that’s a big if.
In my case it’s the understanding that money spent on the lottery is [DEL]essentially[/DEL] thrown away. I’m just minimizing the amount I throw away. With the minimum I’ve set up the last time I played was about three years ago.
Some people see the lottery as a way of taxing dreams. Many players see it as worth $2 to dream that dream, knowing full well they’ll likely never win. But then, how will you know it’s your lucky day if you don’t play games of chance?
You don’t collect right away. You have a certain time frame to work with. Tell no one, but hire yourself some lawyers and money managers. Then collect as quietly as possible.
I would change my life radically, but as few people as possible would ever be told that I won. I’d tell more people I had AIDS than I’d tell I won the lotto. My immediate family could be sworn to secrecy, and my “cover story” would be that I work from home - which would be somewhat true.
If you told them all you had AIDS they’d definitely leave you alone 
I know money would change me. I would come up with a spectacular way of quitting my job, and living like a rapper for a year. I’d have my mom help with an investment planner and get most of the cash into investments so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend it. Once the money’s out in the wild making interest for me I’ll forget all about it once I get my liquor and hooker budget set up.
Cool thread idea, OP.
If I won, say, $20,000,000 tomorrow, my life would do a complete 180 and I would evaporate from the life of everyone who knows me right now. I would, for all intents and purposes, have died to everyone that I’ve ever met so far in my life, apart from family. There is nothing in my life meaningful enough to me right now that I wouldn’t abandon in it completely if I had the financial ability to. This is not apathetic at all, it’s simply that at 20 years old you (or at least I) have had little time and ability to accumulate things or build a life all that much. If I won the lottery I’d hit the road tomorrow, I’d be gone like smoke on the wind and I wouldn’t share a damn thing with anyone I know, because I don’t know anyone I’d want to share with, except possibly my family, and even then I doubt I’d come running into the room shouting I’d won the lottery. More likely, I’d just help them out here and there and become mysteriously deaf to questions about where I’d got the money, and perhaps only come clean if someone suspected I’d got it illegally.
I won’t bother posting up what I’d do with 20 mil because I don’t play the lottery at all and I don’t know if I ever will, and posts like that are really only interesting to the people writing them, but I can say with certainty that money would not change me - it is a lack of money that is changing me. Perspective and semantics, perhaps, but that is how I see it - I wouldn’t be living differently months from now if I won the lottery, I’m living differently now because I don’t have that money. I know myself well enough to know exactly what I’d do with an unexpected windfall, and I’m not going to paint myself in a better light than I know is true. It’s why I’ve always disliked those morals to the story, any story, where one character achieves riches or success and it’s supposed to be a sad, sorry state of affairs that he abandons his friends, the friends he made before he was so well off - who’s to say most people aren’t like that? Who’s to say most people aren’t rich snobs waiting to happen? I would never be a rich snob because I have no interest in impressing other people and I know money would not change that, but I personally wouldn’t be abandoning my friends because I have very few and they’re really just disguised acquaintances anyway, but that idea has always half-irritated me, talking like everyone becomes a complete dickhead when they get rich - maybe they’re dickheads already and all money did was allow them to express it.
I don’t play the lottery unless the pot is over $100 million – around $50 million after taxes.
I have a complicated plan which involves putting around 10 million in various trusts for family and closest friends, leaving the country for several years, and returning to settle in a different state than the one I won the lottery in.
I’m not the sort of person who needs a gold-plated BMW so I think I’d have no trouble living off the interest, with the occasional splurge.
I normally don’t put a price on friendship…and yet…here we are.
It is impossible to NOT be (or at least appear to be) a dickhead after coming into a huge windfall. For the simple reason that all those problems that your friends and family deal with every day - rent, work, bills, whatever - they all go away for you. No more “can’t afford christmas gifts for little Jimmy and Susi”. No more “Old Man Shitboss is busting my chops again”. No more worrying about car repairs or fixing the roof or any of the other crap that most people have to deal with. Eventually all those friends and family who still have to deal with that crap simply won’t be able to relate to you and you won’t be able to relate to them.
If I won I would want my name and photo on the front age of every newspaper in America, if not the world.
Then I could tell every single person who contacted me to fuck off.
I would buy out my immediate family’s mortgages and give my current house to my mother. It’d come to less than a million all told and would make their lives vastly simpler, even if they couldn’t go jetsetting like me. Though to be honest, both of my parents have pretty cushy jobs where they take vacation like every other month anyway. They might just be happy I’d actually have time to spend with them.
More info please! I don’t think I’m understanding. Why would you want your picture in every paper? And why couldn’t you just tell, everyone coming out of the woodwork, to Fuck Off anyway? How is it connected to your photo in the paper?
Eh. My friends were my friend long before I had those kinds of concerns. And I like to think that most of my friends are the sort who wouldn’t expect me to hand out large sums of cash just to make them happy.
The wife and I play on occasion, but not very often. I like to say that $5 every few months is like paying for the day dream, and how knows? Random chance is just that… random.
We have long said that upon confirming we are winners, we make 2 stops on our way to the lottery office… a lawyer, and a financial planner.
My biggest concern would be the wife and I disagreeing about our living arrangement… I want to move into a bigger house, with a yard. she wants to fix up our yardless crappy house.
Some friend would get surprises, some family would get some help, but most of the money would be invested and lived off of very comfortably.
Because people who are in the newspaper for winning lots of money get contacted by many people they do not even know. More people to tell “Fuck Off.”
Oh, now I get it. You want your photo in the paper to maximize the number of people you get to tell to fuck off. Interesting approach, and not one I’ve heard before!
My husband and I each have a sister and parents and we have two sets of friends that are family.
We would start off with a ‘what do we want’ calculation. Honestly, I don’t want to be rich. I would like to not have to clip coupons and to have a maid and to be able to have one of us not have to work. But I love my job so would probably stay on.
Once we had done the calcluation on that (to include our new bigger house, college and our retirement), we would divide what is left between the people above (pretty much equally). Hopefully, it would be enoug that they would then be in a similar position to us (more freedom but not rich).
Anyone who isn’t in the above list, I am not too worried about their reaction nor do I care. I know of a few extended family members who will pop out of the woodwork and I would tell them too bad, so sad.
You’re missing the impact of ‘six degrees of separation’. Even if you didn’t notice your neighbor won the lottery, somebody would. Then it’s, “Hey, I think my old buddy Joe grew up in Lottoville–I wonder if he knows that guy?” “Never heard of him, but I’m still in contact with these other folks who still live there, maybe one of them …” Eventually an e-mail, tweet, or Facebook status update will turn up in your information flow–“Hey, I heard ol’ John Smith hit the jackpot! Has he bought a solid-gold Cadillac yet?”
Yep. I probably buy three or four lottery tickets a year–if I’m only going to buy a few, might as well buy them when the expected value of a $1 ticket is $0.85 instead of $0.15. Set a high jackpot criteria for buying tickets, and you kill two birds with one stone.
I have always thought that if I ever won the lottery, I would buy my dream house (it would be around 500K. Nothing in the millions) and buy a reliable car. The rest of it would be put in a trust where I would be alloted the interest that was made on the money. Though if it was a crazy amount (more then, say, 10K) I would lower it.
I’m not a materialist person and I don’t want to become one.
One thing I would do is pick 5 people that have been the most influential in my life and make an anonymous gift to them.
I had a lunchroom conversation with a financial planner I used to work with. He specializes in high-worth clients (aka rich people), so he’s used to dealing with this kind of money. It started out as idle conversation between a smallish group, but he had some good points.
He strongly advised that the lucky winner hire a) a publicist to work out a viable plan to get you to a level of privacy you can live with, and to tell people to fuck off on your behalf; b) a financial planner so you don’t spend yourself broke; and c) a lawyer or firm with a lot of experience in tax law, trusts and estate planning so your money winds up wherever you want it to wind up. Ideally, they should work together so you can meet your goals.
This is, of course, idle musing since I don’t play the lottery.
I sometimes talk to my students about lotteries, when we are working on things like statistics, probability, or compound interest. My first advice to them is “don’t play the lottery.” My second is, just like MsRobyn said, if you win a substantial amount, hire a lawyer. A good one, an expensive one.
Well, to start I know who my friends are. Some already make substantially less money than I do, and it’s not an issue between us. They know that I love having them along for things they can’t afford, and they have the grace necessary to ignore the price tag and just be a good friend. I don’t think anything would change with them.
I also have some friends who have substantially more than I do. Those are the ones who might be problematic, as they don’t have that sort of humilitiy, and I think secretly enjoy being the income leaders of their pack. (I notice they don’t have any friends higher than themselves on the income scale.) I’m not sure whether I’d be able to keep them, as the differences in our priorities would be thrown into the spotlight.
I have one friend who is a little bit sick when it comes to money. I think a win on my part could actually throw her into a psychological tailspin. I’m fairly certain that she couldn’t survive as my friend in those circumstances.
My biggest concern would be my ex and his family, who are completely insane about money. He would stop at nothing to get a piece of it, and no piece would ever be big enough to stop him desperately scrabbling for more. His parents are the same way - utterly nauseatingly obsessed with money. These are people who have known what it is to go through a NJ winter without heat in the house. CRAZY about money.
So given the need to hide from the latter, I’d probably change Countries. And really, this is the thing I go around and around about. Where would I want my home base to be?
I would give a large one-time gift to each of my immediate family members, to take care of any looming debt. (approx. $100,000) I would encourage them to use it to buy/payoff a home and if any is left to buy reliable transporation. After that I would set up a trust to provide them with about $2,000 per month each. I would not be able to enjoy my money if I didn’t know they had some level of financial security. What they do with all that is up to them though, and no more is coming. They can set themselves up to be secure or they can use it to increase their problems. My Mother would almost certainly get herself into trouble immediately. Tough noogies. You’ll have $2,000 per month which I know can buy you rent and food and necessities if you use it right. Especially if you’d gotten the $85,000 house in your home town with the first gift.
The main thing I’d want to buy is time. I woudl definitely not go back to work. I would hire someone to keep house, and soemone who could be there for Celtling so that I could go out in the evenings while she’s asleep. I wouldn’t want to miss a minute with her, but it would be nice to go out to a lecture or go dancing now an then without worrying. Iwouldn’t hange her school right away, until Ifound the perfect place for us and waas ready to move us into a new home.
I’d probably build a house in whatever city I chose, as the standard lay-out just makes no sense for me. Plus I’d like to have small apartments for the housekeeper and live-in babysitter so they’d have some space to call their own. I’d buy a very large lot, and put my house smack in the middle of it. I’d have a geenhouse and a swimming pool, and alternative energy sources. (Solar, wind, etc.)
But for the first few months I would probably just book us on a long cruise. I just need some major time away from the stress - the past two years have been excruciating.