
Ask HN: If you had unlimited money for 30 minutes, what would you do? - farza
For the sake of this question assume:<p>- you don&#x27;t have time to prepare and you only have access to a laptop w&#x2F; an internet connection.<p>- the money is in dollars so if you somehow spend $1000 trillion you&#x27;ll likely crash the world economy b&#x2F;c of inflation.<p>- all the money is coming from a magical bank that will disappear when the 30 minutes are up.<p>- you can&#x27;t access it in cash.<p>- everyone (banks, stores, brokers, etc) will accept the magical bank (shout out to Stripe for writing that integration) but the normal limits for those platforms apply (read more below on this).<p>- you are allowed to utilize your existing personal connections.<p>FAQ:<p>- Can I transfer money to a different bank account? Yes. The magical bank does let you do this. But, keep in mind that most banks have daily transfer limits so you can&#x27;t be transferring billions! Keep this in mind as well when you think about buying a lot of stocks. Keep limits of services you&#x27;d utilize in mind and if you break the limit, your answer is nullified!<p>- Can&#x27;t I just buy a bunch of property? Well, that&#x27;s IF you find a way to lock down a bunch of properties in 30 minutes. Usually those deals can take days to close and you only have the money for 30 minutes.
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stephenr
I think this post, and that people responded "seriously" to it, is a pretty
good sign people are starting to lose their shit.

I'm not saying you should disobey the shelter-in-place/etc orders, but _this_
is a bit much.

You're asking the sort of question practically every kid in primary school has
asked or been asked, but you're making it "more real" because you can't just
buy a house in 30 minutes.

For a follow up will you ask what everyone's favourite food is, and then
respond and tell them why it's bad for them? Or perhaps ask what everyone's
favourite colour is and then psychoanalyse the responses?

HN isn't reddit.. or a school yard.

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enchiridion
It might be some creative brainstorming for someone trying to disrupt payment
processing.

If not, I agree.

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CM30
Hard to say. On the one hand, part of me thinks it'd be best to spend it on
marketing, since you could get a lot of attention for future projects if you
could lock in say, a few decades worth of ad space on major publications and
social networking sites.

Also:

* Obviously buy a ton of stock and crypto.

* Use it as an incentive for people to follow you on social media, join your site/SaaS service, etc. We've all seem those folks claiming to offer $1000 to whoever follows them on Twitter, a legit version with a few hundred thousand dollars per person would rake in followers like crazy.

* Transfer as much of it to other people as possible, on the assumption at least a few of them will pay at least some of it back.

* Put money in various online gambling sites, since hey, whatever I actually make in winnings is my cash.

* Go on a general spending spree, since 30 minutes is still plenty of time to buy whatever random consumer good or piece of entertainment media you'd ever want.

* Pay people to work on things I want done on an 'all money up front' basis. If they turn out to be scammers, that's not my problem.

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a3n
I would buy Berkshire Hathaway for whatever price they ask, being sure to tell
them we need the money in escrow and a commitment within 30 minutes.

Then I'd spend the rest of my life figuring out what to do with Berkshire
Hathaway.

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uvw
Unless you are doing a zell pay or similar thing which transfers money from
person to person instantly, there is nothing much you can do. Zell pay has
daily limit of 2000.

If you want to transfer money to another account, it would take more than 30
mins for the transfer to happen. Buying stocks needs 2/3 days for the
settlement or 2/3 days for the transfer to the brokerage account.

Even if you bought something with debit card it takes longer than 30 mins to
settle that transaction.

I would just visit a branch and get a cashier's check. Most bang for the buck
and there's no limit.

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helph67
Perform a Scrooge McDuck impersonation!
[https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/things-you-didnt-
kno...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/things-you-didnt-know-about-
scrooge-mcduck)

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kleer001
I'd donate all of it.

5 minutes to search through the best bang for my buck, then drop 100 million
to the top dozen or so until my time was up.

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Spooky23
\- Transfer to each of my accounts up to the daily limits.

\- Buy a bunch of silver and gold coins.

\- Call a big scrapyard and buy as much copper as possible.

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godot
It's a bit curious that most (only 5 so far) answers mention things like daily
limits to each of your own bank accounts, when the question specifically
stated you are allowed to utilize your existing personal connections (friends
and coworkers).

Why would you not tell as many friends and family as possible about
transferring the max daily limit to all of their accounts? Several ways to
spin / think about this:

\- "Can you send me back some of that money later?"

\- Most friends/coworkers who are decent people will probably send you back
half of it. For those that don't:

\- They are probably really in need, in which case you did a good deed helping
them out, or;

\- They are bad people. Cheap price to pay (actually, free to you) to see
their real side.

Depending on how many people respond to your mass sms/IMs quickly enough, you
can probably send the daily limit to anywhere from 100 to 500 people. This is
probably more impactful than giving yourself X amount of money.

And then if you have time left, there's donations to charity which you can
typically use credit cards / bank transfers for (instantly usually?). Donate
maximum limit to every charity you can think of. Maybe you'll even contribute
to the development of a COVID vaccine?

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jlengrand
I'd send daily limit amount to each citizen in the country, as a one time
bonus

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kleer001
How?

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jlengrand
Direct debits on all valid ibans!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit)

That's the fastest, almost not regulated way to go, because the system itself
allows for longer claim times. That will allow you to go through easier

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mojomark
Buy stock.

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kleer001
Buy crypto.

