An interesting thought experiment: imagine that all the cash on the planet suddenly decided to be divided equally among all 8 billion inhabitants. A farmer from Wisconsin, a potter from India, a herder from Namibia, and a dentist from Australia would all receive exactly the same amount. It sounds utopian, but let’s do the math to see how much money there really is in the world.

It turns out, the answer is quite specific. When talking about the money supply M2 — which isn’t just the bills in your wallet, but all the money in circulation plus bank deposits that can be relatively quickly converted into cash — the data from CEIC shows that in 2024, the global M2 money supply was about $123 trillion.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. If you divide these $123 trillion by 8.16 billion people, each person would get approximately $15,000. About €14,000. And you know, with that amount, you could buy a new Dacia Sandero — the base model, without extras, of course. Or two or three used cars. Or it’s roughly what an average household spends over two years.

It’s important to understand the difference here. The amount of money in the world in the form of M2 is not the same as global wealth. UBS recently calculated that the planet’s net private wealth reaches $488 trillion. But that includes real estate, stocks, jewelry — everything that can’t be simply exchanged for cash. M2 is only the money you can access relatively quickly.

Interestingly, if you perform the same experiment on individual countries, the picture changes. In Spain, for example, the M2 money supply is about $1.65 trillion. With a population of 49 million, each Spaniard would get roughly $33,500 — more than the global average. Spaniards clearly manage their financial system better, judging by this indicator.

All this math shows one thing: no matter how much money there is in the world, it’s never enough to make everyone rich at the same time. The system doesn’t operate on equal distribution but on differences in access to assets and opportunities. So, $15,000 per person is more of a fun calculation than a realistic scenario.