You've gotta hand it to Donald Trump. No matter how you feel about his stances on immigration, foreign policy, or tax reform, the real estate mogul is admittedly a wealth of quotes rivaled only by "Pulp Fiction." His latest gem came during a recent interview on "The Today Show" where Trump elaborated on the struggles and difficulties he faced as he began to create his brand. This quote in particular...
Let's put this into greater perspective, specifically when he received the loan. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and based on the rate of inflation provided by CNN, his small loan during that time would have been valued at today to be $6.8 million dollars.
Mine and Trump's definition of "small loan" may not exactly match, but for the sake of humor, put yourself in Trump's position. It's near the end of the 60s, you're a young college graduate with a full, reasonable amount of hair. Your father, a real estate tycoon, gives you a million dollars to start your own business. Now, if you do not have any inkling of interest in business and you want to splurge the money (like most of us probably would have), then I can see this being a very entertaining use of funds. For example:
The average cost of a new car in 1968 was $2,822.00, so you could have bought 354 new cars.
Movie tickets were $1.50, so you could have seen "Planet of the Apes" 666,666 times. With a number like that, you might as well have seen "Rosemary's Baby."
A burger from McDonald's cost .18 cents, so you could have eaten 5.6 million hamburgers and potentially octupled your chance of morbid obesity.
The price of a six pack of domestic beer was .99 cents, so including taxation you could have bought just over 940,000 six-packs, or 5.7 million cans of beer and one hell of a party.
But, it's 2015. Who cares about what my grandparents could have bought with that much money?
Good point - maybe we need to put this into another frame of mind. Even though a million dollars in today's time is not worth the same compared to the '60s, it's still quite a bit of dough to have on hand. So, if you were to have a million dollars today:
You could attend App State for approximately 70 years at the current undergraduate rate.
Based on the Starbucks coffee and size you prefer, you could be sipping between 215,053 to 350,877 cups of coffee, based on the prices between a tall Cafe Latte and a venti Caramel Machiatto.
You could buy at least 9,000 shares of Netflix stock and lower the monthly price for those of us who are still binge watching "Lost" and "Orange is the New Black."
Increase the monthly pay of the roughly 900 full time staff at App State by $92.59/month and prevent another football game walk out, I hope.
Buy at least 20,020 single-day tickets to Carowinds.
Of course, if you believe in philanthropy, you could always donate to the Justin Chandler Pay Me Now College Fund.
Whatever the case may be, a million dollars is quite a bit of money for anyone, no matter if Trump deems it to be a coin in his annual donation plate. It could be the difference between someone being a beloved charity benefactor, a supervillain like Lex Luthor, or, much worse, Rob Dyrdek. Maybe we can use Trump's obvious lack of financial empathy to look into our own lives and understand the value of money, especially as we save up against student loans and other debts. Take a good look at your finances, dear friends, and save and spend wisely for a better life.
Or spend like Floyd Mayweather at clubs when my back is turned -- your choice.
Think you have better or different ways how to spend Trump's million? Comment below or on Facebook and share the wealth!
