A Billionaire for Five Hours

I was logging off of my Yahoo! account after checking my email. As you may or may not know, when you log off a Yahoo! account, you are returned to the Yahoo! homepage. There they flash different articles of interest. The one that caught my attention was about this man who checked his bank balance to find that he had $88,888,888,888.88 (that is eighty eight billion, eight hundred eighty eight million, eight hundred eighty eight thousand, eight hundred eighty eight dollars and eighty eight cents). CAN YOU IMAGINE?!

So, the end of the article invites readers to imagine what they would do with that kind of money if they owned it for 5 hours. The man who reported the error asked the bank if he could move the money to an interest-bearing account for the time remaining before the error could be fixed and donate the interest to charity. According to the Wall Street Journal that interest would have amounted to $7.3 million. The bank, of course, said no.

I read the article to my husband and he said, "Can we say DEBT FREE?" That made me think of what I would do with that money if I owned it for 5 hours. The ground rule is that you have to return the money and anything you bought with it. But if I could break the rule just a little, I would take a hint from the guy with the original error and move the money to an interest-bearing account. They could have their $88.8 billion back, but with that $7.3 million, I would clear out some serious debt.

Since I am not a philanthropist, I would clear out my debt (the remainder of my two credit cards, my entire student debt through the end of my Masters degree, my car and the cost of my house without making any cosmetic and other renovations (which comes to about $160,000)), my husband's debt, my mother's and my father's debt (no more than $200,000 a piece). Basically, once I cleared the family (mine and his), each with no more than $200,000, I'd start taking a look at other families who got into debt not by being irresponsible, but because of what happened with the economy (and maybe some health issues) and clear their debt. Trying to do this, and including the family, that is 36 approximate individuals and families we could help. And 7.3 million is JUST INTEREST!! Imagine how many families could be helped out of their debt with the $88.8 billion.



Check out the article by going to: "If You Were a Billionaire for Five Hours" by Robert Frank