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So, what to do if you are unlucky enough to win the lottery?
This is the absolutely most important thing you can do right away: NOTHING. DO NOT DECLARE YOURSELF THE WINNER yet.
1. IMMEDIATELY retain an attorney.
2. Take the lump sum.
3. Decide right now, how much to give away. This really shouldn't be more than 20% or so.
4. You will be encouraged to hire an investment manager. Don't. Investment managers charge fees, usually a percentage of assets. Consider this: If they charge 1% they have to beat the market by 1% every year just to break even.
5. Use between 20.00% and 33.00% to purchase a combination of long term U.S. and G7 treasuries.
6. That leaves, say, 60%. Dump half of this into a boring S&P 500 index fund.
7. So you have a safety net. What now? Whatever you want. Go ahead and burn through millions in hookers and blow if you want. Go ahead and be an angel investor and fund some startups, but REFUSE to do it for anyone you know.
I have trimmed this some since the link goes to the original post. The first part of it relates some of the bad things that have happened to winners.
"Spent a lot on cheap whiskey, fast women, and slow horses. The rest I just wasted."
That's also not how gift tax and the Unified Credit work.
I thought that is what YOU said last week? I guess I misunderstood. So please explain it to us?
"The unified credit enables you to give away $5 million (plus the annual inflation adjustments)
during your lifetime without having to pay gift tax.
By using the unified credit during your life, you'll reduce the amount
available to offset the estate tax upon your death."
Last edited by Crashj007; 08-24-2017 at 10:56 PM..
Reason: I tried to be brief, added cite
So, what to do if you are unlucky enough to win the lottery?
This is the absolutely most important thing you can do right away: NOTHING. DO NOT DECLARE YOURSELF THE WINNER yet.
1. IMMEDIATELY retain an attorney.
2. Take the lump sum.
3. Decide right now, how much to give away. This really shouldn't be more than 20% or so.
4. You will be encouraged to hire an investment manager. Don't. Investment managers charge fees, usually a percentage of assets. Consider this: If they charge 1% they have to beat the market by 1% every year just to break even.
5. Use between 20.00% and 33.00% to purchase a combination of long term U.S. and G7 treasuries.
6. That leaves, say, 60%. Dump half of this into a boring S&P 500 index fund.
7. So you have a safety net. What now? Whatever you want. Go ahead and burn through millions in hookers and blow if you want. Go ahead and be an angel investor and fund some startups, but REFUSE to do it for anyone you know.
I have trimmed this some since the link goes to the original post. The first part of it relates some of the bad things that have happened to winners.
"Spent a lot on cheap whiskey, fast women, and slow horses. The rest I just wasted."
But if she didn't sign it, I thought it could be stolen. I'm guessing that she'd be able to fight it using the store surveillance but then she'd be known anyway if there was a legal battle.
Not bad for a $6 gamble. I wonder if she played before and how frequently. Since it took many drawings to have a winner, were odds greater than the often quoted 1 in 292,201,338?
Various Threads have discussed this a lot. Hunt up the one I started. I thought, incorrectly, that my personal odds were the square of that. We had a long thread on the possibility of there never being a winner since each drawing is independent of previous drawings.
She's the most beautiful woman in the world. Wonder if she's still single.
But here's what I don't get.
Massachusetts is one of the few states in the Union that allows a lotto winner to be anonymous via trust fund.
I can only assume it's either ego or pure impatience to not go this route. She's gonna be in a world of hurt soon if she's not careful.
You can't fix stupid. Actually Wednesday afternoon I decided to not buy any tickets ever again if it is over $100 mill since we can't be anonymous in NC.
Being careful was this morning, too late now. She will need bodyguards for the rest of her life.
See "Jack Whittaker"
Pension? She has a 1/4 billion dollars and you think her "pension" is significant enough to mention?
Her pension is now ice cream money.
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