# Would you rather be given £300 a day for life, or unlimited £5 ATM cash withdrawals for life? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 27, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972 "2017-02-27T19:37:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972/101 "2017-03-02T04:07:51Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > The issue still remains that no bank is going to install and maintain an ATM that nets them zero dollars in fees. And finding a public ATM stocked with $5s is close to impossible and trying to monopolize it is going to just get you chased off especially since, again, you’re not making them any money in fees. Granted, this is all hypothetical but dream scenarios of sitting on your couch pushing a button or paying hobos to run your card for eight hours a day aren’t ‘realistic’. > > I suppose if the mystery provider WAS willing to pay $3-4 a pop in fees, you should just negotiate with them to give you $1000 a day instead of paying out $1400 daily in $5s and fees. That is where it becomes interesting because you probably could get some bank or credit union to provide you with a personal ATM if you were willing to give them constant activity and their cut in terms of fees (probably negotiable). It gets complicated because you are going to have to pay out to several different entities and deal with all the headaches that go along with that. I think you could still make well over $300 (or pounds) a day but it would take some effort and management even if you have other people doing it for you 24/7. You are basically running a small business at that point. ---
**Author:** ![guitario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@guitario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guitario)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972/102 "2017-03-03T10:31:21Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I am an international man of mystery when it comes to ATM cards. > I dunno about this. If you’re not actually withdrawing cash, I don’t think it matches the OP rules. Quite right. I’m allowing creativeness in how to draw the money out… but you’d still need to actually draw the money out, otherwise the question becomes pointless. > [@clairobscur](#): > > Frankly, I think that even though it was encouraged by the OP, the idea of hiring people to withdraw the money for you, or building a robot, etc…make the hypothetical totally uninteresting because then it basically becomes : “would you prefer to get £ 300/day doing nothing or £ 1 500/day doing nothing?”. Which is hardly a difficult choice. Exactly. Like I mention above. The original question is about the dilemma between choosing easy recurring payments or the potential for much higher earnings with a bit of effort. A good analogy is the hourly wage monkey vs the commission only sales rep - you can take either job, but if you choose the the latter, you’re free to engage your creativity to maximise your earning potential. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972/103 "2017-03-03T11:48:42Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > The issue still remains that no bank is going to install and maintain an ATM that nets them zero dollars in fees. And finding a public ATM stocked with $5s is close to impossible and trying to monopolize it is going to just get you chased off especially since, again, you’re not making them any money in fees. Granted, this is all hypothetical but dream scenarios of sitting on your couch pushing a button or paying hobos to run your card for eight hours a day aren’t ‘realistic’. > > I suppose if the mystery provider WAS willing to pay $3-4 a pop in fees, you should just negotiate with them to give you $1000 a day instead of paying out $1400 daily in $5s and fees. Which is why I’d just straight-up pay the bank to keep it stocked. Those fives they put in it are drawn from the donor’s account, so they’re not out any money for the money I withdraw; their only costs are the labor costs. I can easily pay them $500 a day to cover those; I can pay them double that without too much pain. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972/104 "2017-03-03T21:02:21Z")
Assuming 1. Said ATM is not going to run out of cash on me 2. Said ATM card can be used at an ATM near me and not 100 miles away 3. Said ATM card can be replaced if worn damaged stolen etc I will take the ATM card. Why? My branch bank has the ATM inside a lobby that is locked after hours, so locked after 5pm It is very little used after hours because of it being in the locked lobby, there are other more convenient ones near by. (Your bank card buzzes you into the lobby btw) So, i could take a stool, a cash bag, and a 4G tablet to do netflix, and go park my but there. Now just converting 5 pounds direct to 5 dollars, in less than 1 hour, i have my $300 60 transactions, because that ATM will let you do chain transactions and spit out the paper receipt at the end of the chain. So if i sat there from say 10pm to 3am, i would net over $1500. That is 5 days of the instant pay $300 in one shot Now if i only went to the ATM on Mon Wed Fri, that is $4500 a 5 day work week, as opposed to $2100 in do nothing instant pay over 7 days And in that 5 day week, i have worked 3 just listening to netflix and punching some keys for 5 hours. Not even an 8 hour day. That is $243,000 per year With room for advancement. If i wanted to go to the ATM 6 days a week, that is $486,000 and if i wanted to increase the hours spent, could easily bring that up over half a million. Once i got a nice nest egg built up over a few years, i could just either walk away entirely or go for 2.5 hours a day 2 days a week and call it semi retirement if i am bored. I could literally live on peanuts for a few years while bankrolling my investment scheme ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972/105 "2017-03-04T08:06:54Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Which is why I’d just straight-up pay the bank to keep it stocked. Those fives they put in it are drawn from the donor’s account, so they’re not out any money for the money I withdraw; their only costs are the labor costs. I can easily pay them $500 a day to cover those; I can pay them double that without too much pain. For those who haven’t been involved in large projects, it’s probably difficult to understand the cooperation you can get from vendors. Going back to my previously mentioned modifications, you can have an ATM spit out a $5.00 bill every two seconds or every second. At every second, that would be $157,680,000 per year. Whatever bank you are dealing with will actually provide the ATMs, the stocking and maintenance. They would even provide someone to do the actual withdrawal for you. They will work with the ATM manufacturer on modifying the code for the machine and keeping it in perfect shape. They will even manage everything. In return, you invest through their bank with a percentage of the money. You don’t have to pay them a dime and they will be happy to do all the work. In the early 90s, I worked with Toshiba as a vendor on a winning eight figure bid to AT&T to supply repeaters for a transpacific fiber cable project. Companies would sell below cost simply to get their equipment locked into the system and make up money on maintenance. Toshiba and AT&T didn’t care because it reduced the initial overhead and they could pass along the other fees to the users. This would be a license to print money. Everyone is going to want to help. For that kind of money, you gain access to the presidents of national banks. They will figure out how to get it done as to make damn sure that it never goes down. The manufacturer of an ATM company isn’t going to give you the time of day, unless you promise them a large cut. One call from the purchasing department of a national bank will have the full attention of their entire company. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-rather-be-given-300-a-day-for-life-or-unlimited-5-atm-cash-withdrawals-for-life/780972.md?page=5)