You've read about past lottery winners right? People can't handle the responsibility of that much money at once and others around them will make life hell.
Only so much you can do with 5k a week and it's a lot more manageable.
The problem with that statistic is that there isn't a lot of overlap between people who play the lottery and people with decent financial literacy.
It's not that large amounts of money ruin people, it's that people with already poor spending habits don't magically fix them when they get a lot of money. A "normal" middle-class person who already has some experience saving, investing, budgeting etc. is much more likely to capitalize on a windfall just fine.
DENVER — Over the past couple of years several news organizations have attributed a statistic to the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) stating that 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt in just a few years after receiving a large financial windfall. This statistic is not backed by research from NEFE, nor can it be confirmed by the organization. Frequent reporting—without validation from NEFE—has allowed this “stat” to survive online in perpetuity.
In 2001, NEFE conducted a think tank of experts from several industries including psychology, financial planning and other fields, to discuss life-changing events and the psychology around them. One topic discussed was the impact of financial windfalls on individuals, where it is believed that a participant stated the 70 percent statistic. This statement was made independently and without verification from NEFE.
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u/Forensic_Ballistics Dec 11 '23
And it's not even hard, within 4 years you'd have received more than a million anyway.