I’ve seen this mental exercise that is quite revealing: what would happen if we distributed all the cash in the world equally among every person on the planet? A farmer in Wisconsin would have exactly the same as a potter in New Delhi, a shepherd in Namibia, or a dentist in Sydney.

The question we all ask ourselves is obvious: how much money would each one have? Well, the answer is more modest than you probably expected. According to CEIC data, we’re talking about the global M2 money supply, which in 2024 was around $123.3 trillion. To clarify, M2 is all that liquidity you have relatively accessible: cash in circulation, high-liquidity bank deposits, savings accounts, and money market accounts. That is, money you could have in your pocket without too much hassle.

This is very different from total wealth, which includes properties, stocks, real estate, and other assets. According to UBS, global private net wealth in 2024 reached $487.9 trillion, but that’s not the same as how much money exists in the world in terms of liquidity.

Doing the simple math: if we divide all that cash in circulation among the approximately 8.16B people on Earth, each person would receive about $15,108, or around €13,944. To put it in perspective, that’s what an average family would spend on food over two years, the price of a used car, or exactly what a new Dacia Sandero costs. Without extras, of course.

Now, if we do the same exercise but only for Spain, things change a bit. With a M2 money supply of $1.648 trillion in December 2024 and a population of about 49 million, each Spaniard would get $33,571, approximately €30,968. Quite a bit more than the global average, reflecting that in developed economies, more liquidity circulates per inhabitant.

It’s fascinating to think about how much money exists in the world when you see it this way. Most people don’t realize that the total amount of cash available in global money markets, although it sounds astronomical, ends up being surprisingly accessible when distributed equally. World money is there, but distributed in a completely unequal way.