Congratulations you won the lottery! Now what? (rar)

[Mr Bean]

In the view of other Rar's I'll bring back an old but classic one. A lottery win, but not just any lottery winning ticket but a massive win.

Tomorrow you will wake up to find a lottery ticket you don't remember buying is the winning lottery ticket for a Power-ball lottery. The amount? 610 million US dollars. For the non-US residents you won an equivalent amount of money (Convert into your native currency as needed).

Three things to keep in mind
1. The local media has picked up the story unusually fast and that evening you find the local TV is running human interest stories with your full name and a short bio of you. So not only did you win over half a billion dollars before taxes but your local news ran the story and the national news is going to be running it tomorrow with your name and face. You are now a minor temporary celebrity. Keeping quiet about your massive windfall is impossible.

2. As is standard you can accept a lump sum of 1/3rd the price after taxes and fees are withheld in the amount of 200 million dollars. Or you can take a twenty year annuity of 30.5 million dollars, after taxes lets say it comes to 20 million a year for simplicity's sake.

3. You are you, your family is themselves, the only unusual thing is you won a stupendous amount of cash, enough to qualify you for the thousand richest people on the planet list in the mid 600's range. Once you win this money it's on your own character what to do with it.

What do you do with more money than any sane man can spend in one life-time? Remember everyone knows you are now richer than Oprah. Does your life descend into a never ending hedonistic lifestyle to shame Caligula? Will you get rid of your money as quickly as possible? Or will you build that really kick-ass tomb you always wanted with the fifty foot bronze statue of you?

[General Zod]

The lump sum of course. $200m is still more than I could probably ever spend on my own, and after a few weeks my face is going to fade out of the press assuming my freshly hired lawyer has anything to say about it. After which I promptly start buying up properties all over the globe and work on investing it to the point of being an actual billionaire. A small self sufficient island with its own air strip and a fully staffed manor house would be a nice place to start. I might invest a few million here and there into some secular charities for the tax write-offs.

[Stark]

Is 'sensibly invest so that your family never has to work again' an option?

[Mr Bean]

Is 'sensibly invest so that your family never has to work again' an option?

Ahh the Hilton Plan, no nothing stopping you from investing in enough things to be able to trust fund your trust fund kids and trust fund those trust fund kids so your great grand kids can enjoy the security that comes from knowing you have a million in an account you can fall back on. It's boring and your boring but at least we can look forward to your grandkids making shits of themselves when the sex tapes leak.

[Venator]

610 CAD(-ish, the Loonie is pretty strong at the moment)... let's see.

Being 21, I'm definitely taking the $20m/20 years; it's almost double the money of the lump sum, and by the time I've got the last of it I'll have barely hit my midlife crisis. The press wouldn't be a huge problem since I like in the middle of absolute nowhere, though it makes going to school a lot harder.

First things are to talk to the bank manager at my local branch, she knows her shit and would be able to set me up with the right financial contacts, and to get a lawyer to have the press subdued as General Zod said.

Next up, sensible investments and locking money away in school funds for my hypothetical progeny, then providing for my family and donating to a couple local causes that need it (plus a million or two to my school to counteract the city's dickery and interference).

Then to live in decent comfort. I still want to work in-field if I can, maybe do some academic or personal research, or build and fund my own lab.

[darthdavid]

$20m/20 Years, hire a good accountant so it gets properly invested and all my taxes and shit get taken care of properly. Go back to college. Move someplace warm. Bask in the glow of knowing that I'll never have to work for the rest of my life and that whatever I want to do with myself it will be entirely on my own terms. Probably get into politics or sciences (odd combo, but I've always wanted to leave an enduring positive legacy and to my mind the best way to go about it would generally be to help expand the bounds of what we know or to work towards improving our (currently quite dysfunctional) society).

[Stark]

Ahh the Hilton Plan, no nothing stopping you from investing in enough things to be able to trust fund your trust fund kids and trust fund those trust fund kids so your great grand kids can enjoy the security that comes from knowing you have a million in an account you can fall back on. It's boring and your boring but at least we can look forward to your grandkids making shits of themselves when the sex tapes leak.

You're right, financial security is 'boring'. Good call; who needs sensible financial planning when you can buy $15,000 shower curtains?

This much money is enough to both have basically unlimited private funds and move into a few industries (or one expensive one). Don't tell me ... that's 'boring' too?

[weemadando]

I probably take the annuity option, assuming there's protections in there for it to be passed on to next of kin until expiry of term in the event of me going early.

20 million a year is more than enough to VERY comfortably live and travel all that I could want. Not to mention having a healthy safety margin for all my investments. Say 7m a year for "extravagant living/travel" for my family (no doubt with a bit leftover). 7m a year in higher risk/reward investments and 6m a year into reliable investments.

I would still have a job though, happy in the knowledge that at any time I could drop the "screw you guys, I'm going home". It'd be MAAAAD part time though.

Longer term I'd work towards establishing some sort of ongoing educational foundation, be it an actual institution or just a series of scholarships.

I'd definitely build a library though. Just because.

[Havok]

Ha ha you dumb fuck. Oprah is worth like 2.5 BILLION dollars. The measly 400 mill you pocket from this isn't getting you on any fucking lists. Certainly not the 1000 richest people in the world list. I mean are you just fucking lazy and stupid or do you really think that 400 million is a lot of money?

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/bil ... _Rank.html
There you go champ. Top 1125 BILLIONAIRES in the world. The mid 600s? 2 Billion at least.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I choose to take the annuity. I know I can sometimes be intemperate, so if I have an intemperate year I don't want to be one of those rags to riches to rags stories.

First thing I use the money for is to rectify my weight problem.
After that's under control, I pay off all my mother's debts (including forgiving her debt to me,) buy my aunt and uncle that house in the Carolinas they've always wanted, buy myself a house in Massachusetts somewhere (probably Cape Cod,) and then I start looking up and taking performance driving schools, because I've always wanted to learn to drive like a professional racer.

Once I'm thin enough to fit and skilled enough to use them, I'm going to track down a Bugatti Veyron and a Porsche Carrera GT and go mucking about with them. I'd like to get a passport and maybe drive through Canada, too, then maybe figure out what I'd need to get the car(s) and my driving legalities up to snuff for Europe. Go and track down all the legendary Driver's Roads.

[Dahak]

Well, of course the annuity.
I would invest it generously in real estate and other "safe" investments over the years. Giving family some, too. And there's an idea for a fancy house floating in my head which would be nice to actually build...
Apart from that, I possibly would throw away money by founding my own little company (maybe consulting), travelling, and buying loads of antiques for the real estate bought above

[Guardsman Bass]

I'll take the $20-million/year for twenty years annuity. Then I'll talk with a financial adviser, and put a chunk of my annual income into various investments so that my future income will be even greater than this.

I then live very comfortably, buy 2-3 different houses in different places, travel a lot, etc.

[Sarevok]

Accelerate my plans for world domination using this sudden influx of cash ?

Seriously though I would invest it into my existing line of work. I always wanted to get into the video game industry instead of crappy life as a Symbian/J2Me developer while studying at uni full time in electrical engineering. With that kind of money I can finally quit this stressful life and start focusing on making my dream real today as opposed to tomorrow.

[His Divine Shadow]

Going with the sensibly invest the money option. Buy a nice house (no mansions) maybe in california and possibly elsewhere in the states, travel, maybe study. Probably taking the lump sum as well.

[adam_grif]

I take the lump sum and start making diversified investments with 100 million of it. 50 mill can go into establishing a foundation ala X-Prize, focussing on artificial intelligence. With the remaining 50 I build a dream home, buy a car and maybe a motorbike, then blow the rest of meaningless, petty things over the next few years. Oh, and I want to start a gun collection with it too. Hmm.

[PeZook]

I take the annuity and do the following:

1) Get a full-time lawyer with all the options, a bodyguard, a personal assistant to handle errands and up the security of my home while arranging to secretly move somewhere else (frankly, I'd become an instant target for breakins, robberies, kidnapping and such, so security comes first)

2) Once I accomplish the move to some place secure, I set up an educational foundation helping talented young people with scholarships in the sciences. I will also fund social ad campaign promoting the sciences, and maybe invest in hi-tech industries to promote it.

3) For vacations, get a sea skipper's certificate and buy a large seagoing yacht

The rest I would figure out as I went. I'd definitely not build a giant opulent house, these are just troublesome to maintain.

[Sarevok]

1) Get a full-time lawyer with all the options, a bodyguard, a personal assistant to handle errands and up the security of my home while arranging to secretly move somewhere else (frankly, I'd become an instant target for breakins, robberies, kidnapping and such, so security comes first)

Smart move !

I would recommend getting a team of financial advisers as well. Most of us ordinary folks have no idea how the super rich handle their millions.

[PeZook]

There are law firms that offer these sorts of services, but that can wait until things settle down.

If you pay enough, you can have a law firm arrange all sorts of shit for you, it's just a question of waving your bills around

It's probably not optimal, but it can be set up really quickly, and since the media ran your story the very next day, time is of the essence.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd buy a controlling interest in a couple of short-line railroads and freight haulage / shipping line companies to create a diversified steady income stream from a very stable business, and use the rest for land investment and a private sailing yacht I can also live on in the sub-500k range, not counting a short-term expense account to help out a few friends and establish myself until the investment deals were complete.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Annuity. Buy my parents the house they've always wanted in East Anglia (or pay somone to build it for them), buy my brother whichever car he wants, buy my uncle's (rented) house of his landlord and give it to said uncle.

Once thats all done, move away from the area and settle down in a nice smallish town. Biggish house, with cook, cleaner and a driver. And a carriage-built Rolls Royce Phantom for formal occasions and some kind of armoured SUV for more casual stuff. Get a job as a local teacher just to stop myself going stir crazy.

Said house should be on a large amount of land, like an old farm, big enough that I can drive around without needing a liscence. Get a firing range too, and a decent gun collection. Settle back for the rest of my life, raising a large family, teaching them fun stuff like shooting and driving and maybe explosives.
Might even run a Scout group as well.

Oh, and lawyer/bodyguard/investments of course.

[Hillary]

Lump sum for me.

Give my close family enough to live an extremely comfortable life, possibly by way of an annuity. Look after my friends to a lesser extent.

Invest the majority of the cash sensibly to give me a pretty sterling lifestyle and use a significant amount of money (say £10m) to create my own charitable foundation, which would give me roughly £400k to use for charitable purposes a year. Much of this would focus on providing financial advice to other charities, as most are, in my experience, under-resourced in this area and nobody else does this sort of thing in the UK as far as I know.

My vanity purchases would be a detached property with a big garden, probably in the area I currently live (West London, so say £1m - £2m), a couple of quality cars and maybe a coastal bolthole. Obviously, visiting parts of the world I have yet to see is another big plus here.

I would recommend getting a team of financial advisers as well. Most of us ordinary folks have no idea how the super rich handle their millions.

errrrr they use financial advisers as well. When you have $200m to invest, you get a professional to do it for you.

I'd buy a controlling interest in a couple of short-line railroads and freight haulage / shipping line companies to create a diversified steady income stream from a very stable business, and use the rest for land investment and a private sailing yacht I can also live on in the sub-500k range, not counting a short-term expense account to help out a few friends and establish myself until the investment deals were complete.

You clearly have no understanding of the phrase "diversified steady income stream". With $200m, you should be investing across about 150 different stocks. That's what investment banks exist for. Chucking it all in a couple of stocks is absurdly risky.

[open_sketchbook]

Lump sum, please. The annual payments only work so long as the people paying are in business, and you don't get to keep your money by trusting people who aren't reliant on your money. After getting the majority of it invested by a team of competent professionals, I kick back and live as modestly as possible, devoting myself to whatever artistic pursuits strike my fancy; without worrying about needing to make rent/buy food this month, I can take the shitty months and bad pay so I can do what I enjoy. Meanwhile my money is buying land, investing in companies, buying shares, diversifying heavily into other countries to avoid the collaspe of western civilization, and otherwise piling money into a bigass account, where it is then spent either to make myself more money, or to support whatever charitable cause of the future.

Oh, and buy an old bomb shelter just in case.

[Aaron]

Seeing as my dream is basically to be left the fuck alone, I bugger off to some remote area of Canada, maybe Northern BC. Do the usual; buy land, modest house etc.

Take the lump sum but after I'm setup I'm not really sure what do with most of it. I'd like to do something with disabled vets, maybe a fund to cover things that VAC won't. You need a wheelchair? Here, have one.

That sort of thing.

[Norade]

I'd take the lump sum and be out of this apartment in a snap, donate everything that is in it to those who need it and set myself up in a nice penthouse apartment in town. I'd live further out but I don't drive and that will do for now. Seasons tickets to the Canucks would be high up the list as would be decking my house out in creature comforts. Family and friends would all be budgeted for and well set-up for the future.

After that I would looking into recycling projects such as dealing with the garbage island in the pacific and seeing if I couldn't make that into a viable project. Longer term would be setting up a small community for me and my friends and family and getting one of those small nuclear reactors for all of our power needs. As I no longer need a job, I would earn degrees in programing, networking, and robotics and attempt to get in with a team working on building construction robots.

The rest would be invested in money earning ventures, with some going towards a fund for ensuring that worthy students can go to school. I would also hire professionals to see to my safety and the well being of my wealth.

[salm]

The full blown hedonistic thing for me with the money i need for that. The rest can go to friends, family and unicef or something like that.
I might get a financial advisor who will help me to prevent losing everything from possible inflation or something like that but i won´t invest in something like an own company as that would be way too much work.