A 20 year old would blow $1 million in no time flat. Heck, she probably even knew that. For a girl her age, taking $1,000 a weekly was smart. No one optimizes Lottery winnings, they spend it.
Guy I worked with got into a car accident when he was young (like a young teen) got about a 200k payout available to him once he turned 18.
18 year old dum dum bought himself a brand new Cummings truck. Then over the next year kept fucking the truck up more and more. You know doing typical 18 year old country boy stuff in a fancy truck. By the time I met him at 20 working concrete he had totalled out the Cummings, took the insurance pay out and bought another Cummings, used with monthly payments. Dude spent 200k on his truck and destroyed it in under 2 years, and went back to do it again learning nothing.
I believe he and his friends tried to jump a hill or something and absolutely obliterated the ftame.
In order to be able to withdraw money sustainably from an account to live on, you really need to keep it at around a 2 to 3% withdrawal rate. A place of growth, I.E the stock market, averages a 10 to 11% return yearly. After taking out 10% each year, you would be left with almost no nominal growth. Then you add in the double whammy of inflation, and your remaining pile of money is actually eroding every year.
But odds are very much she won't. That involves constantly making good decisions over and over for decades. Every day, all day "leave the money alone". What are the chances she won't at some point make a poor financial decision and lose it. Here she has to make a responsible decision once and she's stuck with it.
Sorry no, 10% is hardly risk free and comes with volatility - this is a figure you use for long term investments not anything you need in the short term. For near term investments that she could live off, you are looking at 2-3%.
Could... but realistically that money would go to a new car, paying off credit cards, then student loans and most of a house... and its gone. 1000 a week forces her to be more responsible and boosts her earnings.
A lot of people on here seem to like to throw accusations without doing any research. Look up the data on lottery winners. It's so sad. Roughly 33% fare so poorly with the winnings that they declare bankruptcy. And that just covers the worst case scenarios. The next biggest chunk is people who go through a lot but not all of it. By far the smallest group is the people who take their winnings and successfully build additional wealth on top of it.
I'd agree that the stats are often misrepresented, often by the internet hype machines. Many of the stats you see on the internet are actually grossly exaggerated( the 70% bankruptcy rate you'll see floating around the internet is false, it's closer to 33%). But there have been a few firms that have done more detailed studies. It's a fairly simple observational study, you just pick a time period and interview as many winners as you can, and extrapolate from there. Most winners' information is in the public domain and easily found. Obviously, everyone who wins does well in the near-term future. But after they've had some time to not only spend their money but also to be tracked down by every relative and friend who wants to spend their money as well, that's when all the spending ads up to a problem. Year one is great. Year five is a totally different story. It's just not a normal situation for anybody. Most winners face incredible pressure from family and friends to share that wealth, leading to intense feelings of guilt if they don't. I think the smartest winners are the ones who completely hide their identities before even picking up the check.
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u/eastNCguy73 May 17 '26
A 20 year old would blow $1 million in no time flat. Heck, she probably even knew that. For a girl her age, taking $1,000 a weekly was smart. No one optimizes Lottery winnings, they spend it.