J. Paul Getty: Counting Billions
on Tuesday, March 29, 2011Aspiring millionaires are constantly counting their money to keep score, but billionaires are scored by power rather than cash. J. Paul Getty said:
“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars” — J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty seems to be conveying that once someone accumulates a vast personal fortune equivalent to a billion dollars, it is no longer practical or meaningful to precisely count or keep track of the total amount of money one has.
At such immense wealth levels, specific dollar figures lose significance, and one’s assets are more abstractly viewed as an overall financial empire or holding rather than a countable sum. Getty’s quote implies that true billionaire status represents a scale of riches beyond simple accounting where money becomes more conceptual than countable.
In essence, he is suggesting that a billion dollars symbolizes wealth that can no longer be fully comprehended or monitored in terms of individual bills and coins, but rather must be managed and understood in aggregate or portfolio terms.
Birthday: December 15, 1892 – Death: June 6, 1976