If you won 150M would you take a lump sum of 88M?

Check out this article:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P99649.asp

Poor money management for the people in the above link. Like a kid in the candy store their greed or naivete got them.


A lotto winner would definately have an estate tax problem, unless they were planning to die in 2011. As for me, I would take a lump sum, buy more life insurance, heck, I would MEC the policy in one lump sum just to leave a legacy for my family and rest easy. Set up a trust. Pay off all my debts and put it into a financial vehicle where I can live off the interest. I would retain a really good/savvy CPA, Estate Planning Attorney, and keep my mouth shut and refuse all press conferences. I would probably hide for a few months, at least. I think I would be slightly paranoid if people found out

 

id take the $88 million

open a ING ORANGE SAVINGS ACCOUNT at 2.60% interest

wait a year without touching it

take ou my $2,288,000 interest

spend it how i want for a year

then take it out again

and repeat.

 

EWWWWWWW.

I'm glad I got to spend a pleasant holiday season WITHOUT seeing that post!

DL

 

I would take the lump sum for the economic reasons already stated. damcgee, that was an excellent table, thank you.

We scratch our collective heads at all these losers doing unbelievably stupid things with accidental windfalls, but it really should come as no surprise. The average person does NOT know how to manage money. Simple probability theory guarantees that it is overwhelmingly likely that an average person will win a lottery with a small chance of a big win rather than an above average "smart" person doing the same. The probability is further by the fact that the average person is more likely to be into regular small time gambling endeavors, like the weekly buying of lottery tickets. Smart people, for the most part, just don't have the time or patience to waste time or money on fleeting chances.

So very average people get thrown this huge sum of money and they squander it away like evertything else in life. Where's the shock in all this ?

 

no catch, no minimum, no penalties.

 

Care to elaborate on that?

 

ffrom their TOS, i found:

Also, we reserve the right to return any deposit to you that causes the combined balance of all of your accounts with us (including any joint accounts) to exceed $1,000,000.

 

I read somewhere that gambling winnings (which includes lottery) are taxed at a flat 25% tax rate, regardless of your current income trax bracket.

Additionally, you can easily invest $88m in various hedge funds.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/16/powerball.winner.ap/index.html

85M lump sum, and the guy seems to have a head on his shoulders. I'm curious to see if he can pull off his intention of turning it into a billion.

C.

 

The person who won the Powerball $220mm jackpot still hasn't come forward and it's been several weeks. Probably had a heart attack and died.

 

And I think you need to read the article I linked to. He is the winner of the 220M Powerball jackpot!

C.

 

exactly-lump sum

 

LOL! I just saw that $85mm lump sum and I was thinking it had to be someone else since the the jackpot he won would be $93.975mm after taxes, not $85mm like the article said (flat 25% tax for lotto winners). I checked powerball.com to see if the winner spoke yet before I posted and I'm surprised powerball.com hasn't said anything yet. Why can't that guy just be happy with $90mm, jeez...

 

Just to throw a conspiracy theory out there...What would stop the government from eliminating the lotto winner and collecting a huge amount in estate taxes? Ya know, here and there...would make you paranoid enough to just win the thing..

 

Serious constitutional issues aside, in the big scheme of things, the money collected wouldn't even be close to being worth the risk if the gov't was caught even considering something along those lines.