What if your immortality was discovered after you won?
One possibility is that the lottery will just tell you to take a lump sum and be happy with it or they will declare bankruptcy.
Over time, a million dollars will be worth less and less, until it’s virtually worthless.
Yes. If you had won the million dollars in Zimbabwe in 1980, it would have been worth $1.47 million American. In April 2009, when the Zimbabwean dollar had been revalued three times, the orignal million original Zimbabwean dollars would have been worth 1.47 x 10[sup]-19[/sup] US dollars, or $0.000 000 000 000 000 000 147 (I think).
I strongly suspect that the small print doesn’t actually say until you die. As an example, when they give you a year’s supply of some product, which implies as much as you may want to use in a year, it will usually boil down to some average amount.
As such, I suspect such an offer probably has some sort of upper limit. Hell, even if you’re not immortal, I doubt any company would want to have someone win at a young age, say 22, and live to 102 and owe them 80 million. So, I’d expect something like you get it until you die or they’ve paid you some amount of money.
If they didn’t actually have such a clause, then I imagine they’d eventually find a way to wiggle out of it when they found out. Like transferring assets and declaring bankruptcy or possibly trying to find some legal way to force you out of it.
Old joke. A person falls into a deep sleep, and sleeps for 200 years. When he awakens, he finds to his amazement that his bank is still in business. He goes in and they still have his account, and he finds his $200 investment is now worth $10 million.
He takes it out, and thrilled finds a phone booth (this is a very old joke) to call about buying a car. He lifts up the receiver and hears:
“Please deposit two million dollars for the first three minutes.”
The Canadian “Win $1000/wk for life” scratch lottery cards have small print that reads
Payout limited to 20 years
I suspect most are the same. Every “lifetime” limitation I’ve seen has either been 20 or 25 years.
But the lottery commission won’t need all that much more money to support an infinite series of annual payments than it would for a fixed, long term series of payments, because the present value of all of those endless future payments is negligible.
Say a 20 year old wins. And let’s assume that the 20 year old will live to age 80 i.e. the lottery commission is facing annual payments for the next 60 years. If we assume an interest rate of 5%, and payments made annually in advance, without any indexation, then a lump sum of $19,875,754 is needed right now to fund the future payments for the next 60 years.
If the 20 year old is immortal, then the lump sum needed to fund an infinite series of payments is only $21,000,000. This is because all of those endless future payments to the immortal winner have a tiny present value:
- in 200 years’ time, the annual payment of $1 million is worth only $57.83 now;
- in 300 years’ time, the annual payment of $1 million is worth only $00.44 now;
- in 400 years’ time, the annual payment of $1 million is worth only $00.003 now etc.
Here is a blog post exploring the issue of immortals and compound interest.
Eventually the sun will expand and destroy the earth. So no, not forever.
Even the Ontario one? I buy the Cash for Life tickets for my ~annual lottery ticket fix and I’ve never noticed a maximum number of years on the payout.
And OLG doesn’t mention it on the fact sheet http://www.olg.ca/assets/documents/game_fact_sheets/cfl_1149.pdf
The secret conspiracy behind this is that by claiming the ticket, you are signing a contract guaranteeing that you will be killed at the end of a set period of time. Hence “for life”.
Relevant part ofPublisher’s Clearinghouse $5,000 a year for life:
(Bolding mine.)
Using their numbers, the pay minimum is 38.461538461538461538461538461538 years equivalent. BTW, the odds in wiining are 1 in 1,750,000,000.