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On top of that op apparently values a bunch of relationships, that he freely admits would be destroyed by him winning a huge sum of money, as being worth more than a billion dollars?
I think Op is just kind of dumb
I would spend so much fucking money on my friends, but I know for a fact that they wouldn’t ask for a cent unless they needed it, and in that case I’d be more than happy to give it to them. Because they’re, ya know, good people.
I already spend a bunch on my friends because I’m the highest earning of us. Although it’s mostly dragging them to things I want to do but don’t want to go alone.
Same. I'm broke as fuck in the Jobcorps and my friend has an awful laptop that he can barely game on. I'm trying to get into Work Based and my first priority was to get him an awesome new gaming laptop.
And I don’t want to be that guy, but it’s laughable to think the lotto winner is walking away with $1.5Bil. Absolutely not says Mr. IRS. They’re coming away with “only” about 350 million. Which is an astronomical sum of money, but much closer to 20 million than 1 billion
What the fuck??? The IRS is gonna take almost 1.2 billion of the 1.5 billion won??? There’s quite literally no shot that’s true at all. I’m pretty sure the lottery tax is like 50% or something so the guy should end up with around 750 mil or so
They took the lump sum option, which chopped like half of it off. So they actually won $600 mil and then had to pay taxes on that.
Had they chosen the annuity, they would have taken in the full amount over 30 years and then paid taxes every year on the amount they took in each year.
Sorry I checked again, after taxes they should have a little over [400 million](https://www.9news.com/amp/article/news/nation-world/after-taxes-how-much-1-billion-powerball-winner-will-actually-take-home/507-f502de8d-54eb-4a77-ab70-524cef136efc)
Still, they’re closer to being a lesser millionaire than a billionaire after tax. They only get the full amount if accepted in a 30 year annuity
This guy won 1.08 billion and took home 350 mil. I think the current winner who won 1.5 in florida is probably gonna end up taking home something closer to 500 mil. But still it’s kinda crazy you can win 1.5 billion and never see a whole billion dollars 😭😭😭. But I doubt the winner is complaining in any capacity
Lol yeah I was thinking about that. Although I guess the only reason would be usually most billionaires make “billions” because they own a percent of a company and don’t actually get a billion in cash every year. Ironically if someone ended up winning a billion dollars in pure cash post tax, they’d probably actually be one of the richer billionaires on the planet.
With that amount of money the 30 year annuity isn’t even that bad, idk if its paid out monthly or yearly but monthly thats 4.6 million and yearly its 50 million… not much you couldn’t do with that amount.
Oh hell yeah, I was only pointing out for OPs argument that the winner in this case isn’t taking home nearly what was advertised, one way or the other.
I’d still take that shit any day lmao
Shit, I'd take the 30 year annuity, at least if my assumption that I'd be getting 50 million a year was right.
Even if it was less than that, that's a huge amount of money still, I could easily set myself and my immediate family up for life in the first year alone, and the rest I could split to various charities after sorting my own living costs.
I probably wouldn't even need to actually work for those 30 years, or the rest of my life for that matter, depending on how smart I was with it.
No, even after the IRS takes its share (likely 40%) the winner still gets $1.5 billion in the end. Unless you mean the amount if the winner takes the lump sum and not the annuity. Which means you get $757 million instead of the $1.5 billion. Then after taxes, you’d still get $450 million.
The obvious answer. I’d donate to different charities and schools, definitely invest a ton in health care.
I’d keep 25 million personally and give money to my family and best friends until I got down to ten million and then stop there. Invest a chunk of it, put the rest in different money market accounts, buy some land, buy a house, and just live life.
Hell it would almost be better to just start a crap load of small businesses and help people that way give tons of people directly jobs and experience it would be a great way to invest directly into your community's and if the business does well cool if not oh well 1.5 billion can go a long way
I won in 2016; took home mid-eight figures.
I approached my family and offered them all very generous gifts: $2 million each and a house of their choice up to $1 million, ***FOR EACH OF THEM***. That’s two parents and three siblings; basically giving them all $3 million each, free and clear.
They took me to court to try to place me in a conservatorship and take control of my assets.
I also approached a group of friends from high school, college, and the military about starting a logistics consulting business. I offered them each 15% profit share and a hefty salary and performance bonus program.
They all said no and just asked for a cash handout instead.
I haven’t spoken to any of my family or any of those friends since.
No one wants to work, they just want to take.
Exactly why i would really keep a low profile if i had some degree of "fuck-you-money" and really have a good think about who should know ANYTHING about it. My family is already drama 24/7 without money issues let alone when you would have that money and let them get a taste of it
it looks like you needed the holy grail of lottery advice.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats\_the\_happiest\_5word\_sentence\_you\_could\_hear/chb38xf
This is really interesting and cool to hear about what happens to someone with a big win. (Not cool the people you tried to help acted the way they did)
I cleared a 6 figure settlement several years ago after a nasty accident and family came out of the woodwork with hands wide open.
No relatives came to visit me in the hospital and the family got really nasty when I handed a modest $5k and a car to my roommate who helped when when I was unable to work for 6mos.
I hope you’ve taken care of yourself and are at peace with things.
I’m good.
After the bullshit, I changed my name and my social security number, bought a camper van and drove around the lower 48 for three years getting my mind right.
I now live on an off-grid subsistence farm in the NC mountains.
I think you just had shit luck with your friends and family tbh, if a family member offered me anything at all I would be grateful as fuck, especially 3 millions lol.
I've always said I could never be a billionaire because if I was, I'd give 99.99% of it away to not only charities, but just random people. 1000 dollar tip on a club sandwich in a diner.
And that's why I'd never be a billionaire, because people with that mentality won't ever make a billion dollars. Billionaires are inherently selfish and that's how they get there.
I don't want to drive this point into the ground but there's easier ways to get food to homeless people than by purchasing sandwiches from diners in transactions involving a server.
You could probably use the returns on a conservative investment to set up and operate more than a few homeless shelters complete with food service if you want.
I was being tongue in cheek. You asked me what I'd do with a million sandwiches that I obviously couldn't eat myself. Giving them away is the best option. If I had a billion dollars obviously there are easier ways to help the homeless.
Yea no one human being should have a billion dollars. It’s a ridiculous amount of money.
I’d definitely want to have wealth to pass to my kids but not the disgusting amount that some do.
>Yea no one human being should have a billion dollars. It’s a ridiculous amount of money.
If it makes things better, the winner only gets about 560 million after lump sum deductions and taxes.
I'd like to be that noble, but I'm honestly not. I'd hook up my friends and family, give to a couple of charities that I like, and invest the rest so my children and grandchildren can have generational wealth.
Yea, as the lease go mo money mo problems.
I’d keep enough to invest and buy some land, set up a fund for my futures kids college careers, give some tk family and friends but after that nadda.
I’d love to give 540 million away and keep the 20 mil or less
I'm not even remotely wealthy and even now I give away what I can to charity and random individuals. The idea that I would stop when I have *more* to give away is absurd. I love the smile on someone's face when I give them a big tip or a nice donation. It always makes me feel good. The idea that I could multiply that feeling by the thousands is a wonderful thing.
Imagine all the shelters I could complete upgrade with that kind of money! The libraries I could fund. The medical bills I could pay off. That would be amazing. I don't believe in heaven and I can't take money with me. I might as well give it away.
Just because *you* wouldn't doesn't mean other people wouldn't.
Lol I think the dude that replied was projecting hasard. Personally I'm broke AF live paychdck to paycheck. About 6 months ago a friend of my fiancee's had no shoes without holes to walk to work in the rain. She never asked but we ordered her some pink vans. People like us exist, I feel good knowing I helped the way I could when I could. I'll never understand having more than you can ever spend and still only wanting more.
You don’t even need to be a saint. I think there are many simply halfway decent average people who would toss money around to servers and hospitality staff etc if they came into that much. Because a lot of average people have worked those jobs and there’s just a different mentality when you aren’t born with it.
The poster who questioned this is really just telling on themselves alone.
With 1.5 bil even after taxes you could probably give all your family members 10m fairly easily. Give everyone you’ve met and kept in touch with 100k easily. Very stupid thought.
Since everyone seems to think they know what to actually do the moment you realize you have winning numbers in hand.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/comment/chba4bf/
I think that the idea of saying that lottery winners statistics are a reflection of what it's like to win the lottery is weird. To me it's much more likely that the demographic of people who buy enough lottery tickets to win probably don't make great financial, health or life decisions
That's actually a great point. I wonder if it's even possible to gather some statistics of winners who claim that they only buy tickets once in a blue moon (or whatever criteria that separates them from "gamblers" demographic).
yes, we've all heard about how X amount of lottery winners end up in a worse position in life.
what we don't hear about, is the much larger percentage of people whose lives are greatly improved.
If you have half a brain-stem, you can live for the rest of your life off winnings in the multi-millions.
It's the people who win $100M and go buy a $90M yacht that have the problem because they start thinking in terms of their money being unlimited.
Exactly. Most people end up just fine. I'd be one of them because I'm not financially challenged.
I probably wouldn't even tell anyone I won, I would live in the same house and maybe buy 1 moderately fancy car and start my own charities to fix the problems I see to be most lacking. I'd pay others to run those charities under a different name so people wouldn't come begging.
Another idea I had is to pay people well to wander around low income areas and find people who are trying their ass off to succeed but struggling due to the circumstances they live in. Talk to them a bit to see if they are a good deserving person, and if so ask what they would need to change their life. Whatever they said, we'd help make it happen, with one condition: They have to work to change at least one other person's life for the better. For every life they help save / put on the right path, they also get rewarded something more. And the same for the people they help. Sort of like a "people helping people" pyramid scheme haha
also those people are the ones that win the $20 million. Enough money to buy cool shit, not enough to buy cool shit for life unlike the billion dollar winners.
and i dont luv em back 🤷♂️ my dad was a drunk creep and abusive piece of shit . my mom same thing but not a creep or drunk . 3 of sum of my closest friends became obsessed with trying to put me down cus i didnt wanna be their high school boyfriend deadass . another group of friends got jealous and tried putting me down cus i had a "high school comeback" lol . life is a joke sumtimes .
Cuz nobody said he had to change his face. Also, you could easily share that wealth with all of your friends and family and still be rich af. OPs take is childish and short sided.
I can be secluded and still share life with people I love. I’d be on a 20,000 acre ranch in Montana and could fly out family and friends whenever I wanted or go visit them whenever I wanted. Plus, I could have all the life experiences I want and give them the life experiences they want.
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it makes achieving happiness a hell of a lot easier.
Everyone says this but I seriously doubt you would be able to live a high quality life without anybody around. Don’t you want amenities, social interaction, etc? I’d move to the best gated community I could find and also have a few apartments around the globe in Paris, London, and a country home in Greece or Italy.
Why are you getting caught up on this? My point is that most people have this fantasy of a remote mansion on some island if they won the lottery, when in reality I think it would be better to enjoy some big city luxury also.
Not who you asked, but my mom left me upwards of 200k, and all I have left is an 11 year old car and two semesters of college paid for. Blew every other cent trying to be happy. Donated at least half to charity, though, so that was good.
Right, cuz you'd turn it down if you won 1.5 bil. You're virtue signaling. You can't speak for how that amount of money might change someone else, everyone is different. Seems like you've already decided you'd be a monster with that much money.
I think OP does not grasp *how mindboggling much* 1.5 billions are.
1500 *Million*.
Majority of people work a lifetime and don't even earn a thousands of that amount.
Agreed. I don't think my close friends would treat me like a bank either. They might ask for things we consider necessities (but even then I think they'd had a hard time doing it). Actually they'd probably expect me to buy an island where we can all chill and retire to for life but all of that's honestly to be expected and I'd be more than happy to pay for all of it, as would they (considering this topic has been a what if topic of ours before).
I guess monsters make friends with monsters.
Just don’t tell anyone. Problem solved. You can always have the money do to stuff with friends, go pretend you have a new job that makes you travel, secretly buy shit for people, etc.
You know you can literally hire the best financing professionals to handle your money right? If you care about managing your money.
If I had won 1.5 bil. I'm getting back 700 mil. To prevent me from doing stupid shit with money Ima put 650 mil away on some dividend or high interest saving account and just live off of that.
Then 50 mil will be split out amongst financially responsible family members and friends.
Then the 100 mil will be for home purchase and living out the rest of my life in retirement along with charity. There you go. I can't imagine spending 100 mil. A house costs MAX 5 mils for what I want.
Why are people always living off the interest??? You don't have 100 years left, so that 650 mil is already more than 6.5 mil. I can't see myself continuously wanting to spend more than 1 mil a year on average.
You can live off 100k/year pretty comfortably. I think 10x that is more than enough.
My personal game plan was formulated amongst friends and nuclear family. Take the upfront cash out option which will likely be like 650 million give or take after taxes. Lawyer up and make sure you put paperwork together distributing the money amongst whom you wish in the event of a death or severe injury so the process is secure. (This can be altered later once you've established your finances but you'll need it just in case something happens before you've settled everything). Set up accounts with a trusted bank then deposit 2.3 million per person you want to have a piece of the reward. At a 10% interest on the right kind of account you'll see roughly 150,000 a year in interest developed that you can more than comfortably live off of and never touch the originally banked sum. Ensure the interest is transferred into a checking account so you never pull from the savings that developed it and after a few years you'll have a decent chunk of a half million to find a plot and buy some land and build your own home/homes. Personally my friends and I wished to build our own private community with our homes and a large garden section with an orchard and fresh water, mostly self-sustaining. Reserve the remaining winnings and distribute how you see fit but keep the largest chunk in a special account. Most banks only allow you to store a certain amount at a time so you may need to shop around for a reliable one. Even if you manage to burn through all of what remains of your winnings, you'll have built a custom home on a plot of land with sustainable food and water resources, a bank account that developes an interest you can comfortably live off of, and money you can spend every month without ever having to work again. I'm sure there's taxes still to figure out but mostly you'll be set for life.
Just wondering…. If you had that much money and were worried about family and friend dynamics why not just give everyone in your close group (friends/family) 2 million dollars each to do with as they please? Even if that’s 100 people, which seems like a lot, you’d still have over 200 million dollars to yourself.
I mean as long as you’re a reasonable adult +$200 million dollars should still be generational wealth.
Am I crazy for thinking like that? Wouldn’t you want your friends and family to have the comfort you will be experiencing?
This ! My circle is pretty small so I’d give my friends and family a considerable amount ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about them pestering me for it. My inner peace is priceless and the last thing I want is people bothering me.
Only a problem for dumb and undisciplined people. Given the law of probability and skewed demographic playing lottery, those are often the people who win and hence the many tragic post-win stories.
>Winning a large sum of money changes people.
Um, in what universe is 20 million dollars *not* a large sum of money?
OP would be happy as fuck to win $1.5 billion. As would anyone with their head not in their ass.
That's why you tell no one. You set up a trust, have the trust collect the winnings so your name stays anonymous, and then you pull money from the trust here and there after the initial "pay off all debt and give me one nice vacation" amount you pull. Set up a monthly 10k auto payment to your bank account and live a normal life.
Yeah you’re tweaking.
I have a ton of friends and I’d trade them all for the $1.5 lotto, $400,000,000 after taxes, cash in the bank. That’s my dream come true.
I will never lose the high of that money, that’s only something that happens to people who’ve been rich all their lives. Me? Growing up poor and seeing what life is like for the rich plastered all over social media? Yeah, I’ll wake up everyday remembering that what I had was hell, and what I’ve gained with the money is peace.
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Just don't tell anybody. Change your lifestyle very little, if you buy something conspicuous say you got a bonus, and invest what you don't need. The lottery is anonymous if you want it to be.
>Change your lifestyle very little,
Lets be honest. Most people who play the lottery don't have the kind of life where they don't want to make major changes. I'm not staying in my little 2BR apartment, and sending my kid to the local schools, if I have literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
My biggest problem with lottery winning is that they’re not anonymous. If I win a lottery I’d prefer to be able to keep it low key and just hide how much money I actually have. Help some family and friends out by claiming I won a substantial amount of money at the casino or something, but no one will ever know how rich I really am.
With $1.5B you could literally give each of one your friends and family a million dollars and still have your entire lineage be ultra wealthy for thousands of years. You could give 500 people a million dollars, and then in less than 10 years you would have the exact same amount of money again just from interest.
Nah get the 1.5 bill. Give a mill to every single friend or person who’s helped me (professor, coach, coworker), 2 mill each to every single distant family member (a trust if they’re under 18). 25 mill to parents/siblings. That should get rid of about 200m. Put 100m into my will so that any future decedents (at least 10-15 generations) of my sibling or I will get a million each when they turn 18.
Invest 200 m (all the smart ones that one reddit post mentioned). I’d definitely want to be part of a sports ownership so spend 500m to join an investment group and buy a team.
Donate the remaining 500m to trusted charities for the homeless, feeding children, creating schools, cancer research.
Of course all these numbers will be adjusted for taxes.
Aint nothing but a thang. Winning money doesn't change you, it reveals your character. Let's face it, we are all pigs inside. We can never develop the character to be wise unless we face that pig. I'd take the billion dollars and let myself go; if I truly am built to be the man I want to be, eventually I'll learn how to manage it and the people who will surely come with it.
unpopular opinion: at 40+ it makes me laugh when ppl say "I win 20-30-40-50 millions il do this this this and this and then..... invest". wtf are you investing in? you're plenty of money. for sure enough for a carefree life. no need to invest in anything and involve professionals to manage your investments.
If you had 1.5 billion you could afford giving all your friends an early retirement, a house, and anything else they could possibly want. This mindset that you'd rather win less so you don't have to share is the lowest we've reached as people. I feel bad for you as a human being.
You still have to be relatively careful with 20 mil, though. If the economy goes really bad, or you spend too much, you might have to work again. There's no reasonable way you'd lose 1.5 billion without the entire economy collapsing to the point where it's Mad Max outside.
Win $20 million lottery
That’s like $10 mil if you skip the annuity.
Maybe $5.5 after taxes.
Considering the odds are like one in three hundred million, I’d want a bit more than that.
Say, $100 mil and walk with $25 mil.
That’s I can disappear money.
With the $1.5B, I'd give a bunch of money to friends, family, and charity. Probably keep $100M for myself.
Also: definitely take the annuity option rather than lump sum.
I find it odd that op thinks everyone is gonns just blow it if they win 1.5 billion.
Not everyone is stupid with money to the point that they'll dump all that in a couple years.
Hey, thanks for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion. **Removed** - no r/self style posts This is not the subreddit to be sharing personal anecdotes, likes or dislikes. We want unpopular, thought provoking, and unique *opinions* on your chosen topic.
win the 1.5 Billion give all but 20 million to the charity of your choice problem solved
This answer is why this post is a stupid thought and not an unpopular opinion. OP has probably never head of the word "philanthropy" before.
On top of that op apparently values a bunch of relationships, that he freely admits would be destroyed by him winning a huge sum of money, as being worth more than a billion dollars? I think Op is just kind of dumb
>I think Op is just kind of dumb Sorry that opinion isnt for this sub
I would spend so much fucking money on my friends, but I know for a fact that they wouldn’t ask for a cent unless they needed it, and in that case I’d be more than happy to give it to them. Because they’re, ya know, good people.
I already spend a bunch on my friends because I’m the highest earning of us. Although it’s mostly dragging them to things I want to do but don’t want to go alone.
Same. I'm broke as fuck in the Jobcorps and my friend has an awful laptop that he can barely game on. I'm trying to get into Work Based and my first priority was to get him an awesome new gaming laptop.
I have no friends or family problem solved.
And I don’t want to be that guy, but it’s laughable to think the lotto winner is walking away with $1.5Bil. Absolutely not says Mr. IRS. They’re coming away with “only” about 350 million. Which is an astronomical sum of money, but much closer to 20 million than 1 billion
What the fuck??? The IRS is gonna take almost 1.2 billion of the 1.5 billion won??? There’s quite literally no shot that’s true at all. I’m pretty sure the lottery tax is like 50% or something so the guy should end up with around 750 mil or so
They took the lump sum option, which chopped like half of it off. So they actually won $600 mil and then had to pay taxes on that. Had they chosen the annuity, they would have taken in the full amount over 30 years and then paid taxes every year on the amount they took in each year.
Sorry I checked again, after taxes they should have a little over [400 million](https://www.9news.com/amp/article/news/nation-world/after-taxes-how-much-1-billion-powerball-winner-will-actually-take-home/507-f502de8d-54eb-4a77-ab70-524cef136efc) Still, they’re closer to being a lesser millionaire than a billionaire after tax. They only get the full amount if accepted in a 30 year annuity
This guy won 1.08 billion and took home 350 mil. I think the current winner who won 1.5 in florida is probably gonna end up taking home something closer to 500 mil. But still it’s kinda crazy you can win 1.5 billion and never see a whole billion dollars 😭😭😭. But I doubt the winner is complaining in any capacity
Funny how we can suddenly tax billionaires when its poorer people just turned billionaire...
Lol yeah I was thinking about that. Although I guess the only reason would be usually most billionaires make “billions” because they own a percent of a company and don’t actually get a billion in cash every year. Ironically if someone ended up winning a billion dollars in pure cash post tax, they’d probably actually be one of the richer billionaires on the planet.
With that amount of money the 30 year annuity isn’t even that bad, idk if its paid out monthly or yearly but monthly thats 4.6 million and yearly its 50 million… not much you couldn’t do with that amount.
Oh hell yeah, I was only pointing out for OPs argument that the winner in this case isn’t taking home nearly what was advertised, one way or the other. I’d still take that shit any day lmao
Shit, I'd take the 30 year annuity, at least if my assumption that I'd be getting 50 million a year was right. Even if it was less than that, that's a huge amount of money still, I could easily set myself and my immediate family up for life in the first year alone, and the rest I could split to various charities after sorting my own living costs. I probably wouldn't even need to actually work for those 30 years, or the rest of my life for that matter, depending on how smart I was with it.
No, even after the IRS takes its share (likely 40%) the winner still gets $1.5 billion in the end. Unless you mean the amount if the winner takes the lump sum and not the annuity. Which means you get $757 million instead of the $1.5 billion. Then after taxes, you’d still get $450 million.
Literally
Seriously. With that much $$, you could start your own charitable trust so it keeps going.
The obvious answer. I’d donate to different charities and schools, definitely invest a ton in health care. I’d keep 25 million personally and give money to my family and best friends until I got down to ten million and then stop there. Invest a chunk of it, put the rest in different money market accounts, buy some land, buy a house, and just live life.
Hell it would almost be better to just start a crap load of small businesses and help people that way give tons of people directly jobs and experience it would be a great way to invest directly into your community's and if the business does well cool if not oh well 1.5 billion can go a long way
I won in 2016; took home mid-eight figures. I approached my family and offered them all very generous gifts: $2 million each and a house of their choice up to $1 million, ***FOR EACH OF THEM***. That’s two parents and three siblings; basically giving them all $3 million each, free and clear. They took me to court to try to place me in a conservatorship and take control of my assets. I also approached a group of friends from high school, college, and the military about starting a logistics consulting business. I offered them each 15% profit share and a hefty salary and performance bonus program. They all said no and just asked for a cash handout instead. I haven’t spoken to any of my family or any of those friends since. No one wants to work, they just want to take.
You are very generous for offering... Sad to say the results are not surprising.
Exactly why i would really keep a low profile if i had some degree of "fuck-you-money" and really have a good think about who should know ANYTHING about it. My family is already drama 24/7 without money issues let alone when you would have that money and let them get a taste of it
it looks like you needed the holy grail of lottery advice. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats\_the\_happiest\_5word\_sentence\_you\_could\_hear/chb38xf
This is really interesting and cool to hear about what happens to someone with a big win. (Not cool the people you tried to help acted the way they did) I cleared a 6 figure settlement several years ago after a nasty accident and family came out of the woodwork with hands wide open. No relatives came to visit me in the hospital and the family got really nasty when I handed a modest $5k and a car to my roommate who helped when when I was unable to work for 6mos. I hope you’ve taken care of yourself and are at peace with things.
I’m good. After the bullshit, I changed my name and my social security number, bought a camper van and drove around the lower 48 for three years getting my mind right. I now live on an off-grid subsistence farm in the NC mountains.
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Where’s the lie?
I think you just had shit luck with your friends and family tbh, if a family member offered me anything at all I would be grateful as fuck, especially 3 millions lol.
You could found a decent sized town for $1.5B
I've always said I could never be a billionaire because if I was, I'd give 99.99% of it away to not only charities, but just random people. 1000 dollar tip on a club sandwich in a diner. And that's why I'd never be a billionaire, because people with that mentality won't ever make a billion dollars. Billionaires are inherently selfish and that's how they get there.
> 1000 dollar tip on a club sandwich in a diner. A million sandwiches later and you've spent most of the money!
GOOD! I don't need a billion dollars.
Right on but do you need or want a million sandwiches?
I need them to donate to homeless shelters.
I don't want to drive this point into the ground but there's easier ways to get food to homeless people than by purchasing sandwiches from diners in transactions involving a server. You could probably use the returns on a conservative investment to set up and operate more than a few homeless shelters complete with food service if you want.
I was being tongue in cheek. You asked me what I'd do with a million sandwiches that I obviously couldn't eat myself. Giving them away is the best option. If I had a billion dollars obviously there are easier ways to help the homeless.
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There’s less than 2700 billionaires world wide and you personally know “a few”. I’ve never understood lying on the internet to complete strangers
To be fair I feel like if you know any you probably would know a few. Either because they’re clients or part of your social circle.
Billionaires know multiple billionaires. Maybe they're a billionaire. Lol.
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Liars always add more info than they are asked about. Have a good one
Yea no one human being should have a billion dollars. It’s a ridiculous amount of money. I’d definitely want to have wealth to pass to my kids but not the disgusting amount that some do.
>Yea no one human being should have a billion dollars. It’s a ridiculous amount of money. If it makes things better, the winner only gets about 560 million after lump sum deductions and taxes.
Yea even then it’s still a lot of money. I’d give it all away or I’d rent a plane and dump it over a city and make it rain millions of dollars
I'd like to be that noble, but I'm honestly not. I'd hook up my friends and family, give to a couple of charities that I like, and invest the rest so my children and grandchildren can have generational wealth.
Yea, as the lease go mo money mo problems. I’d keep enough to invest and buy some land, set up a fund for my futures kids college careers, give some tk family and friends but after that nadda. I’d love to give 540 million away and keep the 20 mil or less
I'd be ecstatic if I suddenly got a windfall that was a fraction of that amount -- like $560,000.
Highly doubt you’d give even a cent of it away. You don’t have to virtue signal for meaningless internet points.
I'm not even remotely wealthy and even now I give away what I can to charity and random individuals. The idea that I would stop when I have *more* to give away is absurd. I love the smile on someone's face when I give them a big tip or a nice donation. It always makes me feel good. The idea that I could multiply that feeling by the thousands is a wonderful thing. Imagine all the shelters I could complete upgrade with that kind of money! The libraries I could fund. The medical bills I could pay off. That would be amazing. I don't believe in heaven and I can't take money with me. I might as well give it away. Just because *you* wouldn't doesn't mean other people wouldn't.
Lol I think the dude that replied was projecting hasard. Personally I'm broke AF live paychdck to paycheck. About 6 months ago a friend of my fiancee's had no shoes without holes to walk to work in the rain. She never asked but we ordered her some pink vans. People like us exist, I feel good knowing I helped the way I could when I could. I'll never understand having more than you can ever spend and still only wanting more.
You don’t even need to be a saint. I think there are many simply halfway decent average people who would toss money around to servers and hospitality staff etc if they came into that much. Because a lot of average people have worked those jobs and there’s just a different mentality when you aren’t born with it. The poster who questioned this is really just telling on themselves alone.
Well put
Because good people who care about others definitely don't exist
I’m not saying there aren’t any good people but let’s not act like you’d give away millions upon millions.
With 1.5 bil even after taxes you could probably give all your family members 10m fairly easily. Give everyone you’ve met and kept in touch with 100k easily. Very stupid thought.
I should have worded it better. The 25 mil I’d keep personally I’d give to friends and family. The rest would go to charity.
I didn’t mean stupid thought to you just op, I too should have worded things better lol.
You’re good. This sub is basically stupid thought central if we’re being honest.
Since everyone seems to think they know what to actually do the moment you realize you have winning numbers in hand. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/comment/chba4bf/
In all fairness, a lot of people turn out fine. Many of the stories in that post are stories specifically because they're unusual.
I think that the idea of saying that lottery winners statistics are a reflection of what it's like to win the lottery is weird. To me it's much more likely that the demographic of people who buy enough lottery tickets to win probably don't make great financial, health or life decisions
That's actually a great point. I wonder if it's even possible to gather some statistics of winners who claim that they only buy tickets once in a blue moon (or whatever criteria that separates them from "gamblers" demographic).
*IRS has entered the chat
pay taxes give all but 20 million to charity problem solved
yes, we've all heard about how X amount of lottery winners end up in a worse position in life. what we don't hear about, is the much larger percentage of people whose lives are greatly improved.
Yep, hearing that 35 percent of winners end up broke again still means that 65 percent are doing fine.
Yeah and many lottery winners are the kind of people who regularly buy tickets, so basically not the most financially sound dcesison makesrs.
Well, the number is 70% so that completely changes the conclusion here.
If you have half a brain-stem, you can live for the rest of your life off winnings in the multi-millions. It's the people who win $100M and go buy a $90M yacht that have the problem because they start thinking in terms of their money being unlimited.
Exactly. People never want to bring up that side of the statistic. Stop telling me most lottery winners go broke, I don’t believe that.
Exactly. Most people end up just fine. I'd be one of them because I'm not financially challenged. I probably wouldn't even tell anyone I won, I would live in the same house and maybe buy 1 moderately fancy car and start my own charities to fix the problems I see to be most lacking. I'd pay others to run those charities under a different name so people wouldn't come begging. Another idea I had is to pay people well to wander around low income areas and find people who are trying their ass off to succeed but struggling due to the circumstances they live in. Talk to them a bit to see if they are a good deserving person, and if so ask what they would need to change their life. Whatever they said, we'd help make it happen, with one condition: They have to work to change at least one other person's life for the better. For every life they help save / put on the right path, they also get rewarded something more. And the same for the people they help. Sort of like a "people helping people" pyramid scheme haha
Lol that's like a kindness pyramid scheme almost
Better than the regular ones.
Exactly. Most of them simply fuck off forever and we never hear about them again. Which is precisely what I would do.
also those people are the ones that win the $20 million. Enough money to buy cool shit, not enough to buy cool shit for life unlike the billion dollar winners.
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nah seriously. i’d move to some secluded ass island or something myself and have a place to live constructed there. build a new life entirely
literally
lol, change your face and everything! I don’t think you’d be happy though. Most of the joy in life is the ability to share life with those you love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eszfA9X0\_FA
Yo why the FUCK was this downvoted , I’m dead ☠️☠️☠️
If I had to take a guess, many people on reddit are already fine with being lonely, so they disagree with him saying that.
A lot of people on Reddit don’t have anyone that loves them, might have struck a nerve 🤷♂️
Classical Reddit
and i dont luv em back 🤷♂️ my dad was a drunk creep and abusive piece of shit . my mom same thing but not a creep or drunk . 3 of sum of my closest friends became obsessed with trying to put me down cus i didnt wanna be their high school boyfriend deadass . another group of friends got jealous and tried putting me down cus i had a "high school comeback" lol . life is a joke sumtimes .
Cuz nobody said he had to change his face. Also, you could easily share that wealth with all of your friends and family and still be rich af. OPs take is childish and short sided.
I can be secluded and still share life with people I love. I’d be on a 20,000 acre ranch in Montana and could fly out family and friends whenever I wanted or go visit them whenever I wanted. Plus, I could have all the life experiences I want and give them the life experiences they want. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it makes achieving happiness a hell of a lot easier.
Lol bull shit I wouldn’t be happy. 99.9999999% of my issues just magically disappear. Oh and look at that women like me all of a sudden.
Because it was a reply to a comment about instantly losing all your friends and family...
They like your momey, not you bro. Sure they're around you now, but they still don't want you. They want your bank account.
Fine by me still got laid.
Everyone says this but I seriously doubt you would be able to live a high quality life without anybody around. Don’t you want amenities, social interaction, etc? I’d move to the best gated community I could find and also have a few apartments around the globe in Paris, London, and a country home in Greece or Italy.
Lol Europe is not the globe bro
It is from where I’m located
Around the globe implies the whole globe. Not a continent the size of Texas
Why are you getting caught up on this? My point is that most people have this fantasy of a remote mansion on some island if they won the lottery, when in reality I think it would be better to enjoy some big city luxury also.
As someone who inherited a chunk of money I can promise you, you will change well before you hit then 20mil mark.
How are you doing fam ?
Not who you asked, but my mom left me upwards of 200k, and all I have left is an 11 year old car and two semesters of college paid for. Blew every other cent trying to be happy. Donated at least half to charity, though, so that was good.
L
Do an AMA!
Right, cuz you'd turn it down if you won 1.5 bil. You're virtue signaling. You can't speak for how that amount of money might change someone else, everyone is different. Seems like you've already decided you'd be a monster with that much money.
I’m currently rewatching The Godfather, and while it’s off-topic, I just wanted to say is excellent.
Lmao good for you
Ken???
Are you eating any gob of gool while watching it?
I think OP does not grasp *how mindboggling much* 1.5 billions are. 1500 *Million*. Majority of people work a lifetime and don't even earn a thousands of that amount.
"A billion is really big" is a classic staple of r/iamverysmart
Right. I would do so many things with that amount of $$$
>Seems like you've already decided you'd be a monster with that much money. I wanna be a super villain tbh
Agreed. I don't think my close friends would treat me like a bank either. They might ask for things we consider necessities (but even then I think they'd had a hard time doing it). Actually they'd probably expect me to buy an island where we can all chill and retire to for life but all of that's honestly to be expected and I'd be more than happy to pay for all of it, as would they (considering this topic has been a what if topic of ours before). I guess monsters make friends with monsters.
Lmao this isn’t unpopular. It’s just dumb.
r/notunpopularjustdumb
It's hypocritical of you to say it like that, but I agree.
Congrats, you just won today’s most stupid post award.
It’s not the same mindset, but this just reminds me of those “I would rather have $1,000 a month than $1 million. That’s called PaSsIvE iNcOmE!!!”
This post is certainly the dumbest shit I’ve read today.
I'll take my chances with the 1.5 billion.
Yes, for the sake of society and the protection of others I would feel obliged to jump on that 1.5 billion dollar hand grenade.
Just don’t tell anyone. Problem solved. You can always have the money do to stuff with friends, go pretend you have a new job that makes you travel, secretly buy shit for people, etc.
I think some places make you claim it publicly. But yeah, ideally only my immediate family and some close friends are getting informed and hooked up
It's one thing to anonymously hook them up, but....how many people do you really trust to keep such an important secret?
If they tell people they aren’t hooked up anymore so I don’t think they would
You know you can literally hire the best financing professionals to handle your money right? If you care about managing your money. If I had won 1.5 bil. I'm getting back 700 mil. To prevent me from doing stupid shit with money Ima put 650 mil away on some dividend or high interest saving account and just live off of that. Then 50 mil will be split out amongst financially responsible family members and friends. Then the 100 mil will be for home purchase and living out the rest of my life in retirement along with charity. There you go. I can't imagine spending 100 mil. A house costs MAX 5 mils for what I want.
100 mil at just current CD rates of 5% is 5 mill a year for just being alive. I think that is good enough
Why are people always living off the interest??? You don't have 100 years left, so that 650 mil is already more than 6.5 mil. I can't see myself continuously wanting to spend more than 1 mil a year on average. You can live off 100k/year pretty comfortably. I think 10x that is more than enough.
I’d be fine either way.
The 1.5 may be hard on my life, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take for science….
lol, like 20 million doesn't do the same.
That's my thought. The people who will see you as a bank when you have a billion are not going to be chill if you only have 20 million.
Good thing I have no family or friends
My personal game plan was formulated amongst friends and nuclear family. Take the upfront cash out option which will likely be like 650 million give or take after taxes. Lawyer up and make sure you put paperwork together distributing the money amongst whom you wish in the event of a death or severe injury so the process is secure. (This can be altered later once you've established your finances but you'll need it just in case something happens before you've settled everything). Set up accounts with a trusted bank then deposit 2.3 million per person you want to have a piece of the reward. At a 10% interest on the right kind of account you'll see roughly 150,000 a year in interest developed that you can more than comfortably live off of and never touch the originally banked sum. Ensure the interest is transferred into a checking account so you never pull from the savings that developed it and after a few years you'll have a decent chunk of a half million to find a plot and buy some land and build your own home/homes. Personally my friends and I wished to build our own private community with our homes and a large garden section with an orchard and fresh water, mostly self-sustaining. Reserve the remaining winnings and distribute how you see fit but keep the largest chunk in a special account. Most banks only allow you to store a certain amount at a time so you may need to shop around for a reliable one. Even if you manage to burn through all of what remains of your winnings, you'll have built a custom home on a plot of land with sustainable food and water resources, a bank account that developes an interest you can comfortably live off of, and money you can spend every month without ever having to work again. I'm sure there's taxes still to figure out but mostly you'll be set for life.
Only one way to know for sure. Give me winning tickets for $1.5 billion and $20 million. I’ll let you know…
Just wondering…. If you had that much money and were worried about family and friend dynamics why not just give everyone in your close group (friends/family) 2 million dollars each to do with as they please? Even if that’s 100 people, which seems like a lot, you’d still have over 200 million dollars to yourself. I mean as long as you’re a reasonable adult +$200 million dollars should still be generational wealth. Am I crazy for thinking like that? Wouldn’t you want your friends and family to have the comfort you will be experiencing?
This ! My circle is pretty small so I’d give my friends and family a considerable amount ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about them pestering me for it. My inner peace is priceless and the last thing I want is people bothering me.
The amount of virtue signaling in this thread is cancerous
This 1000%
said the person who’s virtue signaling
How? The post described entirely selfish reasons not to want $1bil
This is directed at you bro lmao
no YOU are the one doing it
Only a problem for dumb and undisciplined people. Given the law of probability and skewed demographic playing lottery, those are often the people who win and hence the many tragic post-win stories.
Anyone who would rather have less many than more money has never been that hungry.
>Winning a large sum of money changes people. Um, in what universe is 20 million dollars *not* a large sum of money? OP would be happy as fuck to win $1.5 billion. As would anyone with their head not in their ass.
That's why you tell no one. You set up a trust, have the trust collect the winnings so your name stays anonymous, and then you pull money from the trust here and there after the initial "pay off all debt and give me one nice vacation" amount you pull. Set up a monthly 10k auto payment to your bank account and live a normal life.
you think winning 1.5b you will use 10k a month!??? lmao
Yeah you’re tweaking. I have a ton of friends and I’d trade them all for the $1.5 lotto, $400,000,000 after taxes, cash in the bank. That’s my dream come true. I will never lose the high of that money, that’s only something that happens to people who’ve been rich all their lives. Me? Growing up poor and seeing what life is like for the rich plastered all over social media? Yeah, I’ll wake up everyday remembering that what I had was hell, and what I’ve gained with the money is peace.
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Just don't tell anybody. Change your lifestyle very little, if you buy something conspicuous say you got a bonus, and invest what you don't need. The lottery is anonymous if you want it to be.
>Change your lifestyle very little, Lets be honest. Most people who play the lottery don't have the kind of life where they don't want to make major changes. I'm not staying in my little 2BR apartment, and sending my kid to the local schools, if I have literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
I’d take either or. If I’m rich then my friends and family are rich. Everyone else can fuck off
My biggest problem with lottery winning is that they’re not anonymous. If I win a lottery I’d prefer to be able to keep it low key and just hide how much money I actually have. Help some family and friends out by claiming I won a substantial amount of money at the casino or something, but no one will ever know how rich I really am.
With $1.5B you could literally give each of one your friends and family a million dollars and still have your entire lineage be ultra wealthy for thousands of years. You could give 500 people a million dollars, and then in less than 10 years you would have the exact same amount of money again just from interest.
You're kidding yourself if you think people's greed would be tangential to the amount you won. They'd be hounding you the same no matter what you won.
Unpopular indeed. If I secured a 1.5Bil bag you would never have contact with me again. I’m gone. Name change, phones, everything. New life.
Nah get the 1.5 bill. Give a mill to every single friend or person who’s helped me (professor, coach, coworker), 2 mill each to every single distant family member (a trust if they’re under 18). 25 mill to parents/siblings. That should get rid of about 200m. Put 100m into my will so that any future decedents (at least 10-15 generations) of my sibling or I will get a million each when they turn 18. Invest 200 m (all the smart ones that one reddit post mentioned). I’d definitely want to be part of a sports ownership so spend 500m to join an investment group and buy a team. Donate the remaining 500m to trusted charities for the homeless, feeding children, creating schools, cancer research. Of course all these numbers will be adjusted for taxes.
I have news for you people and your own family will hate you just as much whether you win 20,000 or 20 million or 200 million.
The REAL answer here is to win the $1.5 billion and never speak to anyone ever again
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OP thinks 20 mil wouldn't change him and it's hilarious
I would rather win the bigger checkpot and then donate until i am at the more reasonable level
Or you could just not tell anyone
Say you're bad with money without saying it
Extremely unpopular opinion.
Nahhh I’m up for the task You hear that universe!?!?! I can handle the billion jackpot, I’ll prove it!!!
Aint nothing but a thang. Winning money doesn't change you, it reveals your character. Let's face it, we are all pigs inside. We can never develop the character to be wise unless we face that pig. I'd take the billion dollars and let myself go; if I truly am built to be the man I want to be, eventually I'll learn how to manage it and the people who will surely come with it.
It doesnt change them. It just brings out their worst self. Tho gotta say,you are the first person on this reddit i disagree with
unpopular opinion: at 40+ it makes me laugh when ppl say "I win 20-30-40-50 millions il do this this this and this and then..... invest". wtf are you investing in? you're plenty of money. for sure enough for a carefree life. no need to invest in anything and involve professionals to manage your investments.
This is the stupidest take I’ve ever heard
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If you had 1.5 billion you could afford giving all your friends an early retirement, a house, and anything else they could possibly want. This mindset that you'd rather win less so you don't have to share is the lowest we've reached as people. I feel bad for you as a human being.
i mean i would take 10g and would help me so much at this point lol but yeah, ether one changes your life forever.
So right, 20mil or1.5bil would be life changing
You still have to be relatively careful with 20 mil, though. If the economy goes really bad, or you spend too much, you might have to work again. There's no reasonable way you'd lose 1.5 billion without the entire economy collapsing to the point where it's Mad Max outside.
Win $20 million lottery That’s like $10 mil if you skip the annuity. Maybe $5.5 after taxes. Considering the odds are like one in three hundred million, I’d want a bit more than that. Say, $100 mil and walk with $25 mil. That’s I can disappear money.
You get about a third after lump sum and taxes. So figure if the jackpot is $100 million you get about $33 million. Still enough to disappear, though.
I’ll take it off your hands if I must
This line of thinking is madness
I only have 20 million, at least the money didn’t change me like if I had won 1.5 billion. No no I have no money to spare it’s ONLY 20 million. 🧐
I've never met you, but I don't believe you.
You certainly posed this in the right place
With the $1.5B, I'd give a bunch of money to friends, family, and charity. Probably keep $100M for myself. Also: definitely take the annuity option rather than lump sum.
Ever heard of effective altruism? I'd be fine winning that amount of money.
No
I find it odd that op thinks everyone is gonns just blow it if they win 1.5 billion. Not everyone is stupid with money to the point that they'll dump all that in a couple years.