system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How Do The Mega Rich Like Bill Gates Have Free Access To Their Own Money If It's Mostly In Investments And Stocks?

I've seen a lot of information saying things like "Bill Gates and people that rich have most of their wealth tied up in stocks and their investments, they usually have very little cash-on-hand or in their bank." If that's the case, I'm to believe Bill Gates has to start selling his assets before he can just go buy a car? Does he not have readily available access to his basically limitless wealth or is that number just for show? I'm misunderstanding I'm sure, but I don't see the point to having billions of dollars if it's all tied up in stuff you can't touch whenever the whim strikes. Why hoard money like Smaug the dragon if you can never spend as much of it as you want? I know you wouldn't be rich very long if you spent all your money, but *hypothetically*, if I had a billion dollars in assets, stocks, investments, etc could I just spend a billion in cash if I didn't give a shit about anything else?

Is there a variety of super rich people who have a lot of "cash in hand" that they can access whenever they want?
gpt
Having most of your money in investments and stocks is not the same as having all of your money in it. Gates is worth 91 billion dollars, so even if he had only 5% of his money as cash on hand he would still have 4.5 billion dollars available to him for purchases.