It's a common fantasy: If you suddenly received
a huge pile of money, what would be the first
thing you buy?
A new hat?
A car?
A house?
A paradise island?
All of them, with an NBA team or two on the
side?
Even someone like Bill Gates, a man famously
sitting on a bigger mountain of cash than
some countries, once wrestled with that particular
question.
As CNBC Make It tells us, the Microsoft mastermind
and YouTube superstar had to decide what his
first purchase would be when Microsoft went
public in March 1986, which gave his stake
at the company a market value of a cool $350
million.
He didn't celebrate this with a fleet of new
helicopters, or a magnificent 30-course restaurant
meal in the most expensive restaurant he could
find, though.
And as anyone who has ever seen him knows,
he certainly didn't buy a nice suit.
Instead, he made a financially sound, boring
move and treated himself to a debt-free existence
by paying off his $150,000 mortgage.
Sure, that's a very smart idea, but on the
other hand, booooo!
Could "Oh well, I'll just deal with the mortgage
now," really have been his first instinct
when he came into money?
Did the man not even consider treating himself
with a single "Whoa, I can actually afford
this now" -themed splurge purchase?
Anything?
Anything at all?
[laughter]
Ha, of course he did!
You may think he's a robot, but Gates is actually
a human being, too.
The thing to remember here is that March 1986
was not really the first time Bill Gates had
a thick wallet.
Sure, the year marked the point when he started
having the kind of wealth most people can't
even comprehend, but he actually started making
decent money off his company way back in 1979.
While his net worth was not yet anywhere near
the hundreds of millions he would later possess,
he still had money to spare, and he decided
to indulge on one self-admitted splurge: A
Porsche 911 supercar.
To be fair, though, CNBC notes that Gates
made even this vanity purchase with careful
consideration.
Gates bought the Porsche used, and says that
he treated it as a workhorse rather than a
showpiece: He drove it long, hard and fast
around the New Mexico desert, to a point where
he was once arrested and had to call Paul
Allen to bail him out.
Gates said of his beloved car,
"Sometimes when I would want to think at night,
I would just go out and drive around at high
speed.
Fortunately, I didn't kill myself doing that."
Though the Porsche 911 was his first cool
car with a capital C, it wouldn't be his last.
Turns out, Gates is a bit of a car guy, and
he later added several toys to his four-wheeled
collection, including a Ferrari 348 and a
Jaguar XJ6.
Even in his later years, Business Insider
says Gates remains an "avid luxury-car collector,"
and one of the most prized vehicles in his
possession is reportedly a rare Porsche 959
sports car.
Interestingly, Bill Gates still seems to consider
his first Porsche one of his only two major
"guilty pleasure" purchases.
Business Insider tells us that as recently
as 2018, the billionaire said that the car
and the $40 million private jet he bought
later are the only "crazy things" he has spent
money on.
"I often use a private plane, and that is
very extravagant."
Of course, whether you believe that or not
depends heavily on your personal definition
of the word "crazy."
After all, there's the small matter of his
$127 million home that features countless
amenities only the richest of the rich could
ever dare to dream of.
According to Business Insider, the 66,000
square-foot mansion complex is called Xanadu
2.0, and it's located in Medina, Washington.
Xanadu 2.0 has seven bedrooms, six kitchens
and 24 bathrooms, ten of which have actual
baths.
There's a 200-person reception hall, a personal
cinema, and all the usual super-rich jazz.
But Gates is not your average super-rich dude,
is he now?
As one of the absolute richest people on the
globe, he's got trampoline room money, which
is precisely why the place features its own
trampoline room.
Now that's more like it!
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