There was another huge lottery winner. This time Pedro Quezada won $338 million. That’s a lot of coin. He opted for the lump sum and walked away with $152 million after taxes. Yeah, that’s still a lot of coin. If you just took a conservative 3% annually, you’d still be living on $4.5 million before taxes. Any way you slice it, you could live FAT with that kind of money.
Something tells me that Pedro won’t take the conservative approach. Why do I say that? Well, it turns out that if you win more than $600 in New Jersey, they check to make sure you don’t owe anybody any money. In Pedro’s case, he owes $29,000 in back child support. I don’t get that knee jerk reaction that Pedro has made the best choices in life. Unfortunately, the influx of $152 million doesn’t automatically make you smart. If I had to guess, I’d estimate Pedro will likely see his fortune decline as he gets suckered in to multiple “business opportunities” and spends money like it grows on trees. (Sadly, even when you have $152 million, money still doesn’t grow on trees, but it might feel like it at first).
Yeah, I know. This post is a bit of a downer. I suppose it’s because just about every other lottery winner that I’ve read about has pissed the money away, only to find themselves in the gutter of life. I truly hope that Pedro makes it work. I’d like to read an article some day about how Pedro paid all his child support, and then set up trust funds for ALL his kids and lived comfortably on a reasonable income. Unfortunately, Pedro has statistics working against him.