You’ll notice that I said “if I had to” . . . not “if I could.” Because living a billionaire’s lifestyle would be one of the last things in this world I would choose to do.

I mean, who needs that kind of stress? People always after your money and your favors; the press following you everywhere; houses full of antiques and servants; the public appearances, formal dinners, having to smile constantly . . . feh!

Don’t get me wrong — a couple of million wouldn’t hurt my feelings. But — as with liquor, salt, and even chocolate — you can have too much of a good thing.

Still, if I were forced, for some unimaginable reason, to choose a billionaire with whom to share my life, who would it be? That’s a really tough question, because most of them are such greedy, unfeeling, self-serving, narcissistic jerks, I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with them. Except, possibly, one:

Bill Gates.

Oh, I’m quite sure he has his annoying little personality quirks (don’t we all?). And anyone who has achieved his level of success has to be a dedicated, even obsessive, workaholic. But he has one big thing going for him that the others — Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest — all seem to lack, and that is: humanity.

Gates estimates that his fortune should be worth around $200 billion by the year 2045, by which time his charitable foundation will be brought to a close, and 99 percent of his wealth will have been given away. He plans to direct most of that (approximately) $198 billion toward aid to Africa — an area where the U.S. government has recently cut assistance, including its former programs to help fight the continent’s devastating AIDS epidemic.

With around $2 billion remaining, he won’t have to worry about the cost of food or medicine in his old age. But, with Warren Buffett and other philanthropists as his inspiration, Gates has a goal quite different from those of most of his financial equals. As he explained it in a blog post:

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.” [Farouk Chothia, BBC News, June 2, 2025.]

Of course, the word “rich” means different things to different people. Even one percent of Gates’ fortune is an unfathomable amount of money to most of us.

Yet a “mere” $2 billion must seem like pocket change to someone like Elon Musk, whose big dream is to colonize Mars, or to Jeff Bezos, another “space race” advocate. But Gates has addressed that issue as well, saying that he would rather pay for vaccines than travel into space:

“It’s actually quite expensive to go to Mars. You can buy measles vaccines and save lives for $1,000 per life saved. And so [that] just kind of grounds you, as in — don’t go to Mars.” [Amol Rajan, BBC, February 3, 2023.]

And there you have him: a humanitarian, a billionaire who doesn’t spend his wealth to buy elections, or build rockets that explode and fall back to Earth, or hire women to bear his multitude of children. You have a man who cares about people, about the health of the world’s children, about the environment, and about the future of humanity.

So yes, of all of the uber-rich men in this world, I would choose Bill Gates . . . quirks and all.

If I had to . . .

. . . and if he’d have me.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/4/25