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.
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1 million in index funds which I will reinvest later.
The post specified cash. How would you purchase $1m in index funds with cash in an hour?
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
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.
But is the market open at 10pm?
A monkey. I’ve always wanted a monkey.
Hey this guy’s cheating.
Quito Ecuador at 8:30pm on a Sunday night. Nothing other than small cornerstores and liquor shops are open. So I guess I’ll buy as much liquor as I can to resell later.
If you (or a banker or anyone you’re paying) needed to count that money, you’d need to count just over 11 bills every 4 seconds, just to count all the bills within an hour, let alone have time to actually spend the money. This is assuming $100 bills, of which you’d need 10,000 of. This many bills also weighs 22 pounds or 10 kilograms, plus whatever the weight of the container you’re carrying it is… IDK man I think I’d not even try to spend most of it, grab maybe $500-1000 in cash, and go on a quick shopping spree at Target or something, which is like a 10 minute walk from where I live. I could buy groceries, clothing, electronics, household items, etc. If I still had time I would go back and try to buy gift cards in large denominations, but I know cashiers are supposed to give people a hard time with that because of scammers, so I wouldn’t want to deal with that during the initial transaction.
It’s kinda late here in Europe, but I would immediately go to my neighbour and explain the situation quickly.
His house isn’t worth a million dollars but I would buy it for 1 million dollars anyway, after the sale is done, I’d sell it back to him for a price so after taxes we would each get half. We know each other well enough to trust that we won’t screw the other…
I’d buy a good FPV drone, a Hurdy Gurdy and a nice office chair. My current one sucks.
Yeah, that’s it.
Transport in my area is so shit it would take me an hour just to get to a place I could spend cash; I would buy nothing.
Except maybe a therapist out of my own pocket to deal with something dangling financial stability in front of me.
I’m in Switzerland, so I buy a leisurely coffee and croissant. With the change I buy a bottle of water.
With the change I buy a bottle of water.
What change? You took out a loan to get the croissant.
Probably a crap load of music studio gear then donate to one or more schools in my neighborhood
8pm here. I’d buy a house using some house buying mobile app. I’d probably sell it afterwards when the time is right and add the money to my investments.
Buying some type of investment property was my first idea too, but this raises a good point. If the original question was that you had one hour for the funds to actually clear before they are taken away then I don’t think buying a house would be an option.
Can you pay in cash on “some house buying mobile app”?
Alberta Canada. 2 pm.
I’d buy a house. Normally that’s takes a lot of time but as long as I hand off the money to the realtor I should be good. I don’t actually want a million dollar house, and definitely don’t want to pay the property taxes on it. But I can resell it later and keep the money this time.
A million dollars in bitcoin, I’d walk away with a cool $100 after selling it all.
In truth, being in a central Florida town at 7 in the morning, I’d go on a shopping spree at some of the bigger box stores and stock up on electronics and building supplies, before I blew the rest on tools.
I just tried ntfy, it works ! How do I self host the server if you don’t mind?
There are install steps here: https://docs.ntfy.sh/install/ and config options here: https://docs.ntfy.sh/config/
Feel free to drop by the Discord, Matrix, or our Lemmy instance.
First I would bang on a neighbor’s door and pay them to follow me with a camera then run into the fairly nearby motorbike shop and yell ‘quick I’m doing a Mr Beast challenge I need to spend a million dollars in the next half hour!’ all four guys working would jump at it especially if I said ‘give yourself 10% commission on each one’
The only other shop near that isn’t just groceries is a wedding dress shop so I guess while they’re getting the paperwork ready I’d run in and buy their most expensive white gowns so that we could ride in style - though the train might get caught in the chain…
Oh and I’d run into the pub and tell them to ring up as much as possible before the time runs out so we can all go there after to relax.
I think that’s the most creative one I’ve ever heard. Well done.
Disappear as in physically disappear? I wouldn’t spend that “money” knowing that I will be sued.
Disappear as in I don’t get to spend that money? Buy my mother’s phone with 1 million and let her use the phone anyway.
