WHAT IS A TRILLION, REALLY?

What is a Trillion, anyway?

Baby Boomers have often proclaimed “50 is the new 40.”

According a recent CNN report, “Trillion is the new billion.”

With all the talk about stimulus funding, deficits and the budget, the numbers lack context. It is hard for us to understand a billion, let alone a trillion.

To start with, let’s start with dollars we can understand. Let’s say I settled a large injury case that netted you $100,000.00. That is clearly One Hundred Thousand dollars.

Ten times that is One Thousand Thousands, or what we call One Million Dollars.

Now, it takes One Thousand Million to make a Billion. That is a one followed by nine zeros.

And a Trillion is a Thousand Billion. Feeling numb yet?

You see, a Trillion dollars is the number 1 followed by 12 zeroes!

One trillion $1 bills stacked one on top of the other would reach nearly 68,000 miles into the sky, or about a third of the way from the Earth to the moon!

A million seconds is about 11½ days. A billion seconds is about 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years!

That means that a billion minutes ago, Jesus had just risen from the dead!

To put a trillion dollars in context, if you spend a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion!

I sometimes wonder if our elected officials actually understand these numbers.

*Mr. Peel, a Christian Injury Lawyer, may be available to speak to your church or community group. He may be reached through www.PeelLawFirm.com. Other articles maybe found on his blog at www.DavidBPeel.blogspot.com

Money

Money

There are a lot of myths of about money. The one most repeated is that “money is the root of all evil.” However, that is incorrect.

The verse actually says it is love of money that is the problem:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 6:9-11 (NIV)

All evil comes from the heart, and not from inanimate objects made of paper or metal. Thus, money is neither moral nor immoral. It can be used for evil or for good. Much like guns, they do nothing on their own, but can be a tool used for an evil thing like murder or the noble defense of victims.

However, there are some facts about money that I found interesting:

-Pennies now contain 97.5 percent zinc and only 2.5 percent copper. However it costs more than penny to make them: it costs 1.8 cents to make a one-cent coin! (With thinking like that, it is no wonder our government is broke!)

-According to the U.S. national debt clock, we stand today at $14,200,727,372,615.35. The estimated population of the United States is 310,175,903, so each citizen's share of this debt is $45,782.82!

-The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $4.12 billion per day since September 28, 2007! To help visualize this, for just one day’s $4.12 billion you could buy a 2012 Ford Mustang for each of your 186,000 closest friends!

-Your odds of winning huge in the a Powerball are something like 1 in 120,526,770, which means you have a better chance of being in a car accident on the way to buy the ticket than to win!

-If you have a $3,000 credit card balance and you pay the minimums you will pay for over 10 years and almost double the repayment.

-A million is a thousand thousands. A billion is a thousand millions. A trillion is a thousand billions.

-How much does $1 million weigh? Since there are 490 notes in a pound, if you used $1 bills it would weigh a staggering 2,040.8 pounds, but if you used $100 bills it would weigh only 20.4 pounds.

-If you had 10 billion $1 notes and spent one every second of every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would require 317 years for you to go broke.

-“Being well off” is usually defined as those that make about 20%-30% a year more than you. In other words, if you make $25,000 a year, the guy making $32,500 looks pretty well off. But the same is true for the one who makes a million and who looks at the neighbor making 1.3 million.

-Ecclesiastes 5:10 (NIV) summarizes this: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.”

*Mr. Peel, a Christian Injury Lawyer, may be available to speak to your church or community group. He may be reached through www.PeelLawFirm.com. Other articles maybe found on his blog at www.DavidBPeel.blogspot.com

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Life Insurance

Life Insurance is an afterthought for many. It was different for me.

Originally, when I was getting married, I contacted my agent to purchase a policy. My reasoning was simple: I was about be married to my beautiful bride and she may get pregnant. If so, that child is mine and I must still provide for him or her even if something happened to me. She could get pregnant and I could die not even knowing she was a few weeks along.

I am not sure why that occurred to me then, but I have been told before I think a little differently sometimes.

When I explained all this to my agent, he said "If everyone thought like you, I'd be rich!"

At any rate, 15 1/2 years later I have bought more insurance to protect my wife and the kids if I am the first to go see Jesus.

Generally, I strongly prefer TERM insurance. Only under unusual circumstances would I recommend whole life or one of its progeny.

Term is usually so cheap, it is a good buy. I strongly recommend its purchase while you are healthy enough to buy it cheap. A good rule of thumb on amount might be:

With all your debts paid off, could they live well on 5% annualized.

So, with a paid for house, and no notes, $500,000 policy may throw off 40 to 50K per year. Most people can sustain a nice lifestyle without debt and that income, plus any possible earnings. However, for a little more per month, a 1,000,000 is even more preferable. A goal is to allow your survivors to supplement their live though interest without touching the principal.

It can only be bought cheaply when you are young and healthy. So this is the time to think about it. And, be honest on the application, or they will deny your coverage, even after you die in some cases.