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Give it to my parents.
I probably wouldn't give them a lump sum but rather give them a trust with dividends to live off and tell them to go wild. Not trying to be shellfish, but my parents are not particularly tied in the finance world, so investing is not really in their wheel house/I am also not sure they would know how to spend that kind of money.
Sounds pretty shellfish to me.
This is actually a really good point, just because we understand DCF modeling, doesn't mean everyone is a budgeting genius. Many families in the US aren't always successful in sticking to a budget. The idea of giving them a supplementary annuity funded through lottery winnings is interesting, but the best thing would be to sit down with them and have the hard talk, especially since everyone has their own views.
Buy my entire saved for later in my amazon cart.
Let the forum know if you win. So we can YOLO Amazon calls.
I would never want to win the lotto. It's a public announcement so if you were to win, be ready for all of your friends, enemies, exes, and grade school T Ball teammates to come out of the woodwork and 'reach out' to see what's new. You'll be peppered with investment 'opportunities' from hucksters all over the world. Sugar babies will swoon you swearing they love your for your personality and not your nest egg. Your 'friends' and family will hit you up giving you a sob story and explain they were there for you that one time when...
I saw a program awhile back that many lotto winners were less happy after coming into instant wealth. Many find a way to go broke. It's just not something most people are equipped to handle.
What I would do (srs)?
Get a new cell number instantly.
Close all social media.
Call my attorney, CPA, and hire a top shelf advisor I know.
See if my attorney has a way to make my details private such as address, email address, etc and hire a company to scrub my stuff out of the google index.
Skip town for a good 3-6 months and let the hysteria die down. Try to live a normal life after that with less stress and more money.
I remember reading a popular reddit post one time from a lawyer advising on what to do if you won the lottery, he went back to a bunch of historical cases and some crazy percentage of lottery winners end up dying early, either addiction, suicide, murdered etc.
Read somewhere that you can sign your lottery ticket as a shell corp if you don't personally sign it prior. Lottery commission is then only required to disclose the company rather than the individual, obviously easy enough to find out managing members of an LLC but might add some layer of privacy.
Funny story, a kid and his mom in my neighborhood won a few thousand in the lotto. They got in an argument over who should get the money and eventually the cops had to be called to settle it. Turns out the kid had a warrant out on him for drug dealing and the mom got a heart attack and died young a few months after.
But I really doubt this kind of drama would happen to anyone on WSO, except for the lower class kids from bad backgrounds who really work their ass off, I mean if you work in a bank or went to an ivy league you probably have some really rich people in your circle. I mean lottery is basically a tax on those without math or finance knowledge (actually, some math major figured out how to repeatedly win a lottery with a really low payout once) so it's not like the most educated folks are winning them in the first place
Buy as many GME shares as possible.
haha nice
Lottery may be a tax for people who are bad at math but I think that's more applicable to scratch offs and the daily $5k drawings they used to run before Jeopardy on the local station when I was a kid, for something like Powerball even though you're obviously not going to win the upside is such that throwing $20 or $50 on it isn't necessarily a bad play assuming a) you aren't living paycheck to paycheck and can spare the cash and b) you have a plan for the money should you somehow win.
If I won, say $100mm lump sum post tax I think I can honestly say I'd give at least half to charity. The remaining $50mm, I'd blow say a million or so up front on cars, a boat, etc--why not--then get a good financial advisor and invest the rest. Probably put a good chunk of that into condos in various cities and beach/ski resorts around the world in order to have a place to take my family and stay when visiting those places and put on AirBNB the rest of the time, a significant chunk into crypto and the rest into traditional rental properties as well as a risk weighted stock/equities portfolio with enough liquidity and downside protection to move some of those funds into any private investment opportunities that may come along.
I'd probably plan to keep working at least for a few years but wouldn't worry about saving any more than maxing out my 401k contribution.
I have had the pleasure of knowing a few lottery winners already.
Usually what ends up happening is:
Winning - thrill/bragging - moves out of poor neighborhoods - fighting for money happens - people come out of the woods ‘asking’ for $ - more infighting happens - the person blows all the cash - moves back into poor neighborhood again after family falls apart.
Rinse, recycle. These people somehow blew all their winnings within a few years.
If I were to win, I would get the necessary people involved (CPA/JD/Advisor) and figure ways to preserve the winnings best I can. I would also scrub whatever information I can about me off the Internet and from the public eye, and return to finish an education program to do some interesting things.
All I can say is that more bad has come out from lotto winnings, then say good.
What are the odds of someone knowing > 2 (I'm assuming this is what you mean by a few) lottery winners? The fuck?
So, mostly low-income people typically gamble/play the lotto waiting for the big payout to happen. I am well known in my community where I grew up, and it's not unheard of to hear about the lotto winners (small and big), word spreads fast.
I have actually known 3 in total for lotto winners. The 3rd family - same result. Parents divorced and kids all split apart. Their lives aren't too well either, probably far worse then before they won the lotto.
I would meet with an accountant and lawyer immediately.
First thing is first...I would buy all the escorts in NYC for the weekend, rent the Penthouse Suite at the Mandarin Oriental, buy 50 year old scotch and do enough coke and viagra to kill an elephant. If I survive the weekend, then invest it.
This is the way
Donate some of it
Give some of it to my family
Buy some exotic and classic cars
And visit every country known to man
The immediate things would be giving some money to my parents, upgrading my car and my house.
Then, I would take time off to visit all of the states in US, especially the ones I have never visited, which are many. If for nothing else, I would like to to see and learn about the customs in other states. While I am touring around, I would take in a baseball game in each of the states that has a MLB team.
ill invest it, sell all the stuff i own and just travel the world for a while. then after that maybe dedicate myself to some sort of art or music (and ofc some classic porsche(s))
Start my own PMC and "clean" the Western World
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