I watched a show this weekend that highlighted 7 lottery winners. These lottery winners were a bit unusual because they actually still had a little of their money left. Their jackpots ranged from 2.4 million all the way up to 91 million.
The show highlighted how many of these people had been extremely down on their luck before they won. One was living in a hotel, while another was living in a run down house that he couldn’t afford to fix up. I believe he was living on 300 a month.
I found a lot of the show rather disappointing. The majority of the show was dedicated to each person walking around their house highlighting all the material things they had bought. One man spent hundreds of thousands on statues, while another gave a lot of it away.
The only thing that I heard on the hour long show that stuck with me was one man saying that he only spent the interest that his money was making. I’m sure that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it was nice to hear him say that he recognized that by keeping most of his money, he could use it as a tool to generate income to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life.
One other thing that I found interesting was how good each of them said they felt when they helped others. You could see their eyes light up as they recalled different times that they were able to use a little of their money to help someone out. It obviously meant a lot to them.
“I found a lot of the show rather disappointing. The majority of the show was dedicated to each person walking around their house highlighting all the material things they had bought. One man spent hundreds of thousands on statues, while another gave a lot of it away.”
I agree- I felt like I was watching cribs for the pony-tailed lottery winner, at times. It was interesting to see how luck/fate played a part when people were in the slumps financially.
Everybody Loves Your Money,
I don’t play the lottery, but I wonder if one of our fellow pf bloggers won the thing, would they blog about it? Would they share would the rest of us? Would we ever hear from them again…?
Everybody Loves Your Blog,
NCN
This comment is part of my 100 Comments Series over at No Credit Needed.
Haz,
I saw this show and came away with the same feeling. Did you notice that the ponytailed guy who claimed to only be spending his interest couldn’t have been right about the calculations? He won $41mil, and claims to earn $16k per day from the bank. This can’t possibly be right. First of all, after the “cash out” he gets about half, then take out taxes and he’s down to just a little more than $10mil. But ignoring that, and the multi million dollar house, and assume he really has $41mil “in the bank.”
In ordre to earn $16k/day he needs to earn 14% “from the bank.” Wow, I need to know where that bank is.
I used to be a pizza delivery kid when I was in highschool. There was this one guy that would come down to the pizzeria or I would deliver to him. He was a young guy that won the lottery, I believe several million, and he took the 25 or 30 year payout. To make a semi-long story short he was throwing his money away on a big house, rotating cars and motorcycles and gambling. I don’t know if he was a little loopy before he got the money or became that way but he had some major issues. I am amazed that every week someone is winning loads of money for free and they are probably going to end up blowing it. I really hope the schools are putting to good use the millions they are receiving from the state lotteries.
Most people don’t know how to manage money because they never have much to manage. And the people who are worse at managing money are more likely to play the lottery. So plenty of those people win. Of course stories about people who invest it wisely aren’t fun and those guys likely also keep a low profile to get away from all the scammers and charities that go after lottery winners.
I suppose by this fact those, who have won their money, differ from those, who have earned it. Easily received, easily lost. The money is considered by the lottery winners only as a mean for material valuables and not as a source of the future income.
I think really winning the lottery would be hard on a some people who have never had much in life.If I ever do win the lottery I would really set back and have to get a grip on reality.Things could go horribly wrong for me and others like me who havent had much in life who go to work and come home.I think the first thing you should do is NOT tell anyone that you know you hit the lottery at first.Realize who your real family and friends are.There probably would be more people knocking at your door and ringing the phone off the hook then you would ever care to know wanting something I would guess.I would definatly help others after everything settled down.If I knew someone that lived nearby who won the lottery,I would ask them for a handout….