World's Larget Powerball $305 Million!

Hmm, pay off everything and buy another house for cash, start up the restaurant I've wanted to, donate about 20mil to various charities.

 

Pay off the engagement ring I recently gave my fiancée. Then pay for the wedding and honeymoon. With the remaining money I might buy myself a can of Pepsi if I have enough for that.

 

Most suggestions here would only eat up a couple of days interest on $350MM, which amounts to close to $50,000.

Winning the lottery essentially becomes a full time job, getting rid of the money. Yes, I have a list, but it is quite long.

 

You could always pimp the prius

 

Sorry....but my Prius is a company car.
If I won 8-9 figures????
I wouldn't even come back to the office to clean out my desk!!!!

"My" Prius would very quickly become a usta-car....just like the others.
Would I drive a G3 with 8-figures in the bank????
(LOL!)
Not a chance.
I 'might' take a test flight in a Tesla and add that to my stable of cars (with one heck of a solar array!!!) however (comma!) A Prius....pimped out or otherwise....just wouldn't be in the picture.

My main priorities would be securing the futures of family, increasing charity work, and wealth preservation.
I think it would be cool to adopt a few classrooms full of first graders. Gather all of the parents and kids together and say "You graduate High School....You go to any college you can get into....on me." and then set up a sub-S to make sure that they have all of the educational things that they need to get to and through high school.
It'd also be cool to set up another sub-S to convert some of the 5-gallon buckets full of house keys that banks have into means-adjusted housing for people who are willing to submit to drug and alcohol testing. This could actually solve two problems, since many of them would also need refurbishment providing job opportunities for low skilled people who want to be employed.
If I didn't have to fix phones for a living and convert all of my income to keeping me in the 2 luxuries to which I've become accustomed (eating and sleeping indoors) I could hire folks to do some pretty groovy stuff!!!

Then again.....just blowing it on stupid stuff would be kinda fun too!!!

 

quit work and help the needy

 

start a restaurant based on "Biggest Loser" menu. it wont stop the country from imploding upon itself but at least i could feel good about myself.

other than that, i would travel, maybe buy a house. i have a LEAF and a Prius, so need car purchases that i can think of

 

Why do you have to get rid of the money? Hire a money guy to manage it for you, retire, and live within your new means! In other words, never spend more than you make on your investments (shouldn't be a problem), and let the principle grow as much as possible.

In addition to that, i'd set up some funds for my mom and sister (my mom so she can retire and do what she wants, my sister so she could finish her PhD comfortably).

 

other than basic needs and setting up college funds and whatnot, i would donate it. i am guessing i would spend no more than $200,000-300,000 a year after the initial flurry of purchases

i would install public quick charge stations in the currently ignored regions of the state. set it up so all expenses are paid for first 20 years ( i figure if i win i would be taking the annuity option anyway)

but i have been frugal all my life and its a hard habit to break. i "know" i would be booking vacations on off days simply because the crowds are smaller, the lines are shorter, etc. went to Disneyland a few years back in Oct. the weather was perfect and the crowds...well, the lines are NEVER short there but the wait was bearable

 

Because I want to accomplish something good. Having $350 Million is a lot of force in the world. If someone else is managing it for me, they are exercising that force for me, and I might object to their choices. So my conscience requires that I control the force of that money, to do what I can to see that it is applied well.

The $50,000 is a daily interest, I wasn't even considering getting rid of capital (which I might also do).

 

Anybody else bothered by these numbers? It's not actually $350M; it's about half that. All lottos do this of course, knowing that $1 today is worth a hell of a lot more than $1 divided by 20 years of payments, but they still pretend otherwise when they say how high the number is.

 

The real question is this: How much money must be in the Powerball jackpot for the bet to be rational for a risk-neutral individual (i.e.., the expected value of the bet is at least the amount of the bet)?

It's not easy to figure, because you have to deal with the odds of winning, the price of the ticket, the odds of having to split the jackpot with someone else (which depends on the number of tickets sold in the period of this drawing), and the possibility of winning a lesser prize.

But at least in theory, I intuit that such a break even point should exist in a carry-over lottery, though it won't exist in most casino games against the house (except maybe progressive jackpots).

 

It would exist at times--that break-even and better-but only if you had vast purchasing power--enough to basically buy out all or most of the tickets, and could do this long term enough to flatten out your misses over multiple lottos. As a regular person even if only $500M of tickets were bought and the lotto was now up to, say, $1.5B, it would still never make sense to buy in because even with your life savings the chances of you hitting are so slight that the absolutely massivey most likely thing to happen to you is simply that you end up with nothing!

I basically hate lottos.

 

Not really.
I try to limit the number of things in my life that I allow to bother me, and it seems that a voluntary lottery's payout wouldn't be the top turd in the pile of crap that I am concerned about----especially since I almost never purchase a ticket.
If I were to find myself a winner in a 8-9 figure payout, I would certainly take the lump sum payout.
For example.....the payout for a 350 million USD lottery would be something like 122 million....after the 35-percent tax.
For me?
122 mil would be enough.
I could probably do some tax gymnastics with the Sub-S charities that I talked about earlier, but in the end....I'd hire a firm to deal with the winnings, leave work and get on with my life. It would only take a few mil to double my income for the rest of my life (living to 100) so 122 after taxes would be more than enough.

Besides......if you take the 20-year payout, you run the risk of inflation eating away at the value of the unpaid installments, and anybody with a three digit IQ knows that the only way to really pay out our National debt would be to knock some zeros off of the principal.....and the only way that can be done is either through default and settlement, or an outright devaluation of our currency----either of which would result in the same thing. Knock two zeros off of a 20-year payout for the same 350 million and you're looking at about 175 thousand per year (down from 17.5 million.)
It's still enough to bother with cashing to be sure, but like I said earlier...122 million in the hand is worth 350 million in the "system."
THAT's not all.
17.5 million a year, and you're suddenly a one-percenter.
What happens if they squirt the top marginal tax rate up to 90-percent???
Then?
You're looking at 1.75 million a year after taxes, and before any inflationary effects.

IMHO???
It's better to take the tax hit up front.
Like I said 122 million on a 350 million lottery would be enough for me.
YMMV.

So no.....
The current lottery payout doesn't bother me for a number of reasons, including one over-arching reason....unless you're playing for entertainment value, it's not what I would call a good way to spend two bucks!

 

Optimists tend to get more done and be more successful.
Pessimists tend to be right more often.
That's a scientifically proven fact. I think. Maybe.

I hate them too.

But you don't need vast purchasing power to do what I suggested--I just want to know when the expected return on a buying a ticket is greater than than the cost of a ticket, to a risk neutral person. That is, if the odds are a million to one against, I need to make more than a million dollars if I win.

 

No one will get a present value of $350M out of this jackpot, even before Uncle Sam's cut.

Where do we find that kind of interest rate in this era?

 

First, start with $350 Million...