Did you win? I didn't.
Okay, I didn't play, either. I don't have one dollar to be giving away to the lottery administration. (Of course, I don't have it to be giving to McDonald's, either, but that's what I've done this evening.)
I told a friend that even if you gave away half of this win, you'd still have a ton of money.
So, 600 million. Let's do the math:
Minus 50% for taxes = 300 million
Divided by 30 years = 10 million a year
Over 12 months = 830,000 a month
Equals 208,000 a week
Equals $29,000 a day
That's of course if you take it in the installments. My feeling is that if you take the lump sum you get less than half. Mostly that's because the top amount they advertise is if you take it in the installments so that they make up the money in investments (or maybe future ticket sales; I don't know how it works).
Even with just a fourth of the money ($150 million), you could make a difference in so many lives. Going back to the original calculations, you could give away $500,000 a month and still have $350,000 for yourself. Every month. How crazy is that?
My thing is creating jobs. With $500,000 a month, I could fund 20 jobs at $25,000 a year. I could create over 200 jobs in a year. And I could do that for 30 years. How incredible would that be? How would you feel if you could do that?
Maybe I could buy or build apartment buildings and make them low-income or mixed income housing, because profit wouldn't be my motive. Maybe I could provide support personnel for every child in a failing school, or a counselor for every family in one housing project. Maybe I could fund my own ideas through other people; find some go-getters to follow through on what I've never been able to.
I was talking to a friend about the prize and she was saying that she has a plan for when - when, she's convinced she will win - her ship comes in. Listening to her outline her initial steps, all I could think of was her daughter and how she would have to manage that relationship. I tend to think I would be fine, but that's not based on anything. I think my one brother would resent that I - the foolish brother - had won it. I might have trouble with another brother as well; one who is not very successful in life. I don't know if he would stay solvent no matter how much money I have him. (Of course, this applies to me as well.)
That's what they always say; it strains your relationships. I think I'd be overly generous and so this wouldn't be a problem, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have a problem internally, with me.
