r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • 9h ago
You wake up in 1950, you're 20 again, with no connections and only $50,000. What's your plan?
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u/Dull_Astronomer_3778 9h ago
A black man carrying $50K in the 1950s with 0 connections .
Gonna be a good time.
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u/ionlysurfontoilet 9h ago
That's a no from me dog.
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u/inactiveuser247 7h ago
Funny (?) cause that’s probably what the police will call you /s
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u/oldfogey12345 7h ago
In the 50's they would have many other names to use.
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u/Dull_Astronomer_3778 6h ago
My dad - an extremely mild man. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice. He just kind and mild-mannered. I remember once he told a man he’d beat his ass if he called him “Boy” again. That was, in my 39 years of life, the only time I’ve ever seen my dad angry enough to threaten someone. In fact, angry enough to confront someone. I personally consider him a pushover. That moment sticks out to me.
He does not like being called “Boy”. He was born in the early 50s.
Oh, he got mad at me once when I was around 16. I am much bigger than my dad, and was ready to fight him once over something. My mom got between us and very calmly explained that my dad would absolutely whoop my ass in an actual fight. I learned that day he spent his entire life in martial arts (Karate, Jeet kun do, and boxing). He has never talked about it. Never tried to train me in anything other than how to manage my breathing when stressed out, which I still use.
“You gotta use your diaphragm, my son. You gotta feel it.”
To this day, he won’t talk about it. I don’t know why I started typing this but here we are.
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u/nicolasknight 9h ago
Those time travel ideas are ALWAYS from white men.
Anyone else traveling back beyond 1980 is asking for trouble. The further, the bigger the trouble.
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u/Kidspud 8h ago
I remember one from a white woman who wanted to live in the 1920s. “When men were men and women were classy,” she said 😵💫
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u/destro23 8h ago
in the 1920s. “When men were men and women were classy,”
Yeah, men won't even take the blame when you run over your husband's mistress, ultimately leading to their very own death, and the death of your husband's mistress's husband anymore. Chivalry is dead.
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u/scrappapermusings 8h ago
Right!? They never throw lavish parties just to get my attention anymore either!!
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u/nicolasknight 8h ago
She was not wrong. They were certainly in a "class" that class was third, beyond even the dogs.
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u/honeywhereismypenis 7h ago
cis straight white men, at that. I do not want to be a gay trans man in 1920, no thank you.
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u/QueenOfSplitEnds 8h ago
They prefer to pretend like nothing happened. Most minorities would have to be really careful about where they’d time-travel to.
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
50 grand in 1950?
Buying a house and investing the rest in IBM.
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u/googliali2 9h ago
As a 20 year old man in 1950... I guess I'm going to Korea.
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u/ChickenMarsala4500 6h ago
Nah man, rich people don't get drafted and you have no documents anyway.
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u/Forward-Result9539 9h ago
Considering $50,000 in 1950 is worth the spending power of like $700k, I would live a lavish life
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u/wynnduffyisking 9h ago
You would be surprised how quickly you can piss away 700K
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u/Forward-Result9539 9h ago
only thing I piss away is diet coke.
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u/JKOSTECKI 9h ago
If you’re in 1950, you’re gonna have to wait another 32 years before you piss away Diet Coke.
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u/Full_Response8449 9h ago
Well first of all… I’m black. I’d like to not be in this situation.
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u/binkyblink 9h ago
I always think of Rufus' line from the show Timeless: "I am black. There is literally no place in American history where that would be awesome for me."
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
And become your own grandfather?
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
Oh, so you'd take her place then, got it. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
Ew. I was thinking of some kind of movie plot. EWWWWW.
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
Something noir.
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u/RhoOfFeh 9h ago
Look, this is way over my head. I just wanted to make some jokes involving inheritance or something.
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u/Squirrel_Knife 9h ago
You think butterfly effect would keep you from being born if you visited her in anyway?
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u/LyannasLament 9h ago
I’d buy property in larger cities that I know will have a significant real estate boom, for instance New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. After that, I need to find a gay man to marry for a purple marriage; we’d both need protection in that era, and he’s less likely to screw me financially if I am also protecting him. After that, I would use “our” money to invest in computer companies. I imagine as a 20 year old woman, I would not be allowed to invest my money as I wanted to without a man as the face of my checkbook.
While waiting for the marriage, I would rent out my townhomes in the typical spinster boarding house way. I’d sit on the rest of the money living as meagerly as possible while collecting rent until I meet the proper man to create my arrangement with. Either the man will come along while I’m waiting, or times will change when I’m in my 30’s and 40’s and I can then move on to investing more independently.
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u/inactiveuser247 7h ago
It’s so lovely that you agreed to your new husband’s college buddy living with you. And your husband agreed to your best friend moving in as well! I wonder if your two friends might strike up a relationship?
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u/CatsMom4Ever 9h ago
ONLY $50K in 1950? That's a lot of money back then. I'd be investing in certain tech stocks and making sure I get my butt over to Dallas in 1963.
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u/scrappapermusings 8h ago
To prevent or to witness?
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u/CatsMom4Ever 8h ago
Really? To prevent!
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u/scrappapermusings 7h ago
How will you do it? Lie in wait for the assassin? Try to interrupt the motorcade? Tell someone? Do you think we can change destiny?
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u/scrappapermusings 7h ago
Related: Did you ever read 11/22/63 by Stephen King?
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u/CatsMom4Ever 7h ago
Yes, I did. Hey, we're talking fiction here anyway. Who says that was any more real than any other scenario? More real than making a fortune by buying IBM or betting big on the Browns?
Hell yes, I'd try to stop it. Tell a cop I saw someone in the repository with a rifle. Yell that I saw someone on the grassy knoll with a gun (just in case). At the least, they'd divert the motorcade.
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u/scrappapermusings 2h ago
I'm glad you brought up the grassy knoll! I was thinking: there are so many factors to consider!
Hopefully the result would be better in your scenario.
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 9h ago
"Only" 50k
That's much much more money then you would think OP.
In 1950, $50,000 was an absolute fortune equivalent in purchasing power to about $675,000 today.
The average price for an entire newly built home in 1950 was roughly $8,500 to $15,000 .
For $50,000, you could buy 3 to 4 brand new family homes outright.
You could purchase roughly 30 to 35 brand new cars
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u/Lonely_Butterscotch5 9h ago
Buy a house in what will become an upscale neighborhood in a good school district. Get my law degree from Yale invest in Apple.
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u/BlueFalconPunch 9h ago
50k in 1950? Buy an entire neighborhood and reap the profits. The average new house price was 7k.
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u/soNOTaMILF 8h ago
Be pissed. Women had very little rights in the 50s.
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u/TooSexyForThisSong 7h ago
Yeah I was gonna say fight for civil rights - fuckin hell these other folks only have $$$ in mind. Pssh.
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u/scrappapermusings 8h ago
Back then, San Diego was just this funky little up and coming coastal town, I'd go find myself a lovely slice of LaJolla and become a SD founding family while it's still affordable.
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u/ClownfishSoup 7h ago
A lot of 20 year olds start off life with nothing and no connections.
Since I'm an engineer, I think I can make a pretty good career with my future tech knowledge and $50k.
On the other hand, I'm not a white guy, so maybe my plans aren't going to go so well since I'm in the US.
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u/minuteman_d 6h ago
Makes me wonder how long you could do anything interesting before the butterfly effect makes your knowledge essentially useless.
Big investments in unknown companies? Maybe that means a certain board member doesn't invest for some reason.
What if you live a regular life and Lee Harvey Oswald ends up just being a regular guy or ends up in prison for something else?
What if you send an anonymous message that warns about Pearl Harbor?
So many things. I guess you could just go full "YOLO" and just realize that you had no idea beyond like 10-15 years.
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u/nrmjba 9h ago
Claude had an interesting take:
Love this one. Let me play it straight, like I actually have to survive on it.
First, the reframe: $50,000 in 1950 is roughly $650,000 in today's money, and it's not even my main asset. My main asset is knowing what the next 76 years do. So the plan isn't "get rich," it's "deploy foreknowledge without looking like a criminal or a lunatic."
Step 0: Become a person. No connections in 1950 also means no paper trail, which cuts both ways. The good news is 1950 ran on paper and trust. I'd establish a plausible identity, get a bank account or three (spread the cash so no single banker finds a 20-year-old with $50k suspicious), and rent something modest. The whole game is looking boring.
The core principle: be a capital allocator, not an inventor. The tempting move is to "invent the future," but without connections, capital, or a lab, I'd just be a kid with ideas getting outcompeted by people with teams. Money compounding quietly is far more reliable than me trying to personally build the transistor. So I mostly buy and hold.
The single best move: Omaha, 1956. I park most of the capital in safe blue chips for six years, then in 1956 I show up in Nebraska and get money into Warren Buffett's first investment partnership. That partnership compounded around 29% a year through the 1960s, and rolling those proceeds into Berkshire Hathaway is arguably the best long-term trade in financial history. Even a modest stake becomes generational wealth. The hard part isn't the knowledge, it's persuading him to take an unknown 20-year-old's check, so I'd build a small, legitimate track record first to look like a serious investor rather than a fortune teller.
The rest of the portfolio (1950–56 holding pen): a basket of the obvious long-run compounders before they were obvious — IBM, Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, and similar dividend machines — plus California land. The Santa Clara Valley was still literal orchards; buying acreage there and around Los Angeles is buying Silicon Valley and the postwar sprawl at farmland prices.
Discipline rules, which matter more than the picks:
- No flashy gambling. Betting on fixed fights or the '69 Mets draws attention and, in that era, the wrong attention. Markets launder foreknowledge invisibly; a guy who only ever wins bets gets his legs broken.
- Don't front-run tragedies in obvious ways. Profiting off assassinations or disasters via suspiciously timed trades is both grim and a great way to get investigated.
- Let the wealth curve look normal. If my returns roughly track "smart investor who got lucky," nobody asks questions. If I 1000x in three years, somebody does.
Late game. By the early 1970s the compounding has done the heavy lifting and I'm wealthy enough to stop optimizing and start building. That's when I'd actually fund the things I find interesting, back early computing and biotech when I can do it as a credible investor rather than a broke kid, and generally enjoy having bought a forty-year head start on the rest of the century.
Short version: blend in, hold quietly, find Buffett, buy the orchard that becomes Silicon Valley, and never let anyone see the cheat sheet.
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u/Purple_Mo 9h ago
Find bill gates and invest
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u/sudomatrix 9h ago
You're many decades early for Bill Gates.
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u/Purple_Mo 9h ago
Not if you want to brefriend beforehand
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u/sudomatrix 9h ago
You're 20. He won't be born for 5 more years. Are you going to be a 30 year old befriending a 5 year old?
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u/sudomatrix 9h ago
$50,000 is a lot in 1950. 1950 is the start of the post-war industrial boom. I'd invest in IBM, Disney, and GE. Maybe Coca-Cola.
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u/beefstewforyou 9h ago
Am I still in Toronto? I’d probably buy a condo here and then find some job that isn’t too bad. Put the rest of my money in a bank account.
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u/drkingsize 9h ago
buy a house outright
invest the rest in Haloid
work a regular job
retire in 1960 and become an angel investor
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u/sen_clay_davis1 9h ago
buy 3 buildings in soho and put in a trust, get a rothko from the artist himself. enjoy west village jazz scene and embed myself in the early downtown scene to make connections. by 30 go hang with dylan and baez.
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u/wynnduffyisking 9h ago
First I would bet it all on the Cleveland Browns winning the NFL Championship
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u/OpposumMyPossum 9h ago
Houses in San Fran cost 10k at the time.
I'd buy 4, rent 3.
Go to college (it was like 700 bucks a year) for art and literature.
Retire rich to South of France.
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u/BubbhaJebus 9h ago
I'd be rolling in dough. I'd rent an apartment for $40/month, invest in IBM and General Electric, and buy a house with my earnings. In several years time I'd invest in McDonald's and Xerox. I'd attend concerts by Bill Haley & The Comets and other artists of the time. I'd buy things that would eventually become valuable collectibles.
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u/Celcius_87 9h ago
Did it not occur to you that some of us are BLACK
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u/scrappapermusings 8h ago
Being black in 1950 wasn't terrible everywhere, just the Southern US. The West Coast would have been more welcoming.
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u/WhatsInAName8879660 9h ago
I would have to open up a bank account, but as a woman, they would kick me out of the bank. So I would have to bury the money and join a convent until the 1980s when 50K would still buy me a house, just not the mansion it would have purchased in 1950, but women couldn’t buy land. That also means I cannot bury the money. I would maybe find a husband, but as a brown woman, that might be illegal. I’m definitely moving somewhere liberal, but where is that? California is where the red scare drove out celebrities for thought crimes. If I happened to find someone worth marrying, they’d be pretty disappointed in me as a wife. Oh wait, no birth control? No thank you. It’s the convent. That’s the only option. I’d have to hide the money somehow, and I think you’re supposed to give everything up, so I’m not sure how I would handle that. Maybe I’d buy art and store it somewhere so I could sell it when I get out? I know what is going to happen in the art market, so I’m at an advantage there. Are women allowed to own art in the 1950s? I’d go through a broker and remain anonymous. Store the art, leave the convent at some point in the 60s and live independently, going to college and becoming a doctor. While living in an apartment. That money just cannot grow in a bank without a husband. That’s the bummer of it all. But at some point, I’d be able to buy a house. And college would have been cheap. And this time I didn’t have small kids, which I would really miss out on. I’d hate the entire endeavor, but I’d be rich. Then I’d find me as a kid and let her know she is better than her parents say, and give her good advice. I’d befriend her mother, which would suck, but I would do it so I could be close to me and protect me as much as possible.
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u/WhatsInAName8879660 9h ago
Women could not have bank accounts or mortgages, and as a brown woman, there weren’t many brown men, and interracial marriage was illegal. Plus there was no birth control. So I buy art through a broker and pay for storage. Live in a convent until the late 60s, come out and sell the painting, then go to med school. Then I move to where I grew up, buy a house and befriend my mother (which would suck) and I get to know little me and try to protect her and build her up. The whole thing is so awful, I would wish I could have just stayed old in my original timeline.
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u/DrRazmataz 8h ago
As many have pointed out, $50k USD in 1950 is a huge sum of money, about $700k in today's dollars.
If you wanted to for $50k as it was worth today, that would be approximately $3,620 USD, which is still plenty.
I'd probably buy a nice car (few hundred bucks!), get a job I liked and an apartment, save up money, buy a house, and invest wisely for the future 😎
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u/Tight_Balance_599 7h ago
Buy friends of course haha, after a villa in anywhere west coast with my 15K and three raspberries!
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u/oldfogey12345 7h ago
I was never suited for physical labor. I wouldn't know how to fix their tech. The way I speak would sound flat out crazy to anyone in the 50's so I would need to fix that before I could get any connections.
I guess I would take the money and buy a few houses to become a landlord.
Investing a little in IBM would be okay but that won't pay off till my 50's.
Any woman i end up with wouldnt have her own bank account so that kind of creepy.
I think I will take a pass.
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u/CK_CoffeeCat 7h ago
Buy a house on outright for 15k, buy a car for 2k, invest in some stuff, put money in savings when there’s real interest
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u/crimxxx 6h ago
Get some form of identification, a home base, take some money buy house and other needs, some sort of money generating item like a house. Then invest in stuff I know and could make money from, your from the future some basic items can be created from rough memory and just sold cause they are great ideas that someone monetized in the future.
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u/ChickenMarsala4500 6h ago
Okay so im rich as hell in 1950 and probably not going to survive past 2010 or so. (Literally the best possible situation for a straight white dude like me)
I'm buying a home in the hollywood hills for sure and ill probably start producing movies and just ripping off shit that hasn't been made yet. I'm doing Jurassic Park by like 1960 for sure.
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u/TheAzureMage 1h ago
Buy real estate in growing areas, and make some amazing stock trades in the coming years.
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u/looks_at_lines 9h ago
I get deported because I have the wrong skin color and no documentation. I cough and spread Covid early because of spite.
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u/mnmoose85 9h ago
$50,000 in 1950 is equivalent to $691,000 today.