The MegaMillions jackpot (shared by several of the US states) is now up to $220,000,000 when taken as a 26-year annuity, or about $125,000,000 as a lump-sum. But that’s only the example that made me ask this question. There are many other gigantic lotteries all over the world, with all sorts of payouts and all sorts of financial situations.
Here’s my question: It is not unusual for co-workers to pool their money together to buy a bunch of tickets, and then to share the winnings. It is also not unusual for people who win a gigantic amount of money to quit their job. Has it ever happened that the coworkers won so much money, that so many of them quit their job at the same time, that the place they worked for went out of business?
I’m not talking about a mom-and-pop grocery or other tiny business. I mean like a company which suddenly found itself with all ten people in the Accounts Receivable department gone, or all ten factory workers gone. Such a thing would be pretty devastating to the rest of the company, and I’m wondering if it happens and how they cope.
I’ve never heard of this happening. I imagine they’d have some success requesting that a few of the former employees stick around for a couple of weeks to train replacements.
This does bring to mind a story from something like 25 years ago. Some state lottery (Pennsylvania?) had rolled over a couple of times (no winners) and the jackpot was a new record ($96 million, IIRC). Ticket buying was frenzied, and all sorts of TV stations covered the drawing and its aftermath. A popular number combination won - indeed, something like 66 winning tickets had been sold. In a short while a man appeared with one of them to claim a share of the prize.
He explained that he was the representative of a pool of office employees that had bought a mess of tickets, including one winner. The pool had 112 members. One TV reporter breathlessly asked “How does it feel to have won the biggest prize in US lottery history?” Of course, what he’d actually won was around $12,900 (annuity value, so figure $8000 cash) - better than a shove in the eye with a stick, but a tad short of $96M.
When the California lottery topped $50-million all us guys in the back at a small company I worked for would pool with a buy in of $10. Nobody wanted to do just quick-picks though, they wanted some input. So I wrote a quick BASIC program, everyone would give me their three favorite numbers, and the program would crank out combinations from that pool.
We would have to fill out the slips though, and one lunch period when we were busy doing so the boss walked in, looked at us all industriously filling in spots, and asked what we were doing. We told him then said, “You realize, of course if this hits, your workforce is gone!”
Without a word he pulled out his wallet, tossed a ten-spot on the table and left. We included him in the pool. Didn’t come in, though.
I seem to remember reading about a small-town police department where most of the force (about ten or twelve officers, IIRC) won a lottery. Several of them who were near retirement age quit, and there was some concern about the police force being short-handed. I tried to do a search, but I keep getting links to police warnings about lottery scams.
It didn’t close down the business - the Halifax is a multi-billion pound bank! - but there was a case in England when most of the staff of one branch walked out after a GBP 7.5M win. A bit premature if you ask me - split 12 ways that doesn’t sound like retiring money to me :dubious:
I can’t find a cite but I seem to remember reading that some businesses had banned office syndicates in the contract of employment just to prevent this sort of problem.
I worked at a place the would forbid the employees from playing an office pool for the reason stated: If we all won and quit it would kill the company.
I tended to start a pool simply because it was forbidden.
No, but standard advice is to withdraw no more than 4% of your nest-egg at first so the remainder can grow enough to counter inflation. 4% of the £625k they would get is £25k per year. Taxable. While you may be able to retire and live off that, I wouldn’t like the lifestyle myself.
When 8 co-worker meat packers won $365million a few of them continued to work and implied that they did so because the business “would be in a bind” had they not done so. I do not think that means necessarily would go out of business probably not. link
I remember this because MSNBC (I think) made this angle the lead on the broadcast of the story. It seems buried in the archives of the event on-line and was an angle that was really hard to find.
David Gehle, 53 — He’s a third-shift supervisor who has worked at Cook’s for 20 years. He’s been in the pool four or five years. He’s a native of Lincoln and is unmarried.
And the millionaire has kept on working, finishing his latest shift early Wednesday morning.
He and a couple of other winners have been around the plant to help, he said.
Why? asked the reporters from California to New York.
“They would have been short of help,” he said. “The managers, we think a lot of them. … We couldn’t just leave them.”
It’s hard to believe what’s happened, he said.
“You never dream of something like this happening,” he said. “It’s amazing. I never thought we could win a Powerball.”
There are good people who work at Cook’s, he told the crowd at the Cornhusker.
“These people here are a good sample of it.”
What next? Well, at 10 p.m., he’s got to be at work.
“So I need to get some sleep.”
There was a company in town called Star Telecom where that happened. They won a huge lottery. It was before they had the lump sum option so they took the money over 26 years. It seemed like so much money but once they divided it up and taxes were taken out, they only got like $25k per year each. A friend of a friend was one of the winners. Apparently they have a blow out party every year when the checks come.
