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Lottery Winners Who Blew It All
- Thread starter Dram
- Start date
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Surface of Me
I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
If $250 wasn't the bet minimum, why didn't you test your theory on a smaller amount of money?
What was your theory?
ReturnOfTheRAT
Member
It's a real shame that dumb people win the lottery. Using future payments as collateral on a loan is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Life is full of moments that seem shamefully unfair.
Also, there are winners who are smart, and they're the ones who do not get media attention and quietly make their lives better.
Of course. That's the reason they were playing the lottery in the first place. Each ticket was a dream that they'd be able to do whatever they wanted without money as a constraint.
There's not really much evidence that financial education works. If it does, the effect is fairly limited. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Pretty much. The average person buying a lottery ticket is not doing so as part of a carefully considered, long term financial strategy. If they were to come up with a carefully considered, long term financial strategy after they win, it would be a complete departure from the behaviour that got them the winning ticket in the first place.
Why would a smart person buy a lottery ticket?
Bogleheads has a really good, long post somewhere on their forums on how not to waste your millions after winning the lottery. It's extremely common, even if you don't consider yourself reckless. A lot of winners lose their money because of friends and family coming out of the woodwork for handouts, investment scams and lawsuits from scumbags. Knowing how to safely handle a large sum of money really isn't complete common sense.
Kuro Madoushi
Unconfirmed Member
Win money
Quit job
Time on hands
Use money for fun
Gone?
Figure with THAT much time on your hands and the plethora of shit to spend it on, it makes it easy.
Quit job
Time on hands
Use money for fun
Gone?
Figure with THAT much time on your hands and the plethora of shit to spend it on, it makes it easy.
shira
Member
That is so sad. You end up learning that it isn't the prize, its the fucking game/rush that they want.
CornBurrito
Member
That isn't sad at all. If I gamble, I make sure to treat it like buying a video game. I take say... 100-150 dollars with me at most. And if I leave with more, then great. If I leave with nothing? Well that was a few hours of entertainment. And I wouldn't gamble that often.
What is sadder is thinking gambling will make you money. It won't. It makes casinos money because the games are statistically in their favor.
Charles Foster Kane
Rosebud
Yep. If you're gonna gamble, you better set your mind that you're going to lose, so that way it's easier to tell how much you're willing to waste and don't go overboard trying to win.
Chie Satonaka
Member
Oh for fucks sake.
People can buy whatever they want with their money. It'd be one thing to say people who don't have money to be spending on lottery tickets doing so might make them bad with money, but this is ridiculous. I hate generalizations like this.
HalfBakedProphet
Member
Serious question GAF.
Let's say you won a smaller amount, maybe 75k. What is a good way to invest it so it's not gone in 2 or 3 years?
Let's say you won a smaller amount, maybe 75k. What is a good way to invest it so it's not gone in 2 or 3 years?
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Not a lottery winner, but a big winner....
Long story short. This man, using a VCR figured out that the press your luck board was not random. He learned there were several repeating patterns, and that he could game the board. He won $110,237 on the show in 1984. After the show accused him of cheating, but found that he didn't do anything against the rules he was paid.
He ended up losing it all though various scams. Including trying to win a radio contest by matching serial numbers on $1 bills. $40-$50,000 in $1 bills was stolen from his house.
I'll leave a link to the Wikipedia page here. The whole read is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson
Long story short. This man, using a VCR figured out that the press your luck board was not random. He learned there were several repeating patterns, and that he could game the board. He won $110,237 on the show in 1984. After the show accused him of cheating, but found that he didn't do anything against the rules he was paid.
He ended up losing it all though various scams. Including trying to win a radio contest by matching serial numbers on $1 bills. $40-$50,000 in $1 bills was stolen from his house.
I'll leave a link to the Wikipedia page here. The whole read is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson
You need to diversify yo bonds, nigga.
Don't change your life and use it as a luxury item fund, say, for when a new game comes out or you really need a vacation. That'll keep it from all gong away, at least.
In terms of actual money-making investments? I dunno, hop back in at the bottom of the next property bubble?
I've read an article on how lottery winners literally had to run away from everyone they knew and live in obscurity because of all the people asking for handouts.
Also people who aren't used to handling this sort of money will just blow it all away, so I'm not terribly surprised.
Also people who aren't used to handling this sort of money will just blow it all away, so I'm not terribly surprised.
I'd toss it in the Vanguard total world stock index.
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0628&FundIntExt=INT
Alligatorjandro
Banned
We were one number away from winning like $3 million.
TheyTookOurJobs
Member
I don't know what I'd do with it. I've learned to live simply and cheaply, wanting for very little.
People that play the lottery usually have problems managing money or other problems to begin with.
People that play the lottery usually have problems managing money or other problems to begin with.
TheyTookOurJobs
Member
Ban bait!
DeaconKnowledge
Member
Real estate.
RomanticHeroX
Member
I agree with this. People can certainly make dumb choices even with education, but just up and giving millions of dollars to people who have no financial education is just asking for misery.
I am informed it's a reference to this.
Jimothy, drop a link in next time if you're going to make a reference like that, not everyone will get the reference it without one and it could be misinterpreted.
DeaconKnowledge
Member
What the fuck does the lottery corporation care that you're bad with money?
Besides, that won't help them. There was a thread on GAF on Michael Carroll a few years ago - reading it you knew there was no way he WASN'T going to blow through that money. Dude couldn't give less of a fuck that he's broke.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=396841&highlight=michael+carroll
With 75k? Maybe I'm just too conservative, but I've never felt comfortable with leveraged investing. Not with my life savings...
The government cares if you're bad with money, and the lottery corp. is typically a government organization. Even in cases when it's not, lotteries are heavily regulated.
threetri333
Banned
Are there any lotto winners who are managing their money well?
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Speaking of house poor... I really don't get some of these people.
I was building a house in Manhattan Beach, and this old lady would come out every morning to shake her fist at us and yell gibberish that we understood to mean something like "You're too loud.". But she got upset about the garbage truck and a bunch of other things, too. Then someone had the balls to suggest that she buy double-pane windows. Turns out she could't afford them even she wanted them. All she had was Social Security and she basically ate cat food.
But her property, which she'd bought with the income from her dead-end jobs because you could do that in the '50s, was worth fucking $3 million at the time, minimum, just as bulldozer bait.
She could have lived a nice life. Maybe she liked the area, you might think, but she never went outside except to complain about noise.
I was building a house in Manhattan Beach, and this old lady would come out every morning to shake her fist at us and yell gibberish that we understood to mean something like "You're too loud.". But she got upset about the garbage truck and a bunch of other things, too. Then someone had the balls to suggest that she buy double-pane windows. Turns out she could't afford them even she wanted them. All she had was Social Security and she basically ate cat food.
But her property, which she'd bought with the income from her dead-end jobs because you could do that in the '50s, was worth fucking $3 million at the time, minimum, just as bulldozer bait.
She could have lived a nice life. Maybe she liked the area, you might think, but she never went outside except to complain about noise.
RiggenBlaque
Member
If I remember that article correctly, that guy was already quite wealthy to begin with, which made how terrible his life became even more amazing.
edit: amazing as in "hard to believe," not "fuck that guy"
Couldn't you test your theory with a lesser amount?
Yes they are. They buy way more tickets then people who haven't won the lottery.
It really makes you wonder.
I think most of the posts are spot on. Smart folx aint playin'
Mazdaspeed
Member
I work doing customer service/sales in telecom and I had a call a couple of years ago for someone setting up a phone in a hospice. During the conversation I had the person setting it up told me it was for a person who had won the lottery and then ended up losing it all. I took the details the person gave me and googled and ended up reading about the person while I was setting up the account. Kind of a weird story. Here's a link:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=04f_1187359514
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=04f_1187359514
I was hoping to get a small sliver of rich sweet happiness, instead they went STRAIGHT broke.
Chuck Norris
Banned
Fuck these people in their stupid asses
What a waste
What a waste
SatelliteOfLove
Member
"People all the time saying they'll keep on at their jobs if they win it big. If I win the lottery, you think I'd be driving all around the country telling you people jokes? Hell naw. The last you'd see of me would up on stage with that big check they hand out, saying "I'd like to thank God for this bounty, my wife Lucille for standing by me for 25 years, and now, the following list of people can kiss my ass..."
kyoya
Member
Not a lottery winner, but a big winner....
Long story short. This man, using a VCR figured out that the press your luck board was not random. He learned there were several repeating patterns, and that he could game the board. He won $110,237 on the show in 1984. After the show accused him of cheating, but found that he didn't do anything against the rules he was paid.
He ended up losing it all though various scams. Including trying to win a radio contest by matching serial numbers on $1 bills. $40-$50,000 in $1 bills was stolen from his house.
I'll leave a link to the Wikipedia page here. The whole read is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson
I heard a motion picture adaptation of this story was supposed to made with Billy Murray attached (seriously) but it never materialized.
I gotta post this documentary about it though, The Press Your Luck Scandal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEBCve-3Cw
Did she actually buy that car in the photo. Wtf.
Nikodemos
Member
Ehh, it's the same-ol', same-ol'. Poor people are generally shit with money (due to inexperience) so what happens when they get a bunch is unsurprising. More surprising would be a poor guy/gal who won the lottery and didn't piss it all away.
The guy who was already wealthy before winning and ended up losing it all appears (to me, at least) to have suddenly gone turbo-religious after the deal. That always places immense strain on a family.
In general, the people who don't waste their lottery money on various shit were shut-in (single) penny-pinching recluses who disliked their families. They're the ones you never hear from again after a win (they're also the ones who lawyer up and ask for a confidentiality clause from the lottery corporation).
The guy who was already wealthy before winning and ended up losing it all appears (to me, at least) to have suddenly gone turbo-religious after the deal. That always places immense strain on a family.
In general, the people who don't waste their lottery money on various shit were shut-in (single) penny-pinching recluses who disliked their families. They're the ones you never hear from again after a win (they're also the ones who lawyer up and ask for a confidentiality clause from the lottery corporation).
laesperanzapaz
Member
that blue shit behind the Toronto woman....the fuck is that!?
shira
Member
Cadillac Escalade with DJ booth installed = 200k - she sold it
No no no. These people don't give a fuck about winning - they already have money. They gamble because the game is fun and addicting to them.
WTF she saved 750k, put money into trusts for her kids, gave 1 million to her parents 1.75 divided to 4 siblings, and partied for 9 years.
Sensationalized story, she's not penniless and she took care of her family.
crazy_about_denise
Member
I don't get the hostility.
Luck is not something you can earn or transfer. Let them blow their money. Besides, it helps the economy, keeping the cash flow up.
Luck is not something you can earn or transfer. Let them blow their money. Besides, it helps the economy, keeping the cash flow up.
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