If I had 55M, I would like to be able to tell my friends and family that I can help them with education/medical/bootstrapping expenses if they ever needed it. I’m not completely sure what everybody else is saving their money for if not that
I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
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Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#152Classic Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_... > Congratulations! You just won millions of dollars in the lottery! That's great. > Now you're fucked. > No really. > You are. > You're fucked. This guy did exactly the right thing.
That thread is really dumb. You can't just throw stuff out there like "You're 20x more likely to die of homicide!" and expect to be taken seriously. 1. The demographic that is likely to win lotteries might already be more likely to die of homicide (or become bankrupt, etc) than the general population. 2. Throwing large multiples out sounds flashy, but it doesn't mean much if the probability was already extremely low.…
> You're not fucked if you win the lottery... The amount you can afford with 100 million is incredible. Buy a huge lot and hire security.
You're correct about not being fucked. It's dramatically easier than that though. Just go melt into New York City, where there are many thousands of people in that general wealth category.
The US has ~180,000 people with $30 million or more in wealth. 180,000!
You can trivially vanish in numerous major cities in the US if you have $100 million. No need to hire elaborate security or buy a fortress. With $1b it's still difficult to vanish; with $100m it's trivial. You won't show up on the money lists, the public won't know you exist, you won't be famous, the news media and paparazzi isn't going to hound you.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#153I can't seem to find a solid statistical study on the lottery-winner murder rate. "That Reddit post" says it's 20X higher than within the general population, and elsewhere I've read that it's more than 30X. I know, [citation needed] and I mean that literally - anyone know of a study?
Of course plenty of anecdata is out there. A glance at any of these stories ought to be scary enough to at least give you pause:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Adams_(lottery_winner)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dampier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavigueur_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shakespeare
You can also search for "Tiffani Hill" for an example from just 3 weeks ago.
It's not ALL bad news of course:
Keeps a low profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther
Donated most of it to charity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodtong_Senanan
Used it to run for Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Cisneros
Also politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lohse
World's largest hummus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdat_Ibrahim
And yet... not all the good news is good either:
Went into... err... business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Leyland
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have worked in the nonprofit industry for 10 years. People with money have no moral obligation to give me money. The way the organizations I work with spend the money is about what you would expect for a business with no real economic incentive to be efficient or solve the advertised problem. Lots of politics, lots of waste, lots of egos. I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you wo…
If someone wanted to donate, which are the top organizations you'd recommend and which are the top ones you'd avoid given your knowledge on efficiency and grifting?
As other commenter mentioned, EA is a useful framework for thinking about giving (what is my dollar really buying and is that a step change in something like foundational research). But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. Find small groups of people doing speculative stuff and fund them for exploratory research.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#155I made ~50 million in crypto. By far the most satisfying part was buying a house each for my friends and family. Having a paid off house is really a massive stress reducer for most people which imho gives you the 90% of the financial freedom of being super wealthy.
At my current ~2% mortgage interest rate, why do I want to pay off my house? I make more putting that money into investments returning me much better than that. I don't think the super wealthy keep their money needlessly tied up in real estate like that.
At 2%, especially if I was getting a tax deduction, I probably wouldn't be in a big hurry to pay off a mortgage if I had otherwise available investment capital. But that's paying off 2% guaranteed. I'm not going to earn that today with a risk-free investment. I'll probably earn more than that on a diversified investment, but it's not a given.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Word of advice: don't tell your family how much you make either. YMMV. I don't have any immediate family members who are at risk for monetary issues (luckily) and I have not had any issues with them knowing how much I earn. I'm also lucky that my family has been taught the value of a dollar since I was little. Not everyone has that advantage so I can definitely see why the default advice should be "don't tell them"…
Yeah I told my parents when I started making six figures and the only thing that changed was now my dad doesn’t pay for all my food when I’m visiting.
My parents still insist on paying everything, and they earned relatively little in their lives.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would not consider not donating to be wrong, or donating to necessarily be right.
Bioethicist/philosopher Peter Singer disagrees. "if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior." [1] I'm inclined to agree with him. This is my current moral quandry, since my income is about to dramatically increase. I'm looking for a new car. I can pay in cash. I could pay $90K for a Po…
Unknown people in far away countries don't matter at all. Might as well put the money on fire, the outcome would be about the same.
There's probably enough people in your local community that need help of some sort where you could make an actual difference.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#158> You no doubt realize that money doesn’t change who you are. It can, however, change others’ perceptions of you. People project their own needs, resentments, insecurities and ambitions onto others. Compare and despair is an often unavoidable human trait.
Hey, here's one for us in the bay area.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#159I had something similar happen, when my first successful company became successful. Many people who had been my friends or my wife's friends suddenly no longer saw me as me. They saw a wallet walking into the room. Not everyone acted that way, but so many did. I no longer associate with them. I have the utmost respect for those who were not changed by my privilege or fortune.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bioethicist/philosopher Peter Singer disagrees. "if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior." [1] I'm inclined to agree with him. This is my current moral quandry, since my income is about to dramatically increase. I'm looking for a new car. I can pay in cash. I could pay $90K for a Po…
Think of spending $70k in Haiti (for example) as investing in the Society of Haiti, Inc.: what level of the problem would you like to address? Buying food will help people eat right now, but will not solve their long-term problem (unless it's truly just short-term). On the other hand, long-term thinking is unhelpful if they die of starvation first, so you need both. You could also invest through an organization that…
I'm not a fan of the charity tourism thing. Unless I have some special skill that's in demand in the area, I'm literally taking somebody else's (probably low-wage) job and doing it for free. I'm sure I'd feel good about it, but I'm not optimizing for my emotional fulfillment.
Certainly the selection of charity is a huge issue and is worthy of careful thought and research, but I think a bigger issue to me is how much to donate.
I already live beneath my means, but I could go a lot lower. I could get a roommate, I could get a cheaper place. I could work more hours at a second job.
Especially as I approach the one percenter territory, the degrees of freedom between living like a king and a pauper seem daunting.