The One Million Dollar Bill

Yesterday, I went to BOOKSALE, a second-hand bookstore in SM City San Lazaro, to look for some books I could read to keep myself occupied for this week. I stumbled with Dr. Phil McGraw’s Life Strategies, a soft-bound self-help book. I considered it immediately a best buy. Aside from it was written by a popular psychologist and TV host in the USA, I became very intrigued in the life laws that Dr. Phil expounded in this pocket book.

However, this post will not yet discuss the insights I learned from reading the book. But promise… I will dedicate a post as a review for this book as soon as I finished it.

What I would like to share with you here is how I was stunned to see a dollar bill inside this book and the amount is outrageous … ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!! And promise it really looks truer than true, at least at first glance… Here is the bill:

I instinctively perceived that this is a fake bill, but I felt the need to validate. I immediately searched Google, if there is really an existing one million dollar bill in US. Then, I found out that this denomination is fake (sayang… haha!). In the history of America the highest denomination they released was one hundred thousand dollars, but this was only used to exchange funds through official transactions between Federal Reserved Banks and it was never used for general public. I also learned that this one million dollar bill is just a promotional novelty bill and not a legal tender.    

I just laughed at myself thinking that I already had the greatest find of my life –a flat treasure between pages of an old book. But, what if the note is true and valid that I could convert it in our own currency, I would have been one of the wealthiest men in the archipelago of the Philippines!

Today the exchange rate of one US dollar to Philippine peso is 43.63 pesos. This would make me worth Php 43,630,000.00.  Oh-my! Now the problem is how to spend that amount… haha! If I could handle such amount, I would surely go for worthwhile investments like real estates and establish my multi-million companies. Wow! I also dreamed of having fancy car, a mansion on top of a mountain, a trip around the world, and a lot of charity sponsorship. Ultimately, if ever I could really be that rich, I would like to adopt a school. Of course education will still be my life time advocacy.

Okay let us go back to reality.

The dollar bill is not a legal tender and what I have right now is a second-hand book of Dr. Phil… but who knows, the insights that I can learn from this book can worth more than a million dollar. Maybe the life strategies that I will learn here will eventually help me become more than a millionaire.  

Anyway, I made this dollar bill still useful for me. See, I’m using it now as a bookmark. :)

Happy weekend everyone! :)