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

Go to the nearest jewelry store and buy everything in it. Wait an hour, return it as per the refund policy. If there is no refund policy then I would sell it off. Even if I lost 50% on the sell back, that's still half a mil in cash.

Most popular jewelers have at least a 30 day refund policy.

I would buy four tickets on a mini-sub tour of the Titanic and give them to 4 billionaires.

It's 10:15pm in suburban Colorado, and I'm purchasing one sexual favor from my husband for $1 million.

I'm in Switzerland, so I buy a leisurely coffee and croissant. With the change I buy a bottle of water.

1 million in index funds which I will reinvest later.

First I would bang on a neighbor's door and pay them to follow me with a camera then run into the fairly nearby motorbike shop and yell 'quick I'm doing a Mr Beast challenge I need to spend a million dollars in the next half hour!' all four guys working would jump at it especially if I said 'give yourself 10% commission on each one'

The only other shop near that isn't just groceries is a wedding dress shop so I guess while they're getting the paperwork ready I'd run in and buy their most expensive white gowns so that we could ride in style - though the train might get caught in the chain...

Oh and I'd run into the pub and tell them to ring up as much as possible before the time runs out so we can all go there after to relax.

I'm on a flight 35,000 feet above the Gobi Desert. The cash is pretty much useless to me. In fact it's a bit bulky and I'll be glad to see the back of it.

Plus, nothing on this flight can be bought for any kind of dollars.

2 chicks at the same time

Why do these always exist before the internet? We can order bullion online now. It's almost midnight in a fairly rural area

But yeah, I know a guy that will sell certain things for cash that normally require legal hurdles. But if you show up, cash in hand, he'll backdate things on his end. One phone call, I could buy out his stock in fifteen minutes because I'm a regular customer he trusts. He's usually got a few hundred thousand of goods in place.

Barring that, I'm kinda screwed at this time of night.

I know a couple of farmers that would let me buy livestock in cash like this, but that's only going to be a few thousand bucks.

I know a weed dealer that would be able to give me a few pounds if he's got it in, but I would have to call and ask how much he has.

Do services count? If so, I've got an idea for a cheat lol. Hire my wife for a back rub.

So, I just took a second and sent a text to an acquaintance and explained the scenario. Turns out you can buy a car in an hour or less. It's just a matter of paperwork to make the sale official. So, if you know a car dealer, and they have enough on their lot, you could easily get rid of most of that million in time. Most of the time wasted isn't really necessary. If the dealer and the buyer are already on the same page with the price, you could get as many cars as you have time to sign for.

A monkey. I've always wanted a monkey.

I'm screwed.

It's 8pm on a Sunday and I'm stuck in hospital temporarily unable to walk, so I can't really buy anything in the next hr :(

Guess I may as well share it with the nurses. If I can't give it away, then maybe buy a hug from each one, or a massage, or ... no let's not go there!

Anyway, better to share it than let it lapse :)

Everything is closed.

Plan A: I could try to stuff an atm full of cash, but I'd be investigated for fraud, counterfitting or something. I would record myself holding the cash, wave it in front of all the security cameras I could to show that I legitimately have it, then insert it as much into the ATM as I could and acquire reciepts. In $100 bills I can put 50 at a time so $5000.If it stops accepting any money, I could try a crypto ATM too. Countersue the bank for stealing my money if they claim I'm responsible for the disappearance.

Plan B: I can reach the airport in under a half hour, I could convert it to USD as much they let me before leaving. They might accept 10k that way.

The trouble is, I will be asked about the origin of the money, "It just appeared in front of me/A genie gave it to me/I dug it out of the ground" are reasons that might not hold up well in court.

E: Wait does "spent" money vanish or does it stay?

I'd buy a $1M hug from someone I'm very close to. Then offer them a $500K hug.

It doesn't break rule 3 as written.

Buy a bunch of prepaid debit cards and use it to buy a bunch of random bullshit from ebay and Amazon. Won't be able to get anywhere near $1M worth of prepaid cards but whatever. When all the pointless shit shows up in my doorstep, resell for like 75% of its original value.

Depending on timing, as long as there's a bank branch near me when this deal starts (which, there is one ~10 minutes drive from me); I would head there first, 100%. I'd pay off every debt I have with the bank, Credit Cards, lines of credit, etc. Should take 20 minutes or so, it's not a large number of debts, but it's not a trivial amount.

I'd then drive across the city to the bank that holds my mortgage, and give them whatever is left.... either as pre-payment towards my mortgage, or simply to buy out the mortgage and pay it off.

I wouldn't have much left after that; but I'm hoping I can get all that done in an hour. If, at that point, I have enough time remaining to buy anything, I'd probably see if I could hit up the nearest hardware store and buy all the power tool batteries I can find. Just the batteries, because damn that shit is expensive.

Gold

Transport in my area is so shit it would take me an hour just to get to a place I could spend cash; I would buy nothing.

Except maybe a therapist out of my own pocket to deal with something dangling financial stability in front of me.

Cheap Answer: Go to my nearest Walmart/Grocery Store (10 minutes away from me)and max out all of the vanilla visa debit cards with the $1 million but after fees it won’t be $1 million but I would still spend the million.

Actual Answer: Luckily I’m in a prime spot where I live that I’m 20 minutes away from Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and other luxury car dealerships. So I’d go there and purchase how many cars I can with the million. After I sign, sell them back to the dealership or sell them privately.

Quito Ecuador at 8:30pm on a Sunday night. Nothing other than small cornerstores and liquor shops are open. So I guess I'll buy as much liquor as I can to resell later.

I would immediately pay off all of my debts in my online banking/credit cards/student loan/utility accounts, send my Landlord my rent early via Zelle, login to my parent's mortgage and credit card accounts and pay them all off, pay off all of my wife's student loans and credit cards and business loans via her online accounts, and spend the rest on ebay gift cards.

Well i am not going to respond to this post until I am in the bank....Ahh crap.

Well Sunday afternoon.... Ummm

I would probably look for a local gold/ prescious metals shop. But i don't know if they have that much on hand.

An alternative would be Costco. I should be able to get there in 15 minutes and then maybe that is enough time for me to explain the situation and give me a bar code scanner and access to that locked room with all of the expenses stuff is. And I will just start scanning like mad.

Along the way to Costco i can call family and friends and they can meet me there to help coordinate.

After that it is just a matter of reselling everything. Or i guess it is Costco i could just return it all. Although that doesn't feel right lol.

I'm in Vegas, 22:22, so.. $1 million dollars of food, water, and sun screen for the un housed.

I would "buy" an agreement with my parents that from then on they will purchase for me whatever i ask them to—up to a total of a million dollars.

I'll just call everyone to distribute the money to. Spread the information about. When the money disappears people think I'm a magician

Industry town, 1pm

almost 3 am in my room nothing is open so i guess uh air if its sent to my bank account id start ordering everything i could online

I'd buy ETH

expired

Too many answers trying to game the system. Have fun with it!

If this was earlier in the day, I would drive to a pinball arcade that is maybe 40 minutes away, and offer them the entire million for every pinball machine they had. Hopefully the owner could be contacted and close the deal within the remaining 20 minutes.

I wish there would be time to buy a boat. I know nothing about sailing or maintaining a boat, but I would love to just drive to a marina and just get a 50 foot sailing boat.

If you (or a banker or anyone you're paying) needed to count that money, you'd need to count just over 11 bills every 4 seconds, just to count all the bills within an hour, let alone have time to actually spend the money. This is assuming $100 bills, of which you'd need 10,000 of. This many bills also weighs 22 pounds or 10 kilograms, plus whatever the weight of the container you're carrying it is... IDK man I think I'd not even try to spend most of it, grab maybe $500-1000 in cash, and go on a quick shopping spree at Target or something, which is like a 10 minute walk from where I live. I could buy groceries, clothing, electronics, household items, etc. If I still had time I would go back and try to buy gift cards in large denominations, but I know cashiers are supposed to give people a hard time with that because of scammers, so I wouldn't want to deal with that during the initial transaction.

It is possible to buy a car in less than an hour, though I agree that you can't buy real estate that quickly. New Yorkers might be able to pull off stocks, if the money comes to them while the NYSE is open, but I'm not in New York (or Chicago, for the Mercantile Exchange, or...)

It's kind of a bizarre question, though. I have several small business owner friends. Could I get them to mark up a croissant to $1M, with the understanding they'll cut me in on the revenue?

If not, then what really are the terms of the question? Arms length transactions only? How will that be adjudicated?

real estate

It's 9:30pm in the middle of nowhere.

I'd put everything in my save for later in my Amazon cart and buy it. I'd buy a bunch of crafting supplies online, I'd buy the sports things for my husband online. Probably buy a new monitor or 3, new desk chair, and all the parts I can order online for the racecar. Probably spend my remaining time scrolling Etsy and Amazon for every impulse purchase I can think of, then I'd be out of time lol

I would try to drive into town (20 mins), then buy as many gift cards as I could, although that would look suspicious

I just tried ntfy, it works ! How do I self host the server if you don't mind?

Its gone 3:30am, I've just got home after a night out, I've had too much to drink, so driving is out of the question, besides there nothing open at this hour.....I know, I'll just sleep on it....for an hour anyway 😅

Crypto, shouldn't make a such a big wave compared to receiving 1M on am anonymous source and quickly buying stock exchange with it

High roller casino chips. May be hard to cash them out eventually but should be doable.

Alberta Canada. 2 pm.

I'd buy a house. Normally that's takes a lot of time but as long as I hand off the money to the realtor I should be good. I don't actually want a million dollar house, and definitely don't want to pay the property taxes on it. But I can resell it later and keep the money this time.

What does it mean for the money to disappear? Can I just not spend anymore or would it disappear from whoever I bought from. If the latter, I couldn't in good conscience buy anything. I wouldn't mind if say Walmart lost some profit, but thousands of dollars worth of cash suddenly going missing would cause people to lose their jobs.

If the former, I'd buy as much electronics as I could from Walmart and then buy a bunch of scratch offs and lottery tickets. Those are the only two placed open around here at 11pm.

It's 7:30pm in a city with several 24-hour stores. I'd go on a shopping spree and spend 90% on things for myself and family, then visit as many restaurants + bars as possible while tipping thousands of dollars until the million is all gone.

I'd go to all the pawn shops and clean them out. Lots of gold and silver I could resell.

McDonalds

I'd by gold. Or a bunch of second hand Land Rovers on Gumtree.

I'd buy a good FPV drone, a Hurdy Gurdy and a nice office chair. My current one sucks.

Yeah, that's it.

I think I could legit buy my condo in an hour with that kind of money. But only if the agent is in this part of the city and not in her other home outside the city.

My wife could write up a basic contract that could work as she went to law school and used to do some work for a law firm.

But if that still does not count, then I’d probably order a bunch of computer stuff. Like a new laptop, all the parts for the latest pc stuff, a steam deck. Maybe a bunch of hard drives and some server level stuff.

I guess I’d have tons of money still leftover so I’d buy my wife some stuff that she would like.

I’d totally buy a steam deck. I want one so badly.

I can’t really think of things that I’d like to buy. That are not a car or house.

If I can't think of something better, I would donate to my university's foundation and earmark it for myself, or at least my department.

Or, I would just donate it to charity.

Or, pay off all my debts and donate to charity.

I live in Las Vegas. I’m about in the middle of town and it’s 2200. There’s a pawn shop about 20 minutes away from me that’s open until 0100 every night. They’re a large normal pawn shop but specialize in jewelry and gold. I’d buy all of the precious metals, collector coins, and valuable jewelry. I’d sell the collector coins the next day to a different pawn shop that specializes in collector coins, the precious metals to the gold and silver pawn shop, and the jewelry to a third pawn shop. I’d probably walk away with less than a quarter of the original million and doubt I could spend it all before it vanished but 100-200 k in less than 24 hours is pretty damn good!

If I had 1 million in hand-

I am willing to bet the dealership could get me in and out pretty quickly!

Likewise, I have a friend selling a house. I am quite certain we can make a bill of sale in an hour.

But- since those options are off-limits. Honestly- there really aren't many options.

Since, its cash-in-hand, that likely means online transactions are against the rules.

SO- the best course of action would be to visit a store with a lot of expensive goodies. In my case, walmart is the best local option. Suppose I could buy out all of the TVs, game systems, etc. At least those would have the best resale value.

Stocks and bonds

Living in the small rural community I'm living in ATM I'm not even sure I could. Maybe I could call up some property sellers selling something for around 800k and offer a million. But there is a zero percent chance they wouldn't assume I was a scammer when I told them they needed to accept this deal within the hour or it was gone, haha.

Does the money go poof if you spend it? For example, say I buy some jewelry with half of the million dollars. Then, the time limit passes. Does just the half a million I still have on hand disappear or does the cash I spent vanish as well?

If the cash I spend vanishes, then I might be opening myself up to fraud charges after the hour is up. Going back to the jewelry situation. I buy half a million in jewelry and hand over the last of the cash just as the time limit ends. If the money in the store clerk's hands suddenly vanishes, they're going to demand their merchandise back. If I'm already walking out the door when it goes poof, they'll call the police on me.

Of course, if the money that I spend doesn't vanish after the time limit expires, then that's a different story.