WICHITA, Kansas, May 15, 2008 – What would you do with $1 billion? Few people get the chance to live out that scenario, but Wichitan Phil Ruffin is one of them and sat down with KSN’s Jason Kravarik to tell him what it’s like.

“I always wanted to be in business,” said Phil Ruffin. “I never wanted to work for anybody. And I would advise anybody today -- quit your job today, get your own business.”

Easy for him to say, but that’s exactly what Phil Ruffin did. And then, in 2007, he sold his Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and he instantly became a billionaire.

So how does it feel to look at the bank statement and see $1.24 billion?

“Unbelievable,” Ruffin said. “I think it was the largest amount given to a personal account before, not a business account. Wired it right here to Wichita, Kansas. They didn't know what to do with that kind of money.”

The deal was described in the New York Post as the eighth biggest payout in 2007. And Ruffin had good company - Bill Gates topped the list.

But every success story has to start somewhere and the life of Phil Ruffin is no different.

“When I was in Houston I had to go borrow $100 from the bank,” he said. “I didn't have any money. I had 28 cents.”

When Ruffin moved back to Wichita in 1959, he borrowed from the bank and his father and opened a convenience store in south Wichita. That led to more stores and gas stations, then to hotels and oil. By 1997, Ruffin brokered the deal that would eventually catapult him to the Forbes richest Americans list. He leased his 63 convenience stores to Total Petroleum for $50 million.

With that, he bought into a hotel and casino in the Bahamas, opening a door for his prized possession: The Frontier in Las Vegas. It sat on land so valuable that it sold for the $1.24 billion that had everyone talking.

So, what did he do with the money?

“I bought a new airplane,” he said.

A Boeing business jet to go along with the Raytheon he already owned.

Where does he fly to? Well, one of five homes including one on Park Avenue, one in Cocoa Beach, Florida, two in Las Vegas and one on the California coast, which he bought from his buddy Donald Trump.

"Donald owed me, he owed me $12.5 million and I took the house in trade,” he said. “I'd rather have the house than his note, so ha,”

Ruffin is so close to Trump he was invited to the final taping of the Celebrity Apprentice and both partnered for the new Trump Condo Hotel in Las Vegas.

Ruffin calls Trump a man of his word, and generous like the time Trump called to finish a deal the two were partnering on.

"It was 8 o'clock in the morning; he called me and said, 'we're $42 million short of getting this thing done,” he said. “He says, ‘let's each put up $21 million.’ It was like 8 o'clock in the morning, and I hesitated for a second. He says, 'if you don't have it I'll put up the money for you,' I said, ‘no I've got it.’ But that's what we did. But that's the kind of friend he is.”

That friendship goes beyond business. Trump was the best man at Ruffin’s wedding last year when he married Alexandria, a woman from the Ukraine he met in the Bahamas seven years earlier.

To call Ruffin a jetsetter is an understatement. He’s seen in pictures in the Bahamas playing golf with Sean Connery. But he keeps roots in Wichita because his family is here. Not to mention, the local companies he owns. His non-descript office in south Wichita symbolizes the slower pace of life Ruffin enjoys about the city.

Still, he did try to bring Vegas to downtown Wichita in the form of a Trump casino, which died when voters nixed expanded gambling. His Greyhound Park also died after the vote. It was hemorrhaging money and when slots failed to pass, Ruffin closed the track for good.

“I didn't like that,” he said. “I didn't need the money. It didn't mean anything to me. But I didn't want to see the people lose their jobs that had been there forever. That was a disappointment to me.”

For now, Ruffin is out of the casino business and investing in municipal bonds, which means his money finances school improvements in Philadelphia, road projects in Kansas and the Chicago Midway Airport, among others. It’s more lucrative than a bank account. So far this year, Ruffin’s money has earned him another $30 million.

He says he’s given millions to charity, including diabetes research, which he knows about all too well.

“I have to fight it all the time myself,” he said. “And so, last year I think I gave them $150,000. But you know some of these things are very important that people should donate to. Perhaps I should do more.”

So, is Phil Ruffin happy with where he’s at?

“Should have done better,” he said. “Some deals that I didn't do that I should have done.”

And as long as those deals are hanging over his head Phil Ruffin will be on a plane to the coast, Vegas, New York, or wherever the rainbow meets the ground.

"You go where the money is,” he said. “And it's just like the bank robbers say, 'Why'd you rob the bank? Well that's where the money is.’”

All told, Phil Ruffin is worth $2 billion according to Forbes Magazine. That’s good for number 220 on the Forbe’s List of Richest Americans.

Another Wichitan is on that list: Charles Koch who is worth $17 billion.