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If I gave you $1 million in cash to spend in 1 hour, after which the money will disappear, what would you buy? (discuss.ntfy.sh)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

169 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have asked this question to countless people (mostly in hair salons) as an alternative to small talk, and it always yields interesting results.

Rules:

You get the money right now, right where you are. If it's 10pm and you're in the middle of nowhere, your money will still go poof at 11pm.
As a result of the above, tell us what time it is and roughly where you are (big city, desert, small town, ...)
You must spend the money. You cannot give it to someone to hold on to it for you for a while.
Normal world rules apply, e.g. you cannot buy a $250k car at a dealership in 1h in cash, and you cannot buy a house in 1h either.
Remember that getting from where you are to the place you need to go takes time. Factor that in!

Edit: I'm glad you guys had fun with this one. Feel free to post similar hypothetical questions. I kinda like these.

Edit edit: Free advertising 😅 --> I run and maintain an open source push notification service called ntfy, which let's you send notifications to your phone via PUT/POST, like curl -d "backup successful" ntfy.sh/mytopic. Go check it out.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The post specified cash. How would you purchase $1m in index funds with cash in an hour?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bring it to my bank, deposit, then purchase online.

Though I'd leave it in my index fund, on average they perform better than actively managed accounts

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think getting to a bank, explaining where 1M in cash came from, getting them to accept the deposit, getting them to count it, then spending it in less than an hour is not feasible.

Because, depositing it in a bank is not enough.
It has to be spent.
So, if you don't spend it then the bank is left without however much disappears... If that makes sense.

And, given that, I don't think investing is a suitable application.
Otherwise, just invest it directly at the bank.
Maybe you don't get inflation-beating interest (ie, if it was your 1M you would be losing money), but after whatever-term you get 1M of clean money to spend.

[–] saucyloggins 5 points 1 year ago

Easy. Pay yourself 1 million dollars to wash a dish.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think the only way to spend it all is if you have some shady crypto connection that will give you 800k in bitcoin for it on the spot or something.

Otherwise just go out for the fastest shopping spree you ever did, find an electronics store or whatever expensive retail outlet you can find and spend as much possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If counting the money was a problem to overcome intended by OP, they would've mentioned it. For the sake of the post's intent I think it's safe to assume the money is in large bills, which can be counted very quickly by a machine. Add to that that I can just use an ATM at the front of my bank, and things are much more fast and automatic.

Once it's in my account, it's in my account and I can use it right away

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

On money counting....
Well, $500 and $1000 bill was discontinued in 1969.
So, if you are dealing with those bills, you are dealing with collectors who will be more particular.
So, let's got with $100 bills.
Googling "fastest bill counter" gives the "JetScan iFX i100" which can do 1600 bills per minute.
Which is only 6.25 minutes for $1M in $100 bills.
And it had counterfeit detection.
Honestly, that's a hell of a lot faster than I expected.
If the bank has/uses automated machines for customer deposits.

Anyway, I don't think a bank would accept a $1M deposit.
Any deposits over $10,000 require special processing by the IRS.
Indeed, all financial institutions need to abide by "know your customer" rules.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer

If you are a regular banker than has a $50k salary and you rock up with $1M cash, a bank is going to refuse you. Or at least do a hell of a lot of due-diligence.
It's all about anti-laundering and anti-terrorism these days, and they need to manage the risk of having you as a customer.
If you have a history of big cash deposits, then it might be easier.

Even then, chances are you would have to go to a fairly major branch of a bank for them to be able to accept the risk of holding $1M in cash.

I know modern banking is "Money in, money out. So easy".
But beyond certain thresholds, risk management, government agencies and laws all come into effect. And you can bet your ass, a bank will be wanting to minimise their risk!