If I gave you $1 million in cash to spend in 1 hour, after which the money will disappear, what would you buy?

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!
Bad_And_Wrong,

No rules about strictly official transactions with official shops or government recognized store and stuff? And the money won't vanish as long as I bought something with it? I'd buy my sister's slippers for 1M so it won't vanish. I trust her so the money would be in her name but I can tell her to buy stuff for me.

awsamation,
awsamation avatar

This is the objectively correct answer. Spend the 1M on buying any garbage from family and friends that you trust.

The only way you could spend 1M dollars through regular means with less than an hours notice is if you're already so rich that another 1M dollars is a relatively insignificant gain. Any normal person wouldn't be able to spend that much in under 1 hour even if the money is 100% legit and easily proven to be such.

So the objectively correct answer is to buy random shit from trusted individuals at absurd prices. Then after the timer is up you sell them back other random shit at equally absurd prices in order to give you both extra cash.

They weren't "holding on to it for you", it just so happened that you made to perfectly legitimate if very weird transactions. The fact that these transactions conveniently just avoided the momey timer is mere coincidence. And the fact that each person involved was left with a reasonable profit from the entire ordeal is also a happy accident.

Pyr_Pressure,

Gold

ramius345,

1 million in index funds which I will reinvest later.

SpliceVW,

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

NattyNatty2x4,

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

towerful,

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,

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

fulano,

But is the market open at 10pm?

Very_Bad_Janet,

Maybe this is a cheat but $1M in stock index ETF shares. I guess if I actually earn any dividends I could them spend those on something else,.so this would buy me time. ETA: someone pointed out the "in cash" stipulation. So I am changing this to the sister's slipper type of transaction.

Th4tGuyII,
Th4tGuyII avatar

I'm surprised how many people are straight up missing the "in cash" stipulation. If you want to spend that online, you'd need to deposit it... and you aren't depositing 1M anywhere inside of 1 hour, especially on a Sunday.

I assumed this was going to have a Bruster's Millions style rule were you couldn't just set an arbitrary price for something and buy it, i.e. you had to buy things for their real/retail value...

But since I don't see that in the rules given, the best solution is get a partner/friend to sell you something for 1M, then once the time's up, sell something else to them for 1M minus their cut of the money.

Very_Bad_Janet,

Damn, you're right. $1M for my husband's sock it is.

livus,
livus avatar

It's 10.50pm at night on a Sunday where I live. Shops are shut here and I have no way of physically depositing it in the bank.

The only thing I can do is buy some household item off my partner for that amount.

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

As others might have said: just buy S&P 500 ETF and chill for the rest of my life (I'm at home currently in a small town).

livus,
livus avatar

This would be the obvious choice but can it be done?

OP specified cash so we would have to physically deposit it all the bank and then fund our brokerage accounts and then execute the trades. OP is asking this question in the weekend so we would have to either do OTH or else use an Islamic exchange.

I can't get all that done in 1 hour on a Sunday.

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

Fair enough, didn't take into account all the variables.

LostCause, (edited )

It‘s Sunday and in Austria and outside of restaurant and gas stations everything is closed.

I was just about to buy the entire inventory of a gas station and throw the rest of the money to the people, but then I remembered our version of craigslist. Filtering my location and sorting by highest price, there is a guy near me selling a Yacht for 600k, and also someone selling some Rolex for 500k. I‘d try to contact these and see if either are available to sell to me for cash quickly lol.

VoxAdActa,
VoxAdActa avatar

About 30 minutes away from me is a weird ATM-looking thing that sells crypto, like Dogecoin and BitCoin.

So by the end of the hour, after spending 30 minutes stuffing cash into it, I should ideally have about $990,000 in BitCoin and $10k in Dogecoin (for the memes).

I always wondered who the target audience for that machine was!

Bipta,

Good luck feeding it a million dollars in thirty minutes.

VoxAdActa,
VoxAdActa avatar

I'm gonna give it my best shot!

I_Miss_Daniel,
I_Miss_Daniel avatar

I guess the hopper would become full. Then again, cash that biodegrades within one hour is also rather fanciful.

unsophisticated,

Or the thing doesn’t work from the beginning (I mean it‘s crypto), fails after the first 1k transaction, gets stuck because crypto is slow, is hacked, or you mistype the wallet address, or the provider actually abides by the law and the thing requires KYC and AML verification after putting in the first few thousand.

I_Miss_Daniel,
I_Miss_Daniel avatar

Yeah that's fair. I did actually use it successfully years ago for transferring money to family internationally, but these days with all the needs to track capital gains etc, it's easier just to use WorldRemit etc.

The fundamental mathematics of Crypto is still legit, but the use cases are few in the developed world.

Sordid,
Sordid avatar

You must spend the money. You cannot give it to someone to hold on to it for you for a while.

Critically, the conditions don't state that you have to buy your chosen item from a business at a typical market price. Which means that, despite the above prohibition, you can effectively have someone you know and trust hold onto the money for you by making a ridiculous token purchase from them. So I'd just wake up my dad and buy a pencil sharpener from him. Once the money is rendered permanent by this transaction, he can just immediately give it back to me.

steebo_jack,

This would be difficult, aside from drafting a written contract to buy my neighbors house and then handing her the money for keys, there wouldnt be a whole lot i can do...im out in the middle of nowhere and everything is closed...closest town is an hour away and by the time i get there, money goes poof...

Other thing i could do is burn it like Escobar...

kismattic,

All in cash? Take it to the nearest casino (assuming it’s less than an hour away) and exchange it for chips or whatever works for slots, play minimum bets for an hour then cash out with minimal loss.

Jon-H558,

Bet half on red half on black (and watch the ball hit 00 in my luck)

ray,

It's 12:30 AM here and the only business still open near me is McDonald's. I hope they'll let me buy a million dollar gift card. Otherwise I guess I'm getting 200,000 big macs.

Sylvestris,

I’d probably call a notary office just to ask if buying a plot of land with cash would be possible within the hour. I’d expect a no, but worth a shot.

If no, I’d quickly go buy an electric bike and use the rest of the hour to go to a few charities I can get the cash to. That still counts as spending, right? Otherwise I guess I’ll buy something small from them for a ridiculous amount?

You can spend the hour in agony trying to come up with the best way to get as much as possible for yourself, and probably not succeeding, but giving to a charity you care about is going to feel good no matter what.

deker,

If you've ever been given $1m to spend on a project, you know it's not easy to actually do.

I'd deliver wads of cash to friends to buy stakes in their businesses as an investment so that they could live their best lives and do the amazing stuff I know they are capable of, and pay me back dividends as they grow it.

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