Would you rather have 1 billion dollars today or 1 dollar that is guaranteed to double every year?

I'm 60. Give me the billion

As presented herein, I'm opting for the 1 billion dollars today.

And I suspect that your description of the second option is not exactly what you are intending to communicate.

EDIT: A little back of the envelope (Literally) math of mine shows that it would take 32 years for option 2 to surpass the billion dollars of option 1 up front, not the 29 years that you claim.

And considering the value of compounding of interest or investment potential possible with option one (1 billion investible from day 1), it would definitely be a better option imo.

What if option A was only 1 million instead?

The billion at 5% interest would probably accelerate faster.

I'm not working that out at this time of day.

This is more difficult to answer. I'd probably still go with the million, since the equivalence is in around twenty years, when I'd be eighty & less likely to enjoy my fortune

Also, not only does option 1 have the benefit of compounding of interest, consider that value of the dollar in 29 years or however far out you project it, will be less due to inflation and the diminishing buying power of a dollar with each subsequent year.

The billion hands down.

Would you rather have more money than you can possibly spend now, or in 25+ years?

I’m 5, give me a billion two

Would you rather have (a) one million dollars today or (b) a penny today and future pennies monthly, with the number of pennies doubling each a month?

It's 30 years.

log2(500 000 000) + 1 = 28.9 + 1 ~ 30 when rounding up to the nearest integer.

Alternatively:

sum(2^(i-1)) for i=1 ... i=30 = 1 073 741 823

Technically it's 29 years.

You get 2^N dollars after N years, so in total you will have received 2^(N+1)-1 dollars by then. 2^(29+1)-1 > 1_000_000_000

Even if I was still 20, I’d take the billion. No matter what age, there is no guarantee of living long enough to get the payoff of the second option.

If you are 20 option a

in 30 years it’s one billion

in 40 years it’s 100 billion

In 50 it’s 100 trillion

in 60

1billion with 30 years 9% returns is only 13 billion

Give me the billion. As a degen I'd like immediate action. May not be alive in 10+ years anyways despite my relatively young age. If I was one of those cats who wanted to live to 100, things may have been different. That ain't me.

Year 31 you would receive $1.07 billion. If you never spent any of the money and just saved it all, you would have $1.61 billion in year 31.

This is assuming "today" is year 0; one year from today is year 1, etc.

In 10 years, NBA stars will hold out if only offered a contract of $1 billion.

But that 20yo would look like an idiot if he doesn’t make it to 50. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and the 1 billion now is more than enough.

The sum of Option B is not adjusted for inflation. Consider that carerully. If it takes 29 years to reach the $1 billion in todays dollars, due to inflation, that billion dollars will only be worth $ 510 million in todays dollars.

From an AI search: "The value of $ 1 in 29 years, considering the current inflation rate, will be approximately $ 0.51".

So, it would actually take 30 years (not 29 years) to get the same value of $1 billion in today's value.

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it would take 30 years for that 100% compounding dollar to build up to a billion, and you might die first.

Ten years later it would reach a trillion, and you would have some governments out to kill you for being too rich.

There are diminishing advantages to being a billionaire, after about 1 billion. A billion is already enough to get pretty much whatever you want for life. More than that is obsession, boredom, playing around like Warren Buffet, George Soros etc.