The gold timer starts the second the mission starts, NOT the in game timer. I have a chart that shows the breakdown of how much gold is paid for bounty and free roam missions and their respective timer brackets up to 30 minutes (the cap). Guides that say “wait” are just fucking dumb. One day I was really bored, driving on to Valentine with her for 'maximum' pay out (just for the heck of it.) I don't like to be 'passive' on missions, just standing around, so I found that for Etta Doyle if I toss her in the Bounty Wagon and then casually go North along the Railroad tracks for an Annesburg turn in that it is about right. I don't find it worth it to wait until the 'last 30 seconds', like they might say, unless the Bounty only has 2 minutes left and is a short one. So if you are impatient, with 11 minutes left, you might want to wait until 9:59 minutes left to turn in.

Some bounties are not even that long, though (so like other person said, mainly long ones like Legendaries (or perhaps some Infamous ones.) )īut people have said that the increments for best payout are in 3's, like WITHIN 15/12/9/6/3 minutes left. time spent, before diminishing returns, wait to turn in at 12 minutes AFTER you first start the bounty.