Bill Gates Plans To Donate All His Wealth & Here's How Much He Could Give Everyone On Earth

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says he plans to drop off the list of the richest billionaires on the planet, and if he's looking for something to do with his net worth, we've got some ideas.

Gates revealed earlier this week that he and his ex-wife Melinda are donating $20 billion to their charitable foundation, as part of an effort to address the "great crises of our time."

That knocks his estimated net worth down to about $102 billion, according to Forbes' realtime tracker.

And it sounds like he's not done yet.

"As I look to the future, I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation," he wrote on Twitter Wednesday. "I will move down and eventually off the list of the world's richest people."

That's all well and good, but what if he distributed his fortune evenly among the 7.7 billion humans on Earth?

We did a bit of math on that, and Gates could afford to pay US$13 to every single person on the planet — and he'd still be a billionaire.

However, the guy apparently has no intention of doing that, and instead he hopes to do more good by giving the cash to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"I have an obligation to return my resources to society in ways that have the greatest impact for reducing suffering and improving lives," he tweeted.

In other words, he'd rather change the world through his deep-pocketed foundation than buy you a pizza. Although one can dream, right?

The billionaire and his ex-wife founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, and they've used it to fight poverty, hunger and diseases like malaria over the last two-plus decades.

Gates was at No. 4 on the Forbes annual list of billionaires this year, but this move is expected to drop him down around the 7-8 range.

It also means that No. 1 Elon Musk will have a net worth that's more than double that of Gates.

However, it sounds like Gates isn't bothered by stuff like that, and he'd rather see people like Musk follow his example.

"I hope others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too," he wrote.