It’s decent money for doing nothing. I would get to keep my awesome job and just get handed more money on top of that.
If I wanted a boring job I hated that would make me more money, I can already do that.
I prefer a life, thank you very much.
What’s your current job? How much housework you do? How much leisure time you have.
And a few years at 12 hr days frees up a lot of life in the future.
Let’s see 90 withdrawals an hour at $5/withdrawal is $450/hr. Let’s make it 10 hr days. No sense being obsessive. $4500/day! 350 days/year to account for a vacation is $1.575 million/year. 4 years of that is $6 million. After taxes lets say $4 million. Invest that at 7% compounded annually for 20 years. That’s 15 million.
And send one of the kids to get an hrs worth of $5 each day for bills while the initial money grows and that’s not bad.
What fees? My home bank doesn’t charge a fee for using their own ATM. And they have 13,000 ATMs worldwide, so I’m not stuck using the closest one.
:eek:
Nice thing about that is - if you only take out a couple of hundred thousand a year for yourself the first couple of years and invest the rest, then you can probably make as good a passive income as the 300-a-day people
So now the interesting bit - what are we freshly-minted millionaires doing with all this money?
I suspect I’m going to get fairly politically active with mine … go round re-opening domestic violence shelters that got defunded, pay for a hell of a lot of anti-deportation cases … some to the homeless … worldwide vaccination and clean water programs. And climate change research, definitely lots of that. I wonder how much money it would take to set up a shell corporation to bit for the contract to run Manus Island, and then turn it into an actual livable place for human beings.
I workout 2+ hours every day, and then work out of my house, with my dog at my feet. For lunch, I go to my favorite sandwich shop, and sit out on the patio.
An extra $300/day would be more than enough for me. Life is too uncertain to spend it in front of an ATM. The money just isn’t worth it.
I’m gonna assume since this is a fantasy* that there are no fees and take the ATM. Fuck yeah!
*C’mon, don’t be such downers!
That would be $2,600 per week. I’m assuming we’d get to keep whatever else we had coming in. Would the $2,600 be considered income or would it be akin to pulling money out of some account that you owned and thus not taxable?
I can’t imagine how we could spend all that even if it were taxable income.
Yeah, put me with the lump summers.
My Wife and I are nearly set for retirement. At 300 a day (109,500 a year). I’ll take that.
“Honey, I’m going to the bank! Ok see you in a day or two”. Umm no.
With € 300/day, all my time will be leisure time, and I’ll probably hire someone for most of the housework. While with the € 5 withdrawal, I’ll have to keep working and an exceptionnally boring job at that.
I’m not sure why my current job and leisure time would be relevant in this choice.
I’m 52. I’ll be retired in 10 to 15 years. I don’t know how long I have to live. Statistically almost 30 years, but it might be 6 months, for all I know. Two of my brothers recently died, both aged 61. No way I’m going to waste “some years” working 12 hours a day, if I’m offered the alternative of quiting work right now and living a life of leisure and relative luxury starting tomorrow.
On top of which, I’d be unable to force myself to push ATM buttons 12 hours a day, or even 2 hours a day, every day, for years. So, even if I was picking the €5 option, I’d probably end up with much less money than with the € 300 option.
And what would this money get me that I couldn’t get with € 300/day and that would be worth pushing buttons 10 hours a day, every single day, for years? I frankly can’t think of anything I could buy with this extra money, couldn’t buy with € 300/day, and that would be more valuable than the years not wasted standing in front of an ATM.
You both do raise reasonable points.
If installation of a private ATM is an option that doesn’t break the hypothetical, then even easier would be to build (or employ a geek to build) a robotic accessory that does all the troublesome button-pushing and bill-pulling for you - clip it onto the machine and leave it to run. It could be made to send a text message if it gets stuck.
Using your figures, you’d have about $200,000 at the end of four months. That’s nice money but you’re working a full time job (and not a good one). I’ll make $36,000 during those same four months and I’ll be enjoying my life.
Have you factored in the chance you’ll be hit by a meteorite during those few years?
You’re exchanging your time in the present for money you’re going to use some time in the future. Both in economy and psychology now is worth more than later.
I’m picking the £300. More money right now than I need for doing nothing (which means time right now), vs. even more money (that I won’t need now) for at least 60 hours of work every month (loss of time now)? Easy decision.
I think most people, at some level, value money less and less the more they have. You might chase that additional £100 as hard as the base £100 you need for a basic life, and the additional £100 for a lot of luxury, but even if you are somehow wired to get joy from knowing you’re making another £100, it’s not going to give you the same joy in the spending.
Now if it was only £100 a day I might be hesitant, but even then that would be sure money, always coming in. I could be in a coma for a month, and there’d be £30000 waiting for me when I woke up.
Then you don’t have to leave the house… stay in bed, watch movies and eat doughnuts!
You can’t imagine how you could spend $2,600 a week? Buy a guitar, a car, a big TV, whack it on a horse, give it to a hobo, burn it… the possibilities are endless!
Robot problems!
Now, there’s something that’s baffling me…
A lot of people are aiming to buy or build a robot to automate the withdrawal process - which seems logical, until you realise that building such a thing isn’t exactly simple.
Single individuals with those skills aren’t going to come cheap, and are probably already in a highly paid position - so that’s a whole lot of manual ATM shenanigans just to afford someone.
Not only that, but materials cost money, as does technology… and even then, anything bar the crudest of mechanical devices is more difficult to create than most people realise.
Once it works, who maintains it? The whole point is it is automated, so you don’t have to be there… but if it breaks, how will you know? Who fixes it?
ATM problem!
And buying your own ATM? That’s great… but there’s a problem…
If you own it, you put the cash in there - only to draw it out again. So just don’t put it in there to start with…
Sure you can make money in fees, but no ATM company is going to allow this as it’s fraud - therefore it has to be free to use.
So it’s a completely pointless endeavour… unless I’m missing something?
Is it just me getting this sweet offer?
Because nothing would suck more than thinking I’m about to go withdraw my daily thousands in 5’s, only to get stuck behind some other assho…ahem, Doper withdrawing their daily thousands in 5’s. :smack:
But to play along, I’d go with the lump sum. Constant daily withdrawals would get tedious, and I’d be able to put the lump sum into other things to help earn, anyway. I’m about quality of life.
Still thinking small.
Work with the ATM manufacturer to customize your ATMs. Since they are in your premises, no need to input a PIN. Have the program redone to eliminate everything but withdraws of £5. Just have one hardwired button and have an automated mini robot. The money collects into a box.
The slowest part would be the cash dispenser and your ATM manufacturer could work with their supplier to get the fastest dispenser available.
You have an ATM devoted for deposits into another bank account. Every so often you take the cash from the box, deposit it into the separate ATM. Then you can replenish the dispensing ATM. No need to stop.
If you can get it down to two seconds a cycle 24/7 (pushing the button, cash comes out, repeat) that’s £78,840,000 a year. You can handle a lot of overhead to get this set up and completely reliable with the necessary back ups.
You also don’t need to have much cash in the machine (£3,000), so security isn’t that much of an issue.
Also, you aren’t doing any of the grunt work, you have the necessary supervisors, service contracts, etc. so you are still vacationing whenever you want.
The OP says you get an ATM card that can only withdraw five pound notes (or $5 bills, I guess) but can withdraw them in theoretically infinite amounts. My bank doesn’t offer either of those services so I’m assuming that I’m not dealing with my home bank.
For people building robots, it seems like it’d be easier to just buy an ATM and have someone reprogram the firmware to (a) not require a separate card swipe each time and (b) spoofs the code entry, much like software that simulates mouse/keyboard actions. At that point, it would just spit out fivers as quickly as the cash dispensing mechanics allow.
However, this pretty much assumes a magic ATM that is restocking itself. The OP makes no allowances for such so I assume you’re stuck using the one at the local bank or store.
Barring any of the “Imma build a robot” hypotheticals, the obvious answer is the lump sum because of one key factor “every day for life”.
I think the prospect of unlimited money is seriously overestimating their ability to constantly go to an atm and get cash everyday for the rest of their life. Even if you’re willing to stick it out for a year of all-day/constant ATM mongering you are still losing money every day you aren’t taking advantage of your opportunity. The money you lose every day is vastly disproportionate to the money you make.
Think of it this way: If doing the ATM thing nets you 5 bucks a minute, this means you LOSE 5 bucks for every minute you aren’t doing it. Meaning time eating, sleeping, changing the channel, going to the bathroom…literally anything you’re doing that isn’t getting money is losing money. Eventually you’ll build up enough money where you say “dammit I don’t want to do this shit anymore”, to which then you’re losing thousands and thousands of dollars a month.
OTOH, if you get 300 a day, you’re making money in the most efficient way possible for the rest of your life. Can you ball out day one? Nope. Week One? Probably not. But you’ll eventually get to the point where the money doesn’t matter anymore…and you’ll STILL BE MAKING MONEY.
Give me the lump sum any day.
Any plans to keep an ATM in your home are going to fall apart pretty soon. Who is stocking your ATM with $5 bills? You either supply your own or else you get a company or bank to do it. But they’re only doing it for a cut of the fees – and there are no fees (supposedly, because if there are then who is paying them?). There’s nothing in it for MegaBank to load up an ATM just to watch you drain it and then fill it up again. ATMs only exist and are maintained so someone (not you) can make money off of them.