If you filled a 12 inch tall King (76x80 inches) entirely with $100 bills, you could fit ~$105,892,500
(72x84 inches) ~$102,827,200
more if you stuff the box spring, too.
I agree with others that is about the worst possible strategy short of sticking the money in a mattress.
The interest rates are the lowest you can find and CDs have restrictions on when you can use the money. And why in the world would you forward your dividends to a money market account at low interest rates when you could reinvest the money in your portfolio for a high interest rate? Don’t you know that today you can treat portfolios exactly like a checking account and draw money on them to suit you needs? You sound like someone who doesn’t currently do large-scale investments and has no idea about what is available in the real world.
Financial advisors can be crooks, true. But if you go to one of the big-name investment houses you can be sure that your money will be safe and that you’d be dealing with people who routinely handle far more money than a mere lottery winner ever can dream of. And your returns will be far greater and even safer than the silly scheme that you thought up.
Take 10 Million (or about 1/4 or so of your winnings) down to a good Non-profit org, such as Consumer Reports. Buy an Annuity. That’s a nice tax deduction and aound $50K/month income for the rest of your life. And when you do nigh inevitable and piss away the rest of the $40M, you’ll still have that $50K/mo.
You can get better % from a Life Insurance company for annuities, but from a Non-profit you get atax deduction, too, which you will need badly.
I’ve little concern my ultra-huge megabank’s going out of business. My first act would be to go straight to the bank, speak to a manager to ensure nothing went awry, and then deposit the entire emount in my account.
(Canadian lotteries pay the entire jackpot up front, and there’s no tax payable.)
After that, I’d go to my investments man and our accountant, who’ve been working for our family for 25+ years, and sort out how to live in style while investing most of the dough.
Any REALLY big jackpot, half goes to family, but that happens up front and is permanent; a quarter to my side, a quarter to my wife’s, only given to a few select people and that is the last nickel anyone else gets. Then we plan out exactly what we want to buy, figuring the carrying costs and go from there; the job, really, would be to work with our investments man to determine how much we needed to put awayto have a low risk but conseiderable income, and therefore how much we could spend right away.
I think you seriously misunderstood me… I didn’t intend to convey that I would spread all of the money in CD’s, I’m not that foolish!
What I meant was something along the lines of the following with a net cash value of 50 million after taxes:
2 million spread between 20 different banks at 100k each for a safety net. Sure, Citi isn’t going anywhere now, but neither is a pre-Enron type company either ;), but it’s about diversification of banks to guarantee these CD’s up to FDIC limits. It’s also a backup to investing in a volatile stock market. It’s just one big safety net to insure that I won’t have to work for the man anymore, that’s all. 20 banks might seem extreme, but so what, I have 50 million!
The rest, likely a conservative 60/40 stock & bond ratio and an international holding of 40% of my stock holdings with a company like Vanguard or Fidelity. And forwarding dividends to a money market account to live off of. The capital gains will be a bitch come tax time to sell shares every time I want cash. Also a good reason to forward dividends and capital gains to a money market account is that it allows me to rebalance every year for my target allocation so reinvesting them doesn’t screw that up, nor does it mess with the cost basis come tax time. I would treat my money market account like a checking account, and no other stock or bond funds - that wouldn’t be wise. What are you doing in your real world Mr large-scale investor? 
If it’s investing in real estate and Casino’s, well why the hell would I bother? I have 50 million! Something like that just brings in extra risk that isn’t need and would be better off in like 4 funds total for a lazy investor stock/bond portfolio.
For anyone likely to spend his way to poverty, I doubt an annuity will do much good. After all, there are plenty of institutions willing to extend you credit based on your ability to pay for it with the income from the annuity, and if you can’t manage to hold onto the millions you have, why would you worry about spending the millions you don’t have?
Michael Jackson owned the publishing rights to a bunch of Beatles songs, a sizeable annuity in effect, as we’re not likely to stop buying copies of the Fab Four’s vocal stylings anytime soon. But he’s got more debt than they’re worth, do to a combination of lavish spending and legal fees, and was forced to sell off part or all of them not long ago.
When my brother won the first division prize in Lotto he certainly banked the cheque straight away before he and his fiancée decided what they should do with the money.
If true then that’s a shame. I’d happily miss out on a few days’ interest to dump the cheque in my current account, for the pleasure of seeing 8 figures on the “current balance” at the ATM 
You know, I am sixty year old man. If I win the lottery tomorrow, it will be 21,300,000 in after tax cash. The tax withheld is far more than the amount I will eventually actually have to pay, since I certainly intend to give at least %10 per cent to charities. That leaves me with 19,130,000, and no obligations at all, with a pretty much guaranteed tax refund next year of well over half a million.
I really don’t see the need for a particularly sophisticated “investment portfolio” to assure me of having enough money for my old age! This is my old age, and in this case, I am one seriously rich old fart. My heirs will get a bit up front, and can sit and gnash their teeth as I spend it on showgirls and fast cars.
I can blow a hundred thousand a year on crap, and as long as I don’t live more than thirty years, I am still going to be rich, even with my money in CD’s. Hell, I could just take the annual payout, and get a megabuck and a half after taxes for 26 years, and at the age of 86, my twenty year old new trophy wife can divorce me! (Assuming I have managed to spend it all every year until then.)
Why would I need to be a prudent investor?
Tris
The people who have stuck by me for a long time would get prezzies. I would talk to my financial guys and between us we’d figure out enough dough to keep me flush till the end of my days without ever working for pay again.
The rest would go into a fund. I might take whatever it takes to endow a chair at my alma mater. Otherwise, either I’d hire my financial guys to help run a foundation or else I’d hand most of it over to a foundation whose goals are the same as mine.
The one extravagance? I’ve always loved Bob Mackie’s clothes and I’d see if he’d do a dress for me. And then I guess I’d have to spring for a suitable event to wear it to.
Then it would be back to my life as a regular schlub. I’d travel and do volunteer work and study to occupy myself thence onward.
Forgot to add: YMMV. And that there is a book out someplace that tells the sad tales of what happened to several lottery winners. It’s mostly a cautionary tale, I gather.
Cable TV has had 2 separate shows about lotto winners. If the winner was a reasonable person and did not change his life too much he did fine. If they got a huge house and a fleet of cars they were doomed. The poorer a person managed money when they didn’t have it ,the worst they did when they got it. Trying to buy happiness through conspicuous consumption.
Of course, those people would probably have ended up broke anyway. If you can’t manage your money, you can’t manage your money.
We keep enough in our checking account to pay bills. Everything else goes into a 401-K or an IRA or a portfolio at a Big Name firm. That latter includes mutual funds, stocks, bonds, cash, and every other possible variant on a balanced diversified portfolio. If we wanted we could use it directly as our checking account, writing checks against it just like we could at any bank or credit union.
Pulling out money to go into a money market account is foolish. We could incorporate that into the portfolio if we chose. You can do anything inside a portfolio if you choose. And their computers automatically spit out cost basis at the end of the year so we have no work to do. The firm either balances or moves money for us or we can direct that money goes to certain items.
There’s simply no need today to do any of the complicated maneuvers you talk about. Financial firms are far more sophisticated than anything you can do.
And before anyone asks: no, we’re not rich. Not even close. The Wall Street Journal just had a chart that said it took $6 million to get into the top 1% in this country. We don’t have even that first million.
But we don’t have to. You can get all the advantages even if you have much less money if you know what you’re doing.
It is not the only way to go. However, unless you want to spend large amounts of time devoted to manging your money letting professionals use their sophistication is cost effective and time effective.
And if you’re a lottery winner it saves you the ten years you’d need to spend to get yourself up to speed on these issues for multi-millionaires.
Thanks for the replies. If I win, I won’t forget about you all. 
If you guys ever want to see one of these windfall disasters happen on a small scale, watch a Showtime documentary titled “Reversal of Fortune” where a homeless man is given $100,000 to do whatever he wanted with.
They chose someone who was surprisingly articulate, no obvious drug habits, seemingly healthy, or at least as healthy as you can be while living under a bridge and collecting cans for beer, cigarettes, and food.
There’s probably room for debate about whether it was irresponsible or not, they did set him up with a counselor and a financial advisor, but he refused their advice and his life ended up the same, or maybe a little worse than before the documentary began.
The Wiki article on it is as accurate as I can remember. It was really sad, like a slow motion train wreck.
here’s $250 million: i-am-bored.com
;)First, get advise from your lawyer and accountant. :)Second, go to your bank and have them set up a special account for millionaires. The money can then be wired into that account. You can’t put the money directly into your normal personal checking account. After the wire transfer is complete you can transfer some or the money into your checking account if that is what you want to do.
Foolish. You’d really need to retain a capital management firm of some kind; the idea isn’t to “beat the system”, but rather to diversify and wisely invest so that you make money, and in the case of economic downturns, lose as little as possible.
Not having that sort of advice would mean that you’d probably both make a lot less than otherwise, but also potentially lose more when/if things go south as well.
Wow, a zombie from 2007.
Annuities, charitable annuities . Your college or any major nonprofit will happily take your money, give you a tax deduction, and lifetime income.
I’d build myself a compound and invest in anti-zombie weaponry. They’re cropping up everywhere these days…