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[Scoops Novel]

The best way to use Lottery winnings

There's a lot of things your average Joe might say here. However, I'd like to know what Bay12 would do with it, and lets be relatively serious here. Personally, I'd give it to the most efficient form of charity, which i think is providing clean water. How about the rest of you?

Let's think bigger. Wealth in general.

[andrea]

how much are we talking about?
10k, 100k, 1M or even 100M?

[Flying Dice]

Dames, booze, chains, and boots.


_{Cookie if you know what I'm talking about.}

[TeleDwarf]

The best way to get rid of money in a charitable way I know is to take some poor homeless bastard, one of those who feast on a garbage bin and spend every penny on some cheap alcohol, and give him a day/week/month (or whatever you have money for) of paradase life. Get him into best hotel appartment you can afford. Feed him in the best restaurants. Get him drunk on the best wines. Get him the prettiest hookers. Get him some good suit. And film it all.

[kaijyuu]

Invest. No matter what you can do with 10 million dollars (or whatever), you can do better with 10x to 100x more.

[Skyrunner]

Invest. No matter what you can do with 10 million dollars (or whatever), you can do better with 10x to 100x more.

This.

Though there's a slight problem with sticking it in a bank, with a 1st place lottery you can buy those hefty $10000 Treasury bonds, invest in a good fund, put some in a bank for using, and maybe take advantage of them tax-free investments. Murky on which ones.. I think CDs and T-bills are, and IRA, and probably all municiple bonds ...

Investment gets more return the more money you have. I think you can live off investment income easily with enough money. Heck, buy an apartment and rent it out for some fixed income.

[ansontan2000]

Dames, booze, chains, and boots.


_{Cookie if you know what I'm talking about.}

Thats the Cramps' song! NAO GIMME MAH COOKIE!

[Zangi]

Most likely spend a good chunk on bills/family then squirrel the rest away somewhere in a low risk place.  But yea, investing sounds good.

I ain't need one of em fancy lives... though I'd probably pick up more games...

EDIT: Also, charity for tax breaks.  Win?

[LordBucket]

I'd like to know what Bay12 would do with it, and lets be relatively serious here.

I would enjoy it and help others in ways that suited me, with no formal dividing up of funds between the two. Giving raw sums of money to charitable organizations seems both unsatisfying, and unreliable. It would be difficult to know how much of the money was actually benefitting the intended recipients.

Also, I would focus my humanitarium efforts not on relieving suffering, but on improving the condition of mankind. I would rather give a million dollars to the guy who invented something that would change the world rather than giving it to starving children in africa.

But, I don't delude myself into thinking I would be completely selfless in this. If you handed me 40 million dollars, yes the first thing I'd do would be to revel in extreme hedonism. I don't think I really need a cartier watch, but I would totally have custom-tailored suits made with capes (because why not) and hire college girls (plural) to hang on my arms and look pretty and charter private jets to bounce between ski resorts, and Moscow because I've never seen it and play chess with strangers who don't speak english, and fly a helicopter and maybe try one of those waterjet dolphin swimsuits and then...well, see, that's the thing. My personal "things I really want to throw money at and do" list is not very long. I don't think it would take very many months to more or less exhaust it.

So I'd create a corporate entity with an official charter that basically read "I'm a wealthy eccentric, and this corporation exists to do anything I want." And that list would include intentions to be of benefit to mankind.

For example, I would very much like to build an experimental "alternate/futuristic/sustainable lifestyle" city with 100% wind/solar/geothermal locally (at each building) produced power, no public water or plumbing systems in favor of atmospheric water condensers and septic tanks, no commercial grocery stores in favor of houses with gardens and the like. Residents would be picked from volunteers, and then simply given homes. The goal here would be to create a functional bubble of people capable of sustaining a comfortable standard of living completely absent of money and the need to work, as well as a minimum of infrastructure designed in such a way as to require large, corporate or governmental supervision. Given that environment, I truly believe that there would be people willing to, rather than "work a 9-5 job to live" instead "work" only when actually useful to somebody and on a purely voluntary basis. Amish societies don't need to pay people to build barns. Somebody says "hey, let's build a barn!" and the community gets together and does it. There are people who would genuinely find joy from "being a doctor helping people." So...why not create a society where they can do that in which the hospital doors are unlocked, and when people see someone injured they personally transport them to the hospital because they're not busy working to survive and then call the doctor who can come because it's what he wants to do. There are people who would genuinely enjoy fixing things and teaching people how they work, just like your local ham radio enthusiastic is generally thrilled to teach a newcomer to the hobby how to build and work with radios. There are people who would genuinely enjoy caring for animals, or teaching schoolchildren, or building houses, or any other thing that society needs. So, create a system that allows people to do these things rather than compels them to in order to survive, and when you want something done you either do it yourself or ask your neighbors or post on craigslist looking for volunteers. And people will volunteer, because they're not busy working to survive all the time. And...with a system built to minimize large, unwieldy infrastructure, and with no planned obsolescence, when new technologies become available that simplify and reduce workloads, that will be a good thing that can be immediately implemented to benefit everyone without "putting people out of work."

The goal would be to create a pleasant, livable society where all necessary functions are performed by hobbyists. And I would encourge the hobbyists who liked building houses and roads and bridges and things to make those things and invite more people to live with them so that the society would grow.

That is the kind of thing I would do.

But, yes...I apologize, please forgive me...I would totally also hire some pretty college girls to wear lace and evening gowns and anime cosplay stuff and hang on my arms and drink champagne with me.

Also, if any of you are actually in the position to arrange for me to receive millions of dollars, I humbly request that you please do so. Thank you.

[Telgin]

It does sort of depend on the amount of money, but in general I'd try to use it as intelligently as possible.  For starters, I'd be about the last person in the world who won millions of dollars and was broke the next year.  I'd have to lose my mind to do that (and as much as a shock winning millions of dollars might be, I don't think it would be quite enough for that.)

I've subsisted quite happily on what is considered poverty level amounts of money for years now, so I could make even $1M last me a very, very long time if I wanted to.  I probably wouldn't quit my job though because I think that's where a lot of the money might go.

I currently work for an ISP that's sort of transitioning out of the start up phase to being a big player, and they're doing very well.  Investing in them would be a great opportunity I think, and if I had a few million to spare, why not?

Other than that, I've had a dream for some years now to own a castle.  Yeah.  I live in the USA, and I want a castle, so I guess I'd have to build one.  That's probably not happening without some lottery money though. 

I'd also surely donate a lot of the money.  I'd probably donate to some local universities, set up scholarships, donate to some research funds, and things like that.  Which ones in particular though I have no idea without some careful thought.  Definitely regenerative medicine, and robotics and computer research.

I would also help square away debts in my immediate family, but that would probably quickly get nasty as cousins three times removed suddenly show up at my door...

[Heron TSG]

Help people in order of immediate financial need.

1. Pay for college.
2. Help my sister out with her current debt.
3. Help my dad out with his medical bills.
4. Help my mother finish her mortgage repayment.
5. Invest it and continue supporting myself and my family with the returns and interest until the situation improves.
6. If everything above is fine and dandy, do some other charity work.

[kaijyuu]

Heh, I at least can quite confidently say I wouldn't blow it on random crap. I'm not at all materialistic, so something like a big house or fancy car does not appeal to me. The most expensive thing I might buy would be a top of the line computer.

I'm not money savvy enough to invest well either, so my usage would follow:

- Pay bills
- Put money away in a bank to earn interest
- Pay for all my schooling
- Use it to start a business of some sort, so that I have a job I can tolerate (probably indie game design)
- If I have any left past this, give it to stuff I think might benefit mankind (clean energy research, or progressive politics, or something)

[Flying Dice]

Dames, booze, chains, and boots.


_{Cookie if you know what I'm talking about.}

Thats the Cramps' song! NAO GIMME MAH COOKIE!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But in serious response, invest it. Pay for uni, pay off my parents' house, buy my own house outright. Give myself a couple grand to spend on nonessentials and the rest goes to paying off debts present and future, and to basic living requirements.

[LordBucket]

invest it

I don't really understand this. The average american earns between 1.2 and 2.5 million of the course of their entire lives. Of that, at a casul estimate I'd guess about two thirds of it goes to useless, unnecessary expenses that only exist in order to support the fact that they need to work to make that money and/or mortgage and interest payments.

If you were handed all the money you'd need for your whole life in one lump sum, and therefore didn't need to spend 7-8 hundred thousand to buy a $400,000 house, if you didn't need to spend $200 in gas every month driving to work, if you didn't need to buy a $5 latte every day to be awake enugh for the drive, if you didn't need to do all these things...you wouldn't need as much money.

Now consider that in my state typical lottery winnings are in the 10-40 million range. (Though routinely go higher. It's 73 million right now.) If we take a very conservative jackpot of say 20 million...take the above two paragraphis into consideration and that's roughly 20-40 time the amount of money you'd spend in your entire life. So...let's say you spend ten times as much (quitting your job would mean a great deal of time free for entertaining, after all) it's still 2-4 entire lifetimes worth of money.

...what exactly is the point of investing it? Does it make sense to give it to financial institutes so that you can make even more money you'll probably never spend? And if you say you want to invest in business and industry, if that's really your goal, you can always give it away.

I probably wouldn't quit my job

See, I don't really understand this either. If I suddenly had many millions of dollars thrust upon me, there are far more important things I could be doing than showing up to an office every day.

Changing the world > pushing around pieces of paper

[Scoops Novel]

Investing is a good point (changing the world needs the most money possible lordbucket), but to be honest, yes, if possible i would help out my family when necessary, but i couldn't buy into admittedly understandable selective morality, be it helping out my first world neighborhood or giving to the make a wish foundation. That's of course debatable, but you'd think that curing the disease itself should take priority over making the last days of someone nicer through monetary means, however much i hate to say that. The challenge would be finding the most effective, long-term way of using the cash.