

I just had lunch today with a friend who consults on some of the amenities installed in yachts. He’s working now on a >100-meter yacht being built for a client whose name would be recognized by everyone.

He says that the price tag for a 100-meter yacht ranges from about $120 million to $180 million. A boat that size has a crew of more than 30, and monthly operating costs of about $1 million.

53

at the end of the day, they all have to sit on the toilet and take a dump and wipe themselves just like the rest of us. They may have more money but they are not better than any one of us.

54

You don’t know that. They might have a bidet.

55

Hell, for a billion a year I’d wipe Bezos’s ass for him and clean up the piles if he didn’t want to bother going to a toilet so all of those sound completely optional to me.

56

Some really rich guy had 100m sitting in a bank account. It made the news when someone found the ATM slip.

The story claims to have identified the rich guy, but he denied it. Not sure if they ever confirmed who it was.

57

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from you and I.”
Hemmingway; [unimpressed] “Yes. They have more money.”