Sense of Scale part 3

Instead of looking up at the “big numbers”, we can shrink them to our level. Imagine the average person makes 50k/year, and a rich guy makes 500k/year. What’s the difference?
Well, instead of visualizing having 10x your money, imagine that things cost 10 times less. A new laptop? That’ll be 150 bucks. A new porsche? Only 6,000 dollars. A really nice house? 50k. Things are cheap when you’re rich.
To understand Bill Gates’ scale, don’t think of 50 billion dollars and 5 billion/year income — it’s just another large number. Try to imagine having things cost 100,000 times less (and 100,000 is a pretty large number).
A laptop would be a few pennies. A porsche would be about 60 cents. Your $50M mansion would be a mere 500 bucks. You could “splurge”, spend $1000, and get everything you’ve ever needed. And you’re still earning 50k/year.
It’s much more vivid than “50 billion in the bank”, eh?

Source: Mental Math Shortcuts