With your dollar and a dream, will you play "What if I won the lottery?"?
Asked by
jca (
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March 30th, 2012
When you buy a lottery ticket, with your dollar and a dream, what have you thought about what you would do in the very slim chance you won?
Let’s say you won 10 million. What would you do with it? How would you divide it?
Let’s say you won 100 million. What would you do with that? How would you divide that?
With the record Mega Millions jackpot, people I know that bought lottery tickets were speculating about what we would do if we won. Take care of family members, pay off loans, etc. are all things we fantasized about.
I realize that the chances of winning the lottery are very slim, and people have greater chances of getting hit by lightning. That’s why I don’t play too often. Still, when there’s a big jackpot I will buy an occasional ticket. All you need is a dollar and a dream!
You gotta be in it to win it!
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First thing I would do is have my phone disconnected.
What would I do with the money? You don’t want to know! : )
There’s some common sense issues to take care of right out of the blocks.
1—Do not tell anyone till you’ve completed the rest of the steps below.
2—Sign the back and print in your address. This way, if it becomes lost, nobody else can cash it n, and most likely they will return it to you.
4—Make a photocopy of the winning ticket and put the original in a safe deposit box.
5—Retain a competent attorney, a financial adviser and an accounting firm.
With the historic size of this jackpot, should you win this one, keep it quiet till you can build a strong security firewall around yourself.
I bought a lottery ticket and started mentally spending the jackpot on my bus ride home. The only things I could really think of were buying a sensible used car and taking introductory sommelier classes. $600 million is such a large number that I literally can’t fathom it. (“Literally” is one of the most misused words ever, but I actually mean that.) $3500 would let me reach my short-term goals.
Don’t use a bank close to where you live. People who work in banks talk. Go to a branch far away to deposit the money.
Don’t make any decisions straight away. Let it sit for a while until you get your head around how much money you now have. It will take some getting used to.
If I won, I would pay off my house. Buy other houses in places I love to visit. Use some money to support community projects and help young people in my area. Help my children out a bit, but not too much.
Definitely do as @ETpro said… keep the win to yourself. Don’t broadcast your good fortune. Don’t agree to be part of any promotional activities.
For most of us, money… large sums of money which we don’t have to earn, will only make our baser natures to come to the fore. Even those who “earn” large sums by being hugely popular often wind up wasting it all, or getting hooked on various vices. Unearned mega-millions fall into the laps of those with no idea of the traps and pitfalls of such power.
Pay off debt. Send all three of my kids to the colleges of their dreams. Buy a house somewhere else. After that, I have no idea.
Get cash and then change our names and move to a little island.
Give money to those we think deserve it and then loose everyone’s number.
Buy disposable prepaid phones. We can call out but no one can call in. Except for our kids. We will buy phones under another name. They don’t care so long as its always paid on time.
The rest is pretty simple. Go on a world trip, for a year or two, and build my a home on an island to go to between stops. And of course pay off all debts I have.
And hire servants and adopt a few kids after we get back from our world tour.
I’d convert 25% of it into one ounce gold bullion coins and then buy things that tend to retain value like property. This way when QE3, QE4, QE5 etc deflates the value of the US dollar way down to near nothing, I will have protected my wealth.
Ooh, I thought of a new one. Maid service every week! Ahhhh.
I have never played lotto.
@gondwanalon Wise to be concerned about quantitative easing. The dollar almost certainly has to be deeply devalued against the Yuan is the US is to avoid default. It’s in China’s best interest to allow that. The same Too-Big-to-Fail scenario that lead Bush then Obama to support bailouts of the biggest US banks applies to China looking at US debt. That has enormous implications on what is and isn’t a safe investment.
I’d become a Ghostbuster.
1. get a good tax lawyer
2. Collect my money
3. Retire
4. Move
@Pandora you could just buy a cabin on the World cruise ship. you would not need the island then.
I wouldn’t change my life all that much, I like and need structure, so I would continue to work. It would just be nice not to have to worry which will come first, death or money runs out, hehehe!
If I won 10 mil I would take lump sum, throw a mil to each person in my close family, and buy a house and try to live off the interest.
If I won 100 mil, I would take a lump sum, throw a few mil to close family and friends, and buy a house and live off the interest. I mgiht be a bit more footloose and fancy free with traveling and stuff if I had the 100 mil instead of the 10 mil.
I would freak out, then get down to business to protect the money so that I don’t end up in People magazine in a few years as the record lottery winner who’s now dirt-poor.
I’d pay off my student loans, invest a good percentage for my kids’ education, buy a place in DC, travel, donate to my favorite causes, then probably do what I want to do anyway, go back to school.
After following @ETpro‘s advice above, I’d pretty much do the same as @augustlan.
Beyond that, I’d probably keep working freelance or adjunct and travel more. Nothing crazy.
Oh, yeah. Share it with my friends and family, pay off the house, and travel, travel, travel. Oh course, I’ll never win the lottery if I never buy a lottery ticket, and I’ve had statistics courses, so I never buy lottery tickets. Never have.
I don’t waste my dollar on that dream.
In honor of someone’s big win, I am going to buy two new t-shirts today.
@gailcalled And I’m going to the Mall of America. The mega-church devoted to consumerism.
@linguaphile: Oh, ugh. I get terrible shopitis even on my little main st. A mega-mall would have me dialing 911 before I got the car parked (and then lost it.)
My Mom’s day / month / year were three of the numbers—she came out ahead of the game and so she won more than $10. I bought a lottery ticket to remind myself the chances are far, far greater that I am going to win at landing the perfect job and be lucky in love!!
get pregnant
pay off my debt
get some new clothes
buy my “ideal” house here
buy a vacation home in Ireland
buy a brand new Suburban
donate to friends and family
donate to my favorite charities
invest a little
put the rest in savings, for my daughters’ college, weddings, etc…
@gailcalled I personally don’t love the Maul of America… but it’s the only place I know where to get certain things—and the only place where I know the Apple Store sits right across from the Microsoft Store!
Notwithstanding the whole “money is evil” spiel, I would first off buy a large vacation home on the Lake Tahoe, Nevada coast. I would then buy property in Spain, and a new house somewhere around where I currently am. I would buy a few laptops, maybe a desktop or too, donate much of it (and not to Kony 2012 either), and then use the rest for traveling. :)
Did you know you actually have more chance of becoming President than winning? Interesting fact.
I would do the usual giving to charity, family, friends. Buy a house/s, pool, luxuries and a trip into space.
If I had $10,000,000 I could turn that into a fortune!
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