I’d just buy a decent sized house, hire a maid service and a lawn service, buy a new car every couple of years, and keep myself well-supplied with toys and movies until I die. The remainder of that giant pile of money would get a sign hung on it labeled “financial security/a single hospital visit”, and would sit there indefinitely/until I fell down a staircase in America.
Look at mister hoighty toighty living in Carmel while the rest of us live in the ghetto.
Yes, I have dreams of having dioramas commissioned of scenes from all my favourite movies. I have already figured out about thirty of the ones I’d like.
Opening a charter school in Orange, NJ.
My stupid local station… the numbers they are showing aren’t correct. I’ll call them to get it corrected first thing in the morning.
And after they ran my story in the paper even… Lottery Ticket Holder Has Already Spent $900 Million In Anticipation Of Winning Big Prize
Sure, but tack on my Social Security payout and I’d be comfortable.
I’ve asked myself if I would even want to win that insane amount of money. We’re talking about the transition from being an average Joe to having Warren Buffet or Saudi Prince wealth overnight, with a simple purchase of a ticket.
It’s a life-altering event, and there’s a ton of anecdotal evidence that suggests the ‘winner’ may end up having their lives ruined. I’m sure there are many happy endings as well, but it just seems that it would be hard to trust anyone after winning such a prize.
If i were to buy a ticket, I would already have a plan for handling taxes, choosing accountants, financial managers, etc. One would have to approach handling their winnings like running a multi-million dollar business venture. You’d need business lawyers, a CFO, and they’d have to be credible. Not your family CPA
Nope. I’d just make a damn good attempt at spending a large chunk of the win in the years I have left. Hell, I’m not even 100% certain what a TLA like CFO even means, and I have no interest in learning.
I think I’d build a massive aquaponic farm & desalination plant in Puerto Rico. But instead of tilapia I’d have sharks (with frikkin lasers attached to their frikkin heads) as the ammonia producer & general building security. Or maybe ill-tempered sea bass.
Never mind the desert, you’ll only get stupid people doing themselves in. Want to cause chaos for everyone? scatter your bills over Manhattan and other major cities. And don’t make them small bills, make them big enough ($50, $100) so people will be willing to do stupid stuff to chase them. C’mon, you can afford it! Publicize the time and location of your first million-dollar drop; attendance will be low, because most people will be like “yeah, whatever.” But when it actually happens as promised, people will know you’re serious. When you publicize the next one, the crowds will be massive. Pedestrian and vehicle traffic will be severely impeded even before the drop happens.
Now make the drop happen a few blocks away, but within sight of the waiting crowd, so they can see it and know where to go. Watch the deadly stampedes from your helicopter and laugh your ass off.
Alternative: make the drop too far away to see, but Tweet the new location right when it happens. Watch the stampedes for the trains and taxis as people rush to the new location.
^ When the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series in 1971, I was thirteen. My dad took me downtown to see the “celebration”. People in an office building were dropping huge amounts of confetti, with dollar bills dispersed in each drop. We managed to get out of the area of pandemonium without injury.
Somebody in South Carolina won the jackpot.
Darn it.
Oh, well, it was fun fantasizing.
Probably for the best. I daydream about winning (and yes, I buy tickets now and then), but sometimes I worry about winning and how it might fuck up my life. The stories of lottery winners whose lives became train wrecks are all over the place:
Here’s How Winning the Lottery Makes You Miserable
Dioramas? I’m going to reshoot all of my favorite movies, with much better production values, by all the best directors, and starring ME.
Wait, a billion dollars is only going to allow doing maybe one movie. Hm, better pick the right one…
Or live with the production values, and only reshoot the scenes involving your character. Then you could probably pay for three or four of them.
It’s just about careful management. My plan would be to set aside a minimum that would be rock solid safe even if everything else went wrong, something more than enough to comfortably live on, even if it meant downgrading from absurd luxury (though for me, just having a nice view from a balcony is a luxury). Beyond that, have some set aside for charitable things, and some set aside for ridiculous excess. All carefully looked after by trustworthy money managers.
It’s one thing to make sure your money is well-managed so it doesn’t run out. But there’s more.
Can you handle all the relatives who will be coming out of the woodwork looking for a piece of your wealth?
Can you put adequate security measures in place to assure that criminals don’t threaten your safety (less of a problem in states that allow you to anonymously claim your prize)? Can you live with the kinds of restrictions required by that security?
Can you live a fulfilling life now that you don’t have to work 9-5 to earn a living? If you retire from your job, your connections with your old coworkers will quickly fade. If you dramatically change your lifestyle such that you have less in common with them and your other friends, the connections will fade that much more quickly. Are you the kind of person who can find and nurture other social connections easily?
Suppose you have children, nieces and nephews who are just starting their professional careers. Do you give each of them a million after-tax dollars? What would a million dollars do to their lives? If they’re smart, they’ll invest it all and be able to retire very comfortably at 50. But maybe they’re not so smart. Will it cause them problems? You’re sitting on several hundred million dollars. How will they feel about you if you don’t give them anything?
TL,DR: a massive windfall inevitably changes your relationship with the rest of the universe. Are you the kind of person who can thrive with a new/different set of liberties and restrictions, or not?
I am more than willing to try.
I’d rather have the problems of having a lot of money than struggling with the problems of not having any money.
You know what they say: money buys a better quality of misery.