Here's a thought experiment that blew my mind when I first ran the numbers: what if you could take every single dollar in circulation worldwide and split it equally among everyone on Earth? Like, literally divide all the cash in the world per person and see what everyone gets.

Sounds wild, right? But the math is actually pretty straightforward once you understand what M2 money supply really means. It's not just bills in your wallet—it includes all the cash actively circulating plus bank deposits you could access relatively quickly, savings accounts, money market funds. Basically, all the liquid money that's actually available in the global economy.

So here's where it gets interesting. According to CEIC data from 2024, the total M2 money supply sitting in the world's financial system is around 123.3 trillion dollars. That's the actual cash pool we're working with. Now divide that by the world population—about 8.16 billion people—and you get roughly 15,108 dollars per person. Not exactly life-changing money, but enough to buy a decent second-hand car. In fact, you could literally buy a Dacia Sandero with it. No upgrades included, obviously.

To put it another way, that's about 13,944 euros per person. Enough to cover two years of groceries for an average household. Kind of puts things in perspective when you think about how much wealth inequality actually exists, doesn't it?

Now here's the thing—this is just M2 money supply. It doesn't include all the wealth locked up in real estate, stocks, businesses, or other assets. Global net private wealth is actually way higher at around 488 trillion dollars according to UBS data. But that wealth isn't liquid cash sitting around ready to be distributed.

I decided to run the same calculation for Spain just to see how it compares. Spain's M2 supply in late 2024 was about 1.648 trillion dollars, with roughly 49 million inhabitants. That breaks down to around 33,571 dollars per Spanish resident, or about 30,968 euros. Interesting that Spain's per capita share is actually higher than the global average—tells you something about where the cash concentration is.

The real takeaway? When you ask how much money is there in the world per person, the answer depends entirely on what counts as 'money.' Liquid cash? Not that much. Total wealth? Significantly more. But the distribution is so uneven that these theoretical numbers barely scratch the surface of actual inequality.