$858 Million Left in Cash for Clunkers Pot

If you remember the movie “Brewster’s Millions,” you might recall how hard it was for Richard Pryor to spend $30 million in 30 days with nothing to show for it in order to later win an inheritance of $300 million. The 1985 comedy showed how hard it was to spend money and get nothing in return, but now the U.S. government has put Brewster to shame. It’s spent $67.5 million in just one day, in the form of its CARS program, aka Cash for Clunkers.

And now you can watch the money disappear, too. The government has added a countdown of how much money is left in the program to its Cars.gov website. It’s 24 hours behind, but shows how much is left in the pot for all consumer vehicles — $858 million as of yesterday morning — and a separate kitty for Category 3 trucks — $74.5 million — those large commercial trucks most consumers won’t be trading in a beat-up minivan for. You can check out the countdown here.