The balloon will only burst due to either neglect or the actions of others. So you don’t have to worry about it going off at random. When the balloon bursts, you will receive the amount of money inside.
You must have the balloon with you at all times, whether in public or at home. You are free to come up with excuses for why you have it, but you cannot tell someone the true nature of the balloon. If you do, it will burst instantly.
The balloon will not age or deflate. You can keep it for as long as you desire. You are also the only one who can see the money inside. Anybody else will just see it as a simple balloon.
You get to choose the color, but it must be one visible to the naked eye. You can even put a graphic or text on it.
How long will you undertake this task?
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Copy of the original post in case of edits: The balloon will only burst due to either neglect or the actions of others. So you don’t have to worry about it going off at random. When the balloon bursts, you will receive the amount of money inside.
You must have the balloon with you at all times, whether in public or at home. You are free to come up with excuses for why you have it, but you cannot tell someone the true nature of the balloon. If you do, it will burst instantly.
The balloon will not age or deflate. You can keep it for as long as you desire. You are also the only one who can see the money inside. Anybody else will just see it as a simple balloon.
You get to choose the color, but it must be one visible to the naked eye. You can even put a graphic or text on it.
How long will you undertake this task?
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I’m gonna write it as “happy birthday john” and continue with random names
its my birthday in 6 days, so this could work out well for me
I take 3 weeks off work (don’t quit unless something goes wrong in the next 3 weeks), sit at home watching tv and become a millionaire
I’d try for a year and then retire.
41 days. I am gonna stay inside the whole time. 2 trillion dollars, baby!
Looks like I’m staying at home inside for 45 days then buying the world.
Do we have to take account of the fact that the USD is likely to deflate just as quickly as the doubling effect?
In the late 1940s, the Hungarian pengő got to the point where prices were doubling every 15 hours, and the orange guy seems to be taking the USD that way.
Sounds good to me, hold onto it for a year and be dead for many months from being crushed to death by the cash filled balloon.
My corpse would have 100% of all wealth and by the end of the year my house would likely explode, also likely popping the growing balloon and spreading the wealth to my community.
Stay at home for 2 months, binging TV shows and ordering in. Collect my 2^60 dollars. Pretty sure that’s limitless money since it’s more than exists in the world and I just have to be careful not to overspend.
Yes, since you didn’t stipulate how long you need to step outside I could just chill in the foyer of my apt building or sit in my car in the garage everyday for a month.
It would say happy birthday or some other theme.
Id just sit at home, and order whatever I need to. Who cares if I run my credit card bill up. By the time the statement is due, Ill have $1 Million dollars (in my austin powers voice).
PS I know its more than $1 Million.
For anyone interested the formula is 2^(n-1)
So after 41 days you can be the world’s first trillionaire.
If you were to go much beyond that, possibly even to trillionaire status, you’d be risking crashing economies.
So let’s just do lent where we give up going out for 40 days.
I tell my wife to please just trust me and do not touch move or interact with the balloon that I’ve put in the spare room. It’s a science experiment.
>You are free to come up with excuses for why you have it, but you cannot tell someone the true nature of the balloon
I can tell my wife I’m doing a psychology experiment where I’m being paid to keep the balloon alive. That’s not the “true nature” of the balloon and I beg her to support me on this. It’s only a month (41 days) sweetie can you please trust me on this.
A month. I don’t need to destroy the world. I won’t go out much for that month.
easy explanation someone told my that ballon doesn’t lose helium and i am sceptical if i am right i just got a normal helium balloon for free if i am wrong i got a balloon that never deflates.
31 days yields $1,073,741,824. 62 days $2.30584302E18.
I will stay home as long as I have to.
I would have a charity statement or logo on the ballon and claim I was raising money for the charity when people asked about.
Physical dollars or just magic weightless sizeless invisible money?
I could definately keep this up for a few months.
I’d stay home for about 42 days, and use my vast wealth to combat the Republican party by any legal means available to me
So when your balloon burst after 100 days and causes the earth to collapse under the shift in weight…. Oh boy.
A few weeks is more than I would ever need…
I’m gonna untie the balloon careful and put it iny pocket for a few years… You don’t say I couldn’t let the air out… You said no popping. Do the judges agree?
I have 3 weeks of PTO saved up, I will burn it all and just stay home. Balloony and me. As long as nothing happens in those 3 weeks, balloon and myself will quit work. Then I will just keep going as long as I can. I will either kill the economy or will never have to worry about money again.
Easy-peasy. I’m making a casting case out of expanding spray foam and becoming the richest man on earth.
You never said anything about how big the balloon gets, so I’d have the balloon be 25% inflated and let it grow until it pops.
I could put it in a gym bag and walk around with it, although some stores might think that you are a shoplifter. Have groceries delivered. There is a limit to how much money fits in the bag, but 40 days would be good.
40 days, easy. I never go out anyway.
I put the balloon in a backpack. This protects it from popping easily, and makes me seem like less of a weirdo for carrying around a balloon all the time. I’m pretty sure I could go months like this.
Hmmm interesting concept. I guess I could make it between 32-37 days. I’d finish out the week at work bringing the balloon. Then show up on Monday with it. By that time HR and my boss want to talk with me. I just reply “It’s my birthday. This is my balloon. It’s shiny”. I get told to take a stress vacation and come back in a couple weeks.
At the end of the two weeks I simply resign saying that it’s best for my mental health at this time.
I explain to my wife that I’m looking for less stressful work on the private side that lets me work remote. I order in all the groceries/shopping, keep up with the house chores so my wife is happy.
All the while I’ve been staying inside the house like a hermit with the balloon here at home. Eventually my wife demands I go out of the house, at that time I pop the balloon and tell her we’re retired.
As to why my wife doesn’t pop the balloon. Well my birthday was back in mid March and she and my daughter got me a helium balloon that is still floating here at the house albeit droopy. Realistically I should toss that one. Maybe it has money in it?
I take a month off and become a shut-in. My partner will worry about me, but we’re both such weirdos that honestly it might just be funny and not a big deal at all. The hard part will be keeping the secret to myself.
After 30 days I literally have more money than I know what to do with.
I throw a bigass party with all my friends and family invited, we have a frickin blast. Tears are shed, laughs are had, wonderful music plays, you name it.
After that I buy up thousands of apartments in the city, drop the rent down significantly and only rent to folks near or below the poverty line. I’m talking apartments that used to be $5k/mo going for $500. I don’t give a fuck about profiting off of real estate.
Set up mutual aid co-ops. Places that folks can work, make money, and also help their communities while co-owning the organization. Organizations that train people and give them skills. Education, homesteading, cooking, crafting, you name it.
Imagine all these disgustingly wealthy motherfuckers did this kinda stuff with their money. Life would be grand.
I tell my wife that the balloon was given to me by Elon musk and if I keep it from popping he will give me a billion. I can’t tell her how long that is though, and I have to stay at home with it the whole time. I promise it won’t be too long.
That’s not the true nature. But I’m tapping out after like 35 days. I can’t be arsed to do the naths right now, but I’m happy to be a multi billionaire. I don’t need trillions
61 Days and I never work again for any reason.
For anyone trying to do the math it’s: 1× 2^(Days – 1).
You didn’t specify the size so I’ll take a 6 inch diameter red balloon filled with helium, I’ll put it inside a metal box which I’ll carry around for 38 days.
I will just pretend we’re in lockdown again for a month.
A month at home sounds like a fun time, as long as my cats don’t get to the balloon.
The HS defines the color must be visible, and that I have to take it with me everywhere… but not that it needs to be visible to people. It also says that it has one dollar to start, but doesn’t say what form the dollar is in. It could be any instrument worth a 2^n-1 .
So, I would build a 1/4” thick lexan box and put it inside. I’d put a message on the side of the balloon that said “science fair” for some local school if I HAD to go out, and put the thing in a shopping bag (opaque or clear, as needed).
That assumes it isn’t physical dollars. If it is physical bills, and balloon shaped, my garage will allow it to get to 8 feet in diameter, at around 8 million dollars. If the balloon can safely conform to a box I build to hold it the size of my garage, then around 20 million. So, a max of 25 days in that situation.
If it’s an instrument (a smaller item that records the amount I have) then 35 days gets me to 35 billion, 40 to 1 trillion, and if I made it to 50…I’m a quadrillionaire.
So there’s essentially no rule stopping me from just covering it in papier mache, making it much more durable.
At which point, I only need to keep it around for something like 31 days to become a billionaire. Or 40 days to become the richest person on earth, I suppose.
Realistically, a billion would last me the rest of my life, since I could spend 10 million dollars per year and still have enough to last 100 years.
I assume the money doesn’t just pop out of the balloon after it finally bursts, otherwise any amount of time past 2 weeks would be more than a metric ton of bills.
I’ll have a red one, and the wording on it will say, “Emotional Support Balloon.”
I don’t know how long I can keep it going, but I’ll take holiday time to give myself a nice big head start.
This is gonna be like covid again. Whole year for unpronounceable amounts of money. Then I buy X and call it ElonandOrangearepusseys aka EOP
24 days to $10M. 25 days to $20M. 26 days to $40M. 27 days to $80M
I would simply take a month off from work and not leave the house. Order in groceries, order in food, etc.
We kept a birthday balloon going for three months just bc we couldn’t believe how long it held air. One month would be a billion, so I’m good with that.
Write “Happy Birthday” on it.
I’d leave it for either a few months (working from home or just staying home if I get fired for requesting that much time WFH) if it doesn’t grow with the volume of the money. Or I’d leave it in the biggest room in my apartment with a razor blade next to the door to the next room to ensure it pops instead of smothering or crushing me when it grows too large.
Long.
I would just put it in a nice pelicase or similar and carry or roll that with me.
I choose a red balloon 😉
Addendum: put the balloon in a sturdy shell and put that in a carry on luggage with wheels.
Just add other stuff that I use daily into the luggage. If anyone asks it is just more comfortable to carry my laptop etc. in that rolling piece of luggage than carrying it in a sling bag or backpack.
Once there is enough money in it to destroy our economy I would pop it and try to use it wisely without destroying our economy.
I work from home so I’d only have to take it out for errands and dog walks. Which wouldn’t need an explanation, people would just assume I had a balloon for some reason so that solves a lot. My dog is afraid of balloons so she wouldn’t attack it. I’d probably keep it for 60 days. If I go out with friends I’ll just say I’m celebrating something. It’s one balloon so it shouldn’t be too distracting.
Do I get to pick when to start? Because I get summers off work, and I’m a homebody. 10 weeks is a lot of moolah.
I feel is just stay home for a few weeks. If I had to go out for some reason, the ballon is labeled “I beat cancer!” Nobody except the biggest of assholes is popping or questioning that.
Id tell my girl to float us (pun intended) while i babysit this balloon. She’s down
A full 30 days will make me a billionaire. So that.
I work from home. I bet for thousands/millions of dollars per day I could get my wife to go to the store or pickup the kids. Plus use delivery services.
And that all assumes bringing a balloon with me is a punishment/hassle/embarrassment. I am a dad with small kids who has been embarrassed in every way imaginable. I could give a shit what people think of me at this point
I once kept a helium balloon for 6 months until it deflated too much to stay upright.
I work from home so that would be simple. Anything over 19 days ($524,288) would set me up well at my current living standards. So I’d start the weekend before a three day holiday. I’d take 12 days off of work for “vacation” and then any future days I could survive without it popping would be just icing on the cake. 4 weeks would get me to $268 million but I think I could easily last for a month (30 days = $1 billion, 31 days = $2 billion). I live a fairly benign life and I’m a tad eccentric so it works out.
Quit my Job and just stay home for a month. In 30 days I would be a billionaire. I am good with that.
Exponential growth is wild. You’re basically going to earn 2^(n-1) dollars. Dedicate a month of your life to protecting it and you’re set, 2^30 is over a million.
On day 20 you hit 1 million and on day 30 you hit 1 billion. So, I am doing this for at least a month. Then I will try to get to day 40 to get a trillion dollars.
Dissappear into my house for a month and a half and have a bunch of food delivered.
I lock my doors and stay home for two months. I am now a quintillionaire.
40 days, I’d be a shut in for 40 days .
Easy, I have about 6 weeks vacation this year, I can avoid public places for whatever payout this amount of time earns.
I’d untie the bottom of the balloon, letting the helium leak out but since it will not deflate, I’m assume that means infinite helium keeps coming out. And just like that I’ve solved the world’s helium shortage!
The only issue is we’ve got to harvest the helium fast enough before the doubling money reaches a critical mass.
I could easily make it a month. I still got balloons from my kid’s last birthday and I’m getting no money from them. I’m also a stay at home dad, so bringing a balloon with me everywhere will be simple. People probably wouldn’t even look twice when we leave the house.
I’d quit my job and just stay home and keep it for 41 days. I’d have just over a trillion dollars.
I’m willing to dress up as Pennywise for a month or two to make this happen.
I think I could keep it safe for 41 days, become a multi-trillionaire. Then, it’s a simple matter to buy the United States government and get things back on track. What could possibly go wrong?
40 days at home relaxing with a balloon makes me a trillionaire, yeah I can do that then I retire to my dream job of trying to out Cohen, Steve Cohen
I would immediately put in for every day of leave I have from work, then proceed to not leave my house for a month, during which time I clean out the spare bedroom, and tie the baloon to a sturdy base and leave it in the center of an empty room with the fan off, and place pillows on every surface. At the end of 30 days I have a billion dollars, I can quit my job and never work another day in my life.
I saw this movie!
The Red Balloon (1956)
I work from home, so this is easy. I’d just order food delivery, etc, and never go outside. the question is just when I pop it. Probably in the trillions.
For if I have to go out, stealing the idea of having the balloon say “I beat cancer” on it so nobody fucks with it.
Stay home 1 month.
If the ball would keep it’s size, it would probably collapse into a black hole at around three months?
I’d work from home for a few weeks, and stay home. do so for a month and be set for life.
One month is just over a billion. I have more than that available in PTO. My goal would be one month, but the doubling return after that would make it very hard to want to leave the house. I’d stay in the house as much as possible to avoid any risk or questions, watch TV, build LEGOs, and shop for my next home.
A plain red balloon. I’ll be quitting my job and I believe I’ll be pretty damn wealthy by about the third week. I think the 21st day gets you over a million. I’ll keep it going until at least the 24th day. You underestimate my ability to live as a shut in. I’ll do this with a couple trips to the grocery and a lot of time spent playing video games and answering hypothetical questions. If anyone asks, it’s one of those contest things similar to where you have to take care of an egg.
just make sure to pop it inside of an empty house, and shoot it from far away 🙂
I get paid $1 to pop a balloon. Yay!
Side note: I have a balloon that’s been floating around my house for over a month already, and has been hit by the fan several times. Having not been paid for this , I’d probably do quite well in this scenario.
I undertake this task for exactly sixty four days.
To keep it from popping, I purchase a Pelican case and store it inside of it, padlocked. I bring it wherever I go, but honestly, I can afford to just stay at home and order food and whatever else I want delivered for two months just to be sure.
Hell, I can max out my credit cards ordering fun shit. It’s not like I’ll have to worry by the end of it, I’ll just pay them off with the $18,446,744,073,709,551,615 I end up with at the end.
Time to convince my family, girlfriend, and kids’ mother why I can’t leave the house for 30-days and how it’ll be well worth their time.
Is the money in coins or bills?
After a week there are 64 bills in the balloon? How long until you can’t even put any air into it?
I’m never leaving my house for a year. But as long as I make it 3-4 weeks all is good.
Just going to have my wife safety proof the house with foam and pillows on every sharp surface and il live in one room watching Netflix.
If my wife can’t assist il just go Howard Hughes and live in one room anyway. Delivery drivers can pass my food in through the living room window. And il draw a face on my new balloon friend to keep me company.
I need 18 days to be debt free, 20 to buy land and build a compound, 21 to be a comfortable for rest of life. day 24 means I can retire. So yeah. Im cleaning my house of everything by my bed. the balloon will be by new best friend. Taking my I have 17 days of leave and 10 sick days. Add in weekends. puts me at 16.7 million. I can retire and live off interest. call in sick after that and until I get fired. every day after than is luxuary
I’m not leaving my home, are you kidding me… Watching my balloon will just be my job. Keep it for some months and you’ll be the richest person to ever live. The biggest issue is the physics/size of the balloon, if it actually somehow contains all that cash in physical form.
I’ll just put it inside of a box and carry that around. I don’t go out much. A few weeks of that and I’m more than set.
If I can keep it alive for a month, which should be fairly easy as I live alone and rarely have people over, I’d be a billionaire.
I can easily stay inside for a month and order food when my current supply runs out.
Though if go for 40 days I’d be the worlds first trillionaire.
Or I could go all out, give it 50 days and I’d have $1 quadrillion.
Nah I’m just gonna keep going if I do that. Next thing I know 3 years have gone by and I have more money than there are atoms in the universe.
I think I’d go for a month then evaluate on a daily basis whether or not to continue. I probably pop it around day 34 or 35, go for double digit billions.
I get to choose the color??????? AND I can put text/graphics on it?!
SOLD.
If I can’t tell anyone about it that gets tricky because I have family and young kids. I can’t think of a plausible way of keeping it secure and in the same room as me without them thinking I’ve lost my mind.
So I think I’d have to go on a very well paid ‘work trip abroad’ – which would in fact just be me finding a fairly local AirBnB I could hole up in for 50 days (ordering food and stuff online) until I was the wealthiest person in human history. I’ll transport the balloon in a hard suitcase or something until I get there to keep it safe and avoid unwanted attention. I can tell them the actual story once I return – I’m sure my wife would forgive the deception given the sums of money involved!
3 weeks. I can stay home that long.
When I was pregnant I had a balloon from my baby shower last over a month. Soooooo…
Hear me out:
For a starting value of $10 that doubles every day if I can defend the balloon against an immortal assassin who respawns every morning and lives for the sole purpose of popping my balloon.
30 days easy
1 month easy, I have multiple craft projects to keep me busy. After that it gets kind of iffy, doctor’s appointments and a train trip are coming up. My granddaughter would not be able to understand why she can’t play with Gram’s balloon.
Oh make it purple with a nice butterfly on it. 🦋
I work from home, but I won’t have to for long under this arrangement…
Just a single dollar a day? I’d pop it on day 9 and buy a small coffee. Much too much inconvenience for a dollar a day, knowing that any day could be my last and there are so many interesting things I could be doing where taking a balloon would just be… again, I guess, inconvenient.
Edit: Shit. I didn’t do a very good job with reading. So to answer your ACTUAL question and not the one i made up in my head… as long as I could, lol
We all float down here, Georgie.
I quit my job and simply Never go out until I’m ready
I WFH so I will take the deal.
Until I can’t anymore I guess. I have a rare autoimmune disease that prevents me from leaving the house, and when I do leave it’s for very short periods and often only to go to the doctor. So I’m already at home all day, I’d just need to make my home more balloon proof and make sure any pets don’t pop it
I order two months worth of groceries. I rent a cabin. I pop the balloon on day 60.
Pay me the world.
Stay in a hotel for 2 months with Mr Balloon, don’t leave the room, order fabulous room service.
Earn $1.15 Quintillion.
Pay hotel bill.
Retire.
Not leaving the house for a while…
Im a sahm so easy money tbh. Id get a pink ballon with a bunny on it and say it’s for baby’s first Easter. I don’t go out much either so it wouldn’t be too difficult to keep it from popping
As long as I can. I’ll use the excuse that it is a dare/challenge a friend gave me or a promise I made for whatever reason
I still have several fully inflated mylar balloons in my house from 2 years ago, they even survived living with 3 cats. I’d be so rich. I’d have no problem taking one with me whenever I went out, because mylar is very resilient.
This is actually pretty easy. Doubling gets surprisingly big, surprisingly fast. If I can keep it safe for 20 days, I get half a million. Day 21 is 1 million. So honestly, 20 days would be my goal. Everything after that is just gravy.
So yeah. Invest in some Kevlar. Wrap the balloon. Put it in a pet carrier or suitcase or something.
I would immediately put it in an large pelican case and only leave the house when necessary. 33 days is 4 billion. I would take 3 billion to donate and make peoples life better and then live like a king for the rest of my life.
Well I get 4 weeks of vacation plus a week of sick time and my rollover of up to 3 weeks. I can take all of July and August off to buy a large country and keep my bills going just fine until I pop that balloon
Work would say carrying it around is a food safety violation and I’d only end up with one dollar.
I think the hardest part about this would be not being able to explain the balloon to my wife.
I’m really not sure she would be chill with me taking a month off to babysit a balloon at home.
We have three helium (mylar) balloons from a party over four weeks ago. We’re rich!!
Hardest part would be trying to coming up with a convincing enough excuse to bring it to work, or family events(i can’t take off work, but people don’t bother me at work, family wouldn’t mess with it either if a family event happens during, i just wouldn’t know what to say to them)but if I can manage at least 25 days I’m set for life
I would take some time off of work and let my money build. I might just end up quitting once it got high enough. I think I’d end it at 32 days, maybe 33 at most.
I would do it for 31 days and just stay home and pretend I got long covid to keep people away. That would be more money than I could spend in a single life time.
At some point the amount of money in the ballon is so much that it becomes a hazard. When it popped it would be an explosion. (How big of an explosion would that be?? – IDK) It would disrupt the banking system and the treasury. Then it’s like the treasury printed way too many bills and it becomes almost worthless paper.
Definitely, if you can go at least 3 weeks without income you’ll have a million another day 2 million etc etc, door dash all your food or go out once for a solid shopping trip
Well, I’m going to be gaming reading and watching tv for the next month I guess. I have holidays from study for a while anyway. Just tell my parents that I’m curious as to how long the balloon takes to lose its helium. They’ll respect that. If I have to go to my studies before then, just tell my fellow students the same thing. I’m already pretty eccentric anyway.
Mickey balloon from Disneyland please, cause then I am already up $25
I rarely go out, except for doctor appointments, so that’s not really a major concern. My wife will think it weird, but she’s kinda used to me being weird. Most of my socializing is done online, so I don’t have to worry much there. I do have ferrets – so that might be an issue, but I can generally keep things away from them if I am careful.
I could probably get to 40 days (or more), which would make me the richest man in the world.
Put balloon in a hard case of some sort, pop it after a month or so. Easy.
My dog pops balloons for fun. I give it ten minutes 😂
I stay home for a couple months and operate in full remote mode. I can have anything I need delivered. BTW, in just 30 days you have over a billion dollars, 40 days over a trillion, 50 days over a quadrillion and the total wealth of the world is possibly less than a quadrillion, 60 days (couple of months) would give me more than a 1000 times the world’s wealth thus at that point I can own everything and determine the markets and break them if I want to.
After a month I’d never have to work again. Classic doubling problem.
People saying they would stop at millionaire status aren’t familiar with the wheat and the chessboard problem.