5 ms·

Ask HN: What is the fastest way you can think of to make a million dollars?

17 points by deadcoder0904 7y ago

ColinWright 7y ago
Put $1 on a single number on a roulette wheel, let it ride, and have your number come up 4 times in a row.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  Funny that this was my original thought too. But if we add the "feasible" attribute to the request, I think most tables have a max bet somewhere between 1k and 10k unless theres a high-roller table that does 20k or something like that. In that case he would only need 3 spins or so, assuming the casino doesn't shut him off and he doesn't mind paying taxes of like 500k on the earned income. If there's no other variable besides "fastest", then robbing someone who has $1,000,000 cash under a mattress somewhere would be the "fastest", despite being extremely unethical and a considerable time sink to find someone with that much cash lying around.
  - joezydeco 7y ago
    If you had won 3 times in a row on roulette and wanted to parlay it all back on a single number, the house would happily take that bet. Once you start winning big casinos will do anything to make you stay since they will, in the end, win it all back if you do.
    - quaquaqua1 7y ago
      Ahhh didn't realize we were talking about multi-leg bets. Thought we were talking about the odds for 3 separate bets (usually I think a single number is something like a 30 to 1 pay out)
      - joezydeco 7y ago
        We are indeed talking about separate bets. "Parlay" in this sense means "Bet the entire winnings on a new roll". 1) Bet $1, hit the number, win $35. 2) Bet all $35, hit the number, win $1,225 3) Bet all $1,225, hit the number, win $42,875 4) Bet all $42,875, hit the number, win $1,500,625
claudiulodro 7y ago
Depends on risk tolerance. In general, the less risk tolerance, the longer it will take. The most surefire way is to work at a FAANG for ~10 years and keep your expenses under control or work your way up to an executive/partner position in a medium-sized business, but that's clearly not super fast. The fastest way is the roulette wheel mentioned in another comment or the lottery, but that is realistically almost never going to pan out. Entrepreneurship is IMO a good middle ground between the two paths.
fuzzfactor 7y ago
Make millions of dollars worth of sales.
_archon_ 7y ago
I'd buy 1,000,000 dollars. Starting with linen paper and printing it is super slow.
tozeur 7y ago
Marriage.
- winternett 7y ago
  Either that or robbing a bank. Either way you end up in jail?
vtrips 7y ago
Old wise man once told not the fastest, but the most successful way - "If you want to make good money, focus on creating value and money will take care of itself" Create value.
bjourne 7y ago
Start with a billion dollars and lose 999 million of them in bad investments. :p
xchip 7y ago
you mean legally I presume?
winternett 7y ago
Get a small one million dollar loan from your father. Anyone can do it. ಠ_ಠ
deanmoriarty 7y ago
If you are a semi-competent software engineer with some experience, move to the Bay Area, get a position at any large company that pays well (350k-500k including RSU is pretty feasible these days), live absolutely frugally (under 40-50k a year), invest the rest in VTSAX+VTIAX and don't keep them in your company stock (perhaps some 30% fixed income too to smooth the ride) and you'll be there in ~5 years with absolutely minimum risk (if the market crashes it might take maybe 7? But if you buy a slice of bonds you'll have dry powder to rebalance into equities as they fall). I've been doing that for a few years now and I'm at ~1.6M all liquid and on track to retire before I'm 40 (32 now) and I'm a standard software engineer working in infra. I wish I would have known that earlier instead of completely wasting my time working as a startup employee for pennies, but I also had immigration issues (H1B visa) that prevented me from freely navigating the job market (or at least that's what I like to tell myself as a poor excuse for not taking more control of my future sooner...). If you want to reduce those ~5 years, you can start putting your money in speculative bets (e.g. crypto, leveraged etf, option trading), but that's not my cup of tea, I am way too aware of how much easier it is to go from $1M to $0 than from $0 to $1M. The biggest advice I have for you is: if you're interested in seeing financial returns on your time/work, don't work for a startup, ever :-)
- ta0987 7y ago
  Could you define semi-competent for us please? :-) 350K - 500K sounds insane for a run of the mill developer.
  - deanmoriarty 7y ago
    Maybe I should have said "competent". I myself am a generalist with relatively fair experience in systems, so I do SRE work at Google and got an offer in that range. Many of my friends are developers who know Python (and just Python), have no deep understanding of underlying computing fundamentals (no network stack, no operating systems, ...) and no special skills (no big data, no machine learning, ...). They all still managed to get a really good offer from FAANG (in the same range I'm mentioning), they just had to pass the typical coding interview puzzles that are really not that difficult if you spend a few weeks seriously training for them. One thing to keep in mind: Bay Area is massively expensive, so don't disregard my other point of being "very frugal": it is very easy to end up spending 150-200k after tax in cost of living, especially if you feel you "deserve" nice stuff, or you have kids. I grew up poor in a poor country, so living like a student at 32 still feels like luxury to me (I drive a brand new Honda Civic, live by myself, cook good food at home, ...) and allows me to save 200k+ a year, but many people wouldn't be able to do it In the Bay. Many of my peers routinely spend $600+ a month just on Uber Eats/Doordash, which is simply insane to me.
lapaz17 7y ago
Put your money on countries with a high interest?
dmarlow 7y ago
Probably in real estate. You can make good money still if you are a savvy buyer.

17 points by deadcoder0904 7y ago

ColinWright 7y ago

Put $1 on a single number on a roulette wheel, let it ride, and have your number come up 4 times in a row.

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Funny that this was my original thought too. But if we add the "feasible" attribute to the request, I think most tables have a max bet somewhere between 1k and 10k unless theres a high-roller table that does 20k or something like that. In that case he would only need 3 spins or so, assuming the casino doesn't shut him off and he doesn't mind paying taxes of like 500k on the earned income. If there's no other variable besides "fastest", then robbing someone who has $1,000,000 cash under a mattress somewhere would be the "fastest", despite being extremely unethical and a considerable time sink to find someone with that much cash lying around.
- joezydeco 7y ago
  If you had won 3 times in a row on roulette and wanted to parlay it all back on a single number, the house would happily take that bet. Once you start winning big casinos will do anything to make you stay since they will, in the end, win it all back if you do.
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    Ahhh didn't realize we were talking about multi-leg bets. Thought we were talking about the odds for 3 separate bets (usually I think a single number is something like a 30 to 1 pay out)
    - joezydeco 7y ago
      We are indeed talking about separate bets. "Parlay" in this sense means "Bet the entire winnings on a new roll". 1) Bet $1, hit the number, win $35. 2) Bet all $35, hit the number, win $1,225 3) Bet all $1,225, hit the number, win $42,875 4) Bet all $42,875, hit the number, win $1,500,625

claudiulodro 7y ago

Depends on risk tolerance. In general, the less risk tolerance, the longer it will take. The most surefire way is to work at a FAANG for ~10 years and keep your expenses under control or work your way up to an executive/partner position in a medium-sized business, but that's clearly not super fast. The fastest way is the roulette wheel mentioned in another comment or the lottery, but that is realistically almost never going to pan out. Entrepreneurship is IMO a good middle ground between the two paths.

fuzzfactor 7y ago

Make millions of dollars worth of sales.

_archon_ 7y ago

I'd buy 1,000,000 dollars. Starting with linen paper and printing it is super slow.

tozeur 7y ago

Marriage.

winternett 7y ago
Either that or robbing a bank. Either way you end up in jail?

vtrips 7y ago

Old wise man once told not the fastest, but the most successful way - "If you want to make good money, focus on creating value and money will take care of itself" Create value.

bjourne 7y ago

Start with a billion dollars and lose 999 million of them in bad investments. :p

xchip 7y ago

you mean legally I presume?

winternett 7y ago

Get a small one million dollar loan from your father. Anyone can do it. ಠ_ಠ

deanmoriarty 7y ago

If you are a semi-competent software engineer with some experience, move to the Bay Area, get a position at any large company that pays well (350k-500k including RSU is pretty feasible these days), live absolutely frugally (under 40-50k a year), invest the rest in VTSAX+VTIAX and don't keep them in your company stock (perhaps some 30% fixed income too to smooth the ride) and you'll be there in ~5 years with absolutely minimum risk (if the market crashes it might take maybe 7? But if you buy a slice of bonds you'll have dry powder to rebalance into equities as they fall). I've been doing that for a few years now and I'm at ~1.6M all liquid and on track to retire before I'm 40 (32 now) and I'm a standard software engineer working in infra. I wish I would have known that earlier instead of completely wasting my time working as a startup employee for pennies, but I also had immigration issues (H1B visa) that prevented me from freely navigating the job market (or at least that's what I like to tell myself as a poor excuse for not taking more control of my future sooner...). If you want to reduce those ~5 years, you can start putting your money in speculative bets (e.g. crypto, leveraged etf, option trading), but that's not my cup of tea, I am way too aware of how much easier it is to go from $1M to $0 than from $0 to $1M. The biggest advice I have for you is: if you're interested in seeing financial returns on your time/work, don't work for a startup, ever :-)

ta0987 7y ago
Could you define semi-competent for us please? :-) 350K - 500K sounds insane for a run of the mill developer.
- deanmoriarty 7y ago
  Maybe I should have said "competent". I myself am a generalist with relatively fair experience in systems, so I do SRE work at Google and got an offer in that range. Many of my friends are developers who know Python (and just Python), have no deep understanding of underlying computing fundamentals (no network stack, no operating systems, ...) and no special skills (no big data, no machine learning, ...). They all still managed to get a really good offer from FAANG (in the same range I'm mentioning), they just had to pass the typical coding interview puzzles that are really not that difficult if you spend a few weeks seriously training for them. One thing to keep in mind: Bay Area is massively expensive, so don't disregard my other point of being "very frugal": it is very easy to end up spending 150-200k after tax in cost of living, especially if you feel you "deserve" nice stuff, or you have kids. I grew up poor in a poor country, so living like a student at 32 still feels like luxury to me (I drive a brand new Honda Civic, live by myself, cook good food at home, ...) and allows me to save 200k+ a year, but many people wouldn't be able to do it In the Bay. Many of my peers routinely spend $600+ a month just on Uber Eats/Doordash, which is simply insane to me.

lapaz17 7y ago

Put your money on countries with a high interest?

dmarlow 7y ago

Probably in real estate. You can make good money still if you are a savvy buyer.