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What not to do when you win the lottery

Arcade22 said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-euromillions-officials-for-ruining-her-life/

Who would've thought that amassing frivolous luxuries doesn't lead to contentment?
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People who win the lottery are usually the type of people who play the lottery. The type of people who play the lottery very often have limited financial acumen. It seems to me that there are alot rags to riches to bankruptcy stories among lottery winners.

Despite the downside risk, I wouldn't totally hate having twenty million dollars dropped into my lap.
 
The jackpot in the next Powerball drawing (a U.S. long-odds progressive lottery) is estimated about U.S.$350 million.

The actual take-home value after opting for the lump sum (which every winner seems to do, so there might be a good reason for it) and paying the taxes on that, is closer to $100 million. Still, it seems it would require a whole different scale of frivolous spending to fritter that much away. I'm sure it could be done, though.
 
I'll happily take this horrible, horrible, life-ruining burden off her shoulders.

I am that much of a noble knight.
 
3point14 said:
When I was younger I was broke. I'm still broke, just less so.

When friends implored me to come out and I advised them I couldn't afford it, they'd hear something different to what I said and exhort me to attend the event because it was only £x and we'd have a good time.

When I said I couldn't afford it, I meant I simply did not have the money. What they heard was that I'd rather not spend the money. What was amazing was that this was sometimes difficult for them to comprehend.
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I have the concept boiled down to, "I can pay for it but I can't afford it." If I buy, for instance, concert tickets today (much less drinks at the event) I won't have the money in a week to pay this month's credit card bill.

It's amazing to me how many people (my sister-in-law leaps to mind) can't wrap their brains around that concept. God help my brother if he ever won a major sum of money; she'd blubber and simper and bawl until he spent every last red cent on her.
 
xjx388 said:
$10,000,000+ and I retire right then and there, paying off everything and investing the rest. I might work/volunteer sparingly just to keep busy but live a comfortable life off of the interest generated.
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Would $10 million actually generate enough interest to live off of without having to touch the capital?
 
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Checkmite said:
Would $10 million actually generate enough interest to live off of without having to touch the capital?
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Very much so, as long as you don't seek to emulate Kim and Kanye.

At the current exchange rates $10 million is £8 Sterling. Without really trying hard and using my current building society, I could get between 1 and 1.5% on a mixture of saving accounts and bonds on separate chunks of £1 million. So if I invested £6 million that way, it would be generating around £75k per annum, which is just a little bit more than my wife and I earn combined at the moment.

Of the remaining £2 million, around £600-700k would immediately buy either the house we're renting now, or a somewhat larger one on the same road. This would currently be a better investment than putting the same amount of money into a bank, and would save use a large chuink of a salaries that's currentl;y going on rent. We would effectively be living a somewhat better lifestyle than we are now, not least because I wouldn't be paying £2k travelling costs to work.

The problem for a lot of people who win large sums of money is that once they give up work, they don't know what to do with themselves, and often try to fill that void with stuff that depletes the winnings fairly rapidly. Personally I would just filll my time writing the books I want to write more than I can at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that Analyst Jnr. is due in about four weeks time....
 
applecorped said:
I'd buy a Million lottery tickets
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You laugh, but that happens on a smaller scale. The second job I ever had was at a combination convenience store/ice cream parlor chain in Eastern NY. We had a lot of customers who were addicted, especially to scratch-off tickets. They would buy $20 worth, use everything they won to buy more, plus another $20, repeat multiple times.
We had one customer who was a middle age woman who worked at the local McDonalds. Her car had squealing belts that you could hear a block away, and she had to get in and out through the passenger door because the driver door wouldn't open. She came in to use the store pay phone because her own phone had been shut off. But she played the lottery every day. The saddest thing I ever heard her say was "When I win the Lottery, the first thing I'm going to do is hire a lawyer and get custody of my son back."
 
Checkmite said:
Would $10 million actually generate enough interest to live off of without having to touch the capital?
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I'm too lazy to check, but I bet the average dividend yield of the 30 stocks in the DJIA is at least 2%. If the history is any indication, dividend payments generally keep up with or exceed inflation. So - yeah, an inflation-adjusted $200,000 per year, minus taxes, would be more than enough for my wife and me to live comfortably.
 
It all depends on why you buy the ticket. If you buy the ticket in order to win the lottery, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. If you buy the ticket so you can spend the next few days fantasizing about what you will do after you win the lottery, then it can be a surprisingly affordable form of entertainment.

You can look at fancy homes on the internet, check out fancy cars and restaurants, and daydream and imagine with something “real” in your pocket. Of course, like Schrodinger’s cat, you eventually have to check to see if it a winning ticket (and it won’t be). But hey, they are cheap enough, and most people spend more on coffee each week.
 
Do they remind these people that you don't actually have to spend it?
 
Myriad said:
The actual take-home value after opting for the lump sum (which every winner seems to do, so there might be a good reason for it)
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Actually what most winners do is usually because:

CaptainHowdy said:
The type of people who play the lottery very often have limited financial acumen.
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and they don't go to a personal finance manager for advise. There are some good reasons but it's rare when the take is a big PowerBall payout. Usually the winner doesn't appreciate how much total winnings they are passing up by taking the smaller lump sum.
 
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