How Much is a TRILLION?

Ever wondered just how massive a trillion really is? It's a number so large that most of us can't truly grasp its scale. A trillion is one million million (or one thousand billion) and has twelve zeroes: 1,000,000,000,000.

Here's a mind-bending way to think about it: if you owned a trillion dollars and spent $1,000,000 each day, it would take you just under 2,740 years to spend it all.

How many millions are in a trillion?

A trillion is a million million for both American and modern British English definitions. A trillion dollars is a million dollars multiplied by a million. Or if you prefer, a thousand billion. It has 12 zeroes: 1,000,000,000,000. Makes your eyes cross, doesn't it?

How many billions are in a trillion?

One trillion is the equivalent of 1,000 billion in the modern American system. Up until the 1970s, the UK used the long-scale meaning of trillion, which was 1 million billion (18 zeroes). However, in 1974 Harold Wilson's UK government made the decision to switch to using the modern American meaning to prevent confusion. 5

A trillion in time

When we look at millions, billions and trillions in time scales, the size of a trillion really becomes apparent. It would take us over 350 lifetimes, at an average of 90 years each, to live a trillion seconds (assuming no cryogenic shenanigans).

• A million seconds is 12 days.
• A billion seconds is 31 years.
• A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

How does 1 trillion dollars stack up?

If $1 million in $100 dollar bills stacks up to 40 inches (3.3 feet: kind of underwhelming to look at, really!), and $1 billion is 40,000 inches (that's 0.63 miles high: much more impressive!), $1 trillion in $100 dollar bills is 40,000,000 inches high, which is 631 miles.

In the UK, the median salary is £37,480, so even if Average Joe didn't pay any tax, student loans, rent, food bills, heating, travel bills - or any expenditure at all - it would take them 26,683,501 years to save a trillion pounds. 1

In the US, where the median annual income is around $62,000, saving a trillion dollars (with no outgoings) would take 16,129,032 years! 7

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Curious about salary conversions? Use our Salary to Hourly Calculator and Hourly to Salary Calculator to work out different pay rates.

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So, no wonder that trillion is such a gargantuan figure that nobody actually owns it. Although, UK resident Gareth Hughes came close in 2022 when he received a cheque, sent out in error by energy distributor Northern Powergrid, for £2 trillion. "Bank it, quick!"

Thank you for our compensation payment @Northpowergrid for the several days we were without power following #stormarwen Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this? #trillionpounds pic.twitter.com/z5MNc2Nxl1

— Gareth Hughes (@gh230277) February 12, 2022

Although no one alive currently owns a trillion, some very rich people are getting ever closer.

Who is the richest person on Earth?

According to the Forbes rich list, the richest person on Earth is currently Elon Musk. He's worth just over $400bn. 4

Let's put that figure in words: four hundred billion dollars. Now again in numbers: $400,000,000,000. If you tried to withdraw that amount of money from the bank, not only would it cause some serious repetitive strain injuries for the cashiers, but the cash as a stack of $100 dollar bills would reach 255 miles high.

Most commercial airplanes fly at 30,000 feet, which is 5.7 miles, so imagine $100 bills reaching forty-four times higher than the clouds and you'll be getting somewhere close to $400bn.

Trillions of debt

Much of the West has been economically blighted since the huge financial crash of 2008, and indeed, that was a catalyst in the UK's national debt rising from around £0.5 trillion to more than £1 trillion in the space of just 3 years. Currently it's around £2.6 trillion, and climbing. 2

The USA has a gross national debt (that's government debt and public debt combined) of around $37 trillion. 3 Using $100 bills, they would require a stack of cash that's over 22,000 miles high.

Even if the kind folk in Australia allowed the pile to begin on their land, and drilled a tunnel through the Earth's core to stack the money all the way through the diameter of the planet until it popped out on the opposite side in Washington DC, it still wouldn't be enough cash (it would be short by about 1/2, in fact).

This fantastic video from Demonocracy shows how monstrous this amount of money is.

Article by Alastair Hazell. Reviewed by Chris Hindle.

References

1. Earnings and hours worked, place of residence by local authority. Office for National Statistics (UK)
2. UK government debt and deficit. Office for National Statistics (UK)
3. What is the national debt?. Fiscal Data (Treasury.gov)
4. The world's real-time billionaires. Forbes
5. Statistical literacy guide. House of Commons Library (UK)
6. Usual weekly earnings of wage and salary workers. Bureau of Labor Statistics. USA.

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