So not even the interest has to be paid off during the life of the billionaire? The lenders are just fine being out the 200 million that a new superyacht might cost? And might not be able to collect anything for 50+ years? Where can I get such a sweet loan?!

I mean, I'm sure it varies. Some of the loans might get serviced with interest, some might have "normal" repayments within whatever the billionaire wants to pay out of realized income. Some might build up the amount owed until the billionaire passes - sort of a zero-coupon bond.

It's easy to get such a sweet loan, provided you're a megabillionaire. Bankers desperately want to have their business, and swallowing a little of the vig on a loan is a really small price to pay to be Elon's Banker. That's an oversimplification, of course - I'm sure he has lots of bankers - but given the amount of wealth that's spun off from his various operations (the Space X IPO alone! And also the Twitter and xAI acquisitions), it's worth covering his bar tab to have your name on the list of bankers he turns to.

Let's be honest - it is really, really hard to "spend" a ton of money relative to your holdings at that level of wealth. Sure, you have some amount of hideous large consumption; but almost everything you're buying that matters at that scale is you purchasing an asset (a house, a piece of art you love, jewelry) rather than consumption. Yes, all your payroll and your transportation/vacations and your meals and whatnot....but is that really much more than an eight-figure spend? The stuff you're paying for that isn't itself an asset that maintains value? When you're a Zuckerberg or a Page or a Brin or whatever, that's going to be 0.03% of your net worth. And when you die, it just takes 1-2% of your estate to pay off your lifetime expenses put on the tab. Super-easy to get some institution to finance you at a reasonable interest rate....they know you're good for it, and it's totally worth the trivial amount of interest.