The Gift of the Magi: An Update

Poverty as a virtue? Please! Show me the money!

$46,800. That was all. Denise had put it aside, year after year, living on garbage scraps and the kindness of strangers, making due with hand-me-down clothes her less frugal work friends “donated” to her when they got tired of looking at her thread-bare sweaters and out-of-fashion shoes… Sleeping on couches until friends started asking her to pitch in for rent. $46,800 a year scrimped and saved and socked away… and it had still taken her 21,000 years to accumulate just 1 billion dollars.

21,000 years. That was all.

She felt old as hell.

She was old as hell.

And yet, that 1 billion dollars was just a drop in the bucket of what Jeff had to spend. A drop!

For years she had been wondering how she would ever be able to give Jeff a gift equal to what he could give her. Jeff had the means to buy 3.7 million Ford Mustangs! He could purchase 550,000 modest homes in the Midwest, or 200,000 modest homes on the West Coast. Jeff could give every man, woman, and child in Canada $3,055.56 if he wanted to!