Maybe you don't want to win the lottery

This is the kind of thing the word schadenfreude was invented for:

Juan Rodriguez wanted nothing more than to be one of the guys in rural South Texas where he was raised, and he was until six years ago, when he had the misfortune to acquire almost $9 million from the state lottery.

Today, he's lost his anonymity, his buddies, whatever girlfriends he once had, and most of his family, whom he no longer trusts. He rarely ventures outside the trailer here where he lives alone. . . .

"The rule of thumb we use is sudden wealth will ruin people in three to five years," said Thompson, president of Sage Financial Design, a Connecticut-based company whose clients include instant millionaires.

"At the end of five years, the money's going to be gone or the human being is going to be gone. They either lose their money or themselves or both."

Comments

[kyle8]

Well, only if you are phenomenally stupid. Here is what i would do with a sudden windfall.
1) Move
2) give SOME, but not a lot of money to some family members.
3) Indulge myself in my many past times, none of which are very expensive, but require a lot of time.
4) Invest in a well balanced portfolio
5) Go back to school full time and write.

See, I have a plan, but unfortunately I will never win a lottery, because I do not gamble.

[Nathan]

Interesting that entrepreneurs rarely have the same difficulties dispensing with their wealth. It was created by helping other people, so there is no guilt, whereas lottery money was created by disappointing other people, and thus could be considered "blood money." The entrepreneur uses his money to create more new wealth through investment, or he may lose it exploring new profit potentials, in which case the economy at least gets the benefit of knowing what doesn't work.

The lottery is immoral, for the above reasons, and entrepreneurship is moral. The state will never acknowledge it though.

[Fred]

A group of one hundred workers at a cheese factory in Wisconsin (There are cheese factories in Wisconsin? Who knew?) will share a $208 million Powerball jackpot. At the end of the day, that means about $600,000 each. I think that is great.