How long does each ATM transaction take?
I’d probably take the 300, I’m assuming a minute per ATM transaction. Which is a nice way to earn 300 an hour, but if there is a line or it takes longer, then you could be there for hours.
If I can do what shagnasty suggests, I’d take the 5. Buy my own ATM and install it at home, and hire someone to use it for me.
If the card is stolen or damaged or whatever, can I get a replacement?
300/day means I have my job plus 300.
5/transaction means I have two jobs.
I’d take the free money.
Assuming there’s a replacement available if the card is lost or stolen, then I’m up to the challenge.
I’d build a machine to do the work of withdrawing the (bending the rules here) the minimum currency per transaction that that ATM allows (I’m assuming the rules adjust for the lack of availability of $5 machines in the States).
It would be relatively simple to build something that can press the keystrokes required, collect the money, and keep doing so while I do something interesting on my laptop for a few hours per day.
Would I do it every day? Maybe not, but I bet on average I would come out ahead.
Yeah, this is my question. I’d go with the unlimited withdrawals, but I’d contract it out. What if one of those contractors makes off with the card? If I can cancel it and get it replaced, sign me up. If losing the card is the end, I’ll take the 300.
If nothing else, it’s going to wear out.
Of course I’m going to have the thing running 24 hours a day and optimize the hell out of it. My bank has a “quick withdrawal” option; it doesn’t support $5 (or £5) but I’m sure I could get the bank to put that in. This is going to be a high-usage ATM and I’m sure they’ll be happy to install one in a protected location.
If I can get each transaction time down to 30 s, that’s 2,800 transactions a day, or £14,400. £5,256,000 a year, which is plenty to hire a couple of guards and several low-paid card inserters. Maybe have a little office next to it to organize things and keep the cash protected. I’ll also need the bank to make regular trips to refill the ATM(s).
The process of optimizing things would probably capture my interest for 6 months, after which it should be be working well enough without my input. So it’s fun for a while and then I can do something else with my millions.
Not for me. I can tell from my visits to casinos that getting some paltry amount from hitting buttons isn’t powerful or addictive for me. It would be a particularly boring, although very well paid, day job.
On top of which, diminishing returns. $/£/€ 300 a day for the rest of my life is 9 000 net/month. I’ve no expectations to ever have an income close to this amount, and on top of it, it’s about the income that I once calculated would allow me to have everything I might want. Working for extra money above that amount would be mostly a waste of time.
That said, if it was a serious offer, I would have to think more about it, taking in account other factors and asking for clarifications that wouldn’t be fun for an hypothetical. For instance, a dozen years of high inflation would reduce significantly my income, while “working” withdrawing money part-time for a number a years could allow me to accumulate enough money that I could then invest. That I might not be able to withdraw any money at all when I’ll get older. That I could maybe hire someone to withdraw the money for me. That the currency offered might not exist anymore at some point, that ATMs might not exist anymore, etc…
The safest choice would probably be indeed to “work” withdrawing a lot of money for a while, and then “retire” with what I accumulated. On the other hand, I would get lazy and wouldn’t commit to spend all my days in front of ATMs. So, even assuming a serious offer, I’d probably still stick to the 300, spend, say, 200 and save the remaining 100 as an inflation/end of ATMs/end of the Euro/end of the world protection.
The bank card is a bank card, so it will get worn out, damaged, expire etc - but you can just get a replacement like you can with your current cards.
Now if one of your worker minions runs away with it, then you’d do the obvious thing, report it stolen, it will get cancelled, and your bank will issue you a replacement.
The added bonus, is this thief can’t take out more than £5 at a time… and as it’s unlimited funds, you’re not going to worry about amount he’s managed to withdraw before anyone realised.
It’ll be a stupid thief to swap what may be an easy salary for relative pennies he’d get by stealing it.
Then again, most thieves are idiots, so there you go…
Wait, what?
You’re telling the IRS about the money? Seriously?
I think you’re more likely to lose revenue through workers skimming it - and coming back with excuses about how the ATM was a bit slow to pay out today. Your security team might end up taking a cut from them to keep quiet about it. I guess you could throw auditors into the mix, but that’s additional expense.
You calculate an amount that they should reasonably be able to withdraw in, say, 5 hours, like 1500, and all the money above this amount that they’re able to withdraw during their 8 hours shift is for them. If they don’t bring the agreed amount, you fire them and find someone else. They could still try to shortchange you in theory, but it seems unlikely that they would risk losing a 1000/day job by regularly having a “slow” ATM.
This. In addition, the investment of the unspent money will help the total daily income to increase.
Downsides to the £5 option:
[ul]
[li]Don’t get any money if you go on vacation; you’re ‘home’ ATM may be set to ignore both amount & number of transaction limits, but that doesn’t mean another bank’s ATM would.[/li][li]Don’t get money if you’re sick.[/li][li]Don’t get money in inclement weather (blizzard, hurricane, etc.) when it’s not safe to go out/have your employees come over.[/li][li]ATM will be down periodically to be restocked; what happens on weekends/holidays; do you go without until they can get there again?[/li][li]That’s a lot of bills to stuff in your pockets - where’s that thread on cargo shorts?[/li][li]Are you going to have any problem with the banks/gub’mint when trying to deposit tons & tons of £5/$5?[/li][/ul]
I’d go with the £300/day option.
However, if my only option is £5 at a time from an ATM here’s what I would do: Find a, ummm, gentlemen’s club with an ATM. Pay one of the uglier girls to make withdrawals for me; use my wad of fivers to tip generously. 
Anyone can install an ATM, right? Presumably there are some start-up costs, but …
Yes, anyone can buy an ATM and pay a small fee to get it refilled, etc. They cost a few grand.
I’v seen some models that don’t eat your card while they’re in use. Which leads to an even better solution: get 20 machines and rotate the card around. First 3 seconds is to scan the card. The rest of the minute is spent pushing buttons. The card makes a full cycle every minute. Everybody is in the same office, so there’s no efficiency loss in transport.
This grosses £144,000 a day. You need perhaps 25 button pushers continuously, paid at £10/hr, a few guards at £25/hr, some drivers for the cash, and so on. Should still come to <£20k/day.
Oh, man, this is a good point. The rules don’t specify which ATM to use; as I understand it, the person setting me up is just keeping an account stocked with money sufficient that an ATM connected to the network will always have enough money in it.
So I’m designing my own ATM.
It accepts my card, but no other. It has an express slot, where you swipe the card and put in your code, and it spits out five bucks (I know the OP says pounds, but I’ll take it in US dollars just to avoid the inconvenience of trying to type that weird little L symbol). I bet that we can get the whole process down to to 20 seconds, most of which is taken up by communication with the bank.
I bet I can have that ATM designed for less than a quarter million bucks, but let’s set it at $250,000.
Step 2: a robot. For $10,000, I’m pretty sure I can hire some engineering grad student to design a simple robot that swipes the card and types in the PIN and snags the fiver and puts it in a stack. Let’s figure the robot is crazy energy inefficient, uses $5 of electricity a day. The ATM uses another $45 a day in electricity–super inefficient!
Step 3: someone to refill the ATM. How much can it cost to keep the ATM in fives? Let’s be super generous and pay a company $550 a day to keep it stocked and to guard it (maybe I’m renting a closet in a bank).
At 3 transactions a minute, that’s $15 * 60, or $900 an hour. The daily haul is $21,600. Minus costs, that’s $21,000 a day.
Startup costs are paid in two weeks. After those two weeks, I’m earning $7,665,000 a year.
I may decide after the first few months to use a couple million of my earnings to buy myself a nice house and move the whole operation into the house.
I’ll take the $5 at a time option and hire it out. Even figuring a conservative 3 minutes per transaction, a 24x7 operation will gross $2,400 per day, $876k per year. I’ll keep it simple:
-Hire one subcontractor who will contractually agree to pay me $1,400 per day, every day, to lease the card
-He can keep any amount generated beyond that
This grosses me $511,000 per year. All I have to do is monitor my account to make sure the $1,400 is posted every day. The sub has an opportunity to gross $365,000 per year, more if he can average more than 20 transactions per hour. I’ll leave it up to him to staff the operation however he sees fit. Just don’t miss a day depositing my full cut, or Guido will be making a visit.
I’m surprised how many people just want the easy 300/day. Yeah, it’s decent money. But you can earn a hell of a lot more from the ATM. If I completed a transaction a minute, I could make hundreds of thousands if I made it an 8 hour job for 3-4 months. Compare that to the tens of thousands I’d have taking 300/day. And then I’ve got the money ready to spend or invest or whatever. I think I’ll take the ATM option.
I’ll take the 5 per. And I’ll be at that machine 12 hrs a day for a few years.
I’d definitely go with the $300. The ATM thing would quickly become intolerable drudgery. What if I don’t feel like leaving the house that day?