$1.73 Billion Dollars. What would you do.

My sons and I had a back porch discussion last night about what would we do if we hit the lottery for $1.73b. It was a fun daydream conversation so I thought I would bring the rest of the crowd in on it. 

Generally, I don't buy lottery tickets but when the jackpot crosses $1,000,000,000.00, the wife will usually buy a couple of tickets for the fun of it. That's a life-changing number of zeros. The lump sum take home is something like $740,000,000.00. Just putting that in index funds will bring in something like $56,000,000.00 per year. I'm pretty sure I could live on that. 

As to what I would do, I would probably get up and go to work the next day because there are people who depend on me. I would spend at least a day just wrapping my head around the facts of the situation. 

Step 2 would be to find a really good accountant and a lawyer to help with the pitfalls that money brings with it.

From there, I honestly don't know what I would do. I think it would be impossible to know without the realization of what happened so I'd probably load up my motorhome and go somewhere to sit and think for a while. Maybe do some driving around the country just to see what's out there. I don't have extravagant tastes. I have little interest in international travel. I don't want a huge boat. I don't want a huge house or a personal race track. I have zero interest in flaunting what I have to others. I'm more inclined to use those funds to get away from people. 

I have thoughts about a couple of thousand acres in the mountains somewhere with a nice house and a huge shop in the middle of it but that's about it. 

So, what would you do if you hit the lottery for that kind of money? 

no immediate change the first few days

I would speedily exit my current job, and start a new business

Pay off my house.  Pay off my friends houses.

Pay for everyone's entry into the grm challenge for the next 10 years.

Pay somebody to landscape and take care of my yard.

Add an addition to my garage with a lift.

Get better internet.

Get a cool rv and drive around the country.

Hide from my friends. 

Retire, buy a nice big piece of property, build my dream home and dream garage on it, and spend the rest of my life buying and tinkering with old, interesting cars.

Pay all the associated taxes.

Give 3/4 of the rest to charities of my choice.

Use the rest for immediate family.

I had a friend go from an annual salary of $40,000 to $4,000,000 almost overnight. He shared with me that he didn't realize how difficult it would be to manage the money well. He suddenly felt a responsibility to handle it well, which meant interactions with accountants, lawyers, advisors, and investments which he had never had to do before. He said it was a lot more work than he thought it would be.

SV reX said:

Hide from my friends. 

^This

If you claim the prize in person all sorts of people come out of the woodwork asking for money.

Conspiracy theory time: winning the lottery is today's version of human sacrifice.  Virtually no one that has won it ends up happy.  Including people that were already wealthy.

That being said.  Invest 90% of it.  Pay off a lot of debt of mine and my loved ones.

Start a machine shop and speed shop back home, give steep discounts to anyone that brings me "interesting" projects.

So I found a tax/payout table by state last night. 

Taking the annuity, annual AVERAGE take home, after 37% federal and 3%pa taxes, is $35 million a year. First couple years 25-28, last couple years 100+, with a total payout after 30 years of a hair over a billion after taxes. The investments alone, barring complete financial collapse, are enough to ensure generational wealth, despite a billion dollars really not being E36 M3 anymore. (Yea, I said it, a billion isn't E36 M3. Don't believe me? Go price super yachts. They start at $1.2 billion with a B and go up from there)

Needless to say I was thinking about it this morning.

First and foremost, hire a damn good lawyer, then book a whole summer long vacation, and line up contractors to start the week after school ends, tear the entire top half of my house off and rebuild. New cars for me and the wife. 

Hire a landscaper, a house cleaner, and get a driver on retainer. Then start working over the old people with the 100+ acre farm at the top of my driveway to buy them out. 

Then it's just kinda do whatever whenever. 10 years left for the youngest to get out of high school, so probably an annual donation there, but that also kinda cuts down of the whole retire to an island thing. I'd be perfectly fine with 100 acre hill top farm, especially still staying close to my friends. That's room to shoot, play in the dirt, excuses to buy heavy equipment to play with, and a good start to raise cows and pigs with the chickens. 

Having been homeless poor and also having had more money than I knew what to do with already in my life, my wants/needs/desires have changed drastically. Really all I want out of life anymore is reliable vehicles, a house that doesn't need constant work, some land to play on, and a few pot plants because I berkeleying love and miss growing big outdoor gardens.

j_tso said:

SV reX said:

Hide from my friends. 

^This

If you claim the prize in person all sorts of people come out of the woodwork asking for money.

That's fine. With this level of berkeley you money, security guards are barely an expense. 

RevRico said:

j_tso said:

SV reX said:

Hide from my friends. 

^This

If you claim the prize in person all sorts of people come out of the woodwork asking for money.

That's fine. With this level of berkeley you money, security guards are barely an expense. 

That way leads to paranoia. How do you know you can trust those guards? So you hire more guards.

Better to not have the problem.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Retire, buy a nice big piece of property, build my dream home and dream garage on it, and spend the rest of my life buying and tinkering with old, interesting cars.

This. And a personal race track.

Once that's all covered, start a car-related charity and donate massive amounts to other charities.

Once debts and family are taken care of, I'm buying three pieces of property. 

1. Farmland acreage and building the permanent house with a new storage building for the 5 or 6 cars that I'll rotate through.

2. Mountain cabin in either Tennessee or Colorado to enjoy spring and fall.

3. Beach house on the east coast to enjoy the summers.

Meantime, I'm buying a Corvette, and touring the country for at least 6 months.  There's a lot of this great nation I haven't seen yet, and I need to change that.

After all that, who knows.  Charity work, business investment, or maybe just nothing at all for a time.

The Boy Scout camp I went to growing up will be receiving a nice check, that is for certain.  

I would retire, but mostly because I have a dangerous job and I've done my time. After that, I might have a couple of the cars waxed, because it's long overdue and I hate doing that sort of thing, and then hire a really good landscaping crew to save my lawn. My daughter needs a new car, and I'd like to learn how to play the saxophone. 

Start a museum full of the junk vehicles that I like. 

Probably take the annuity, find a very good lawyer.  I would love to start some kind of museum with cars people can drive/ride in, kind of like the Lane but more so.

I fear that I would become a bigger jerk than I already am.  

But more realistic (?) I would road trip several times a year and hit the Challenge at least once before the money ran out.

Dang Woody!

You're gonna have to learn to think bigger when you actually win

Mr_Asa said:

RevRico said:

j_tso said:

SV reX said:

Hide from my friends. 

^This

If you claim the prize in person all sorts of people come out of the woodwork asking for money.

That's fine. With this level of berkeley you money, security guards are barely an expense. 

That way leads to paranoia. How do you know you can trust those guards? So you hire more guards.

Better to not have the problem.

Just gotta hire the right guards. Cartel, MC, mercenaries. They might get bored, sure, but money buys loyalty. And if you aren't going out of your way to step on people's toes, it's a non issue. 

Puddy46 said:

Once debts and family are taken care of, I'm buying three pieces of property. 

1. Farmland acreage and building the permanent house with a new storage building for the 5 or 6 cars that I'll rotate through.

2. Mountain cabin in either Tennessee or Colorado to enjoy spring and fall.

3. Beach house on the east coast to enjoy the summers.

Meantime, I'm buying a Corvette, and touring the country for at least 6 months.  There's a lot of this great nation I haven't seen yet, and I need to change that.

After all that, who knows.  Charity work, business investment, or maybe just nothing at all for a time.

The Boy Scout camp I went to growing up will be receiving a nice check, that is for certain.  

Me and this guy think very, very much a like.  They YMCA Princess & Guides Program wouldn't have to worry about money for a long time. 

If i get the full 1.7 billion? Fund an anti EV movement, maybe run for some political office.

Everyone hates me already, why change?

On a positive note, I'd want to make a really good car movie.

I would somehow sail around the world. I would even send postcards to my wife.

In reply to Toyman! :

Set up trust

Take annuity

Pay off own bills

Organize list of family, friends, businesses and charities that I admire and determine, on an individual basis, how to help them succeed without spending every penny on day 1.

Purchase dream properties in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, renovate the farmhouse, build "family house" on the current farm.

Then the vehicles start to get finished