If you won the powerball, how would you spend/use the money?

You also didn't factor in income tax. Once you factor that in, you're looking at probably 5.6m (this can vary depending on if you live in one of the few states w/o state income tax).

Also, here's some advice in case you actually do win (hey, you've got as good of a chance as anyone else, and no one expects it to be them), because your idea is kind of terrible.

Lump sum is $264m. Get a tax lawyer and then make it even, take 14m for yourself now. You can find a nice ass house for under 10m. Pay half down and get a mortgage. Why? Because why not:

  • You're rich enough that you will never have to worry about defaulting on it. You'll also probably get a good rate.
  • The payments would be relatively small and easy to pay without having to dip back into your investment accounts.
  • If you bought a $10m house, this would essentially cost you $5m upfront, and then you would have $9m to live off of. The taxes and mortgage would only run you about $200k/year -- small potatoes in the long-run.
  • You're going to want to keep as much money as possible initially so you don't have to dip into your investment accounts.

So, this is an important concept to realize. You want to go for as long as you can without having to dip into your investment account (this is just how investing works, patience is rewarded handsomely [usually]). Reason being is that you're severely hurting yourself otherwise. That is, it will put a big dent in your earnings potential.

This habit would cause your money not to grow very quickly (drawing $2m/year). Which is fine, I mean who needs that much money anyway? But you never know. Something like life extension may be incredibly expensive in the future. If you're young enough space travel might be a thing. But if nothing else, just make all of that bonus money just to give to charity.

Anyway, to get $2m you would need to draw almost $4m because of taxes. So boom, there goes 38% of your yearly earnings. Whoever manages your funds will get a cut too, probably .2% to .5% (taking you from 5% to 4.8% - 4.5%. Then factor in inflation (last year it was 2.1%), so now you're at 2.8% - 2.5%. This gives your return a relative value of $5m instead of $10m. To clarify, you would still see $10m at the end of the year, but each year you would just get relatively less for it. Anyway, in the end, you would really only being beating inflation by like 1% after you draw on your account. Kind of shitty, right? You'd still have a pretty baller life, but you could do so much better with an easy adjustment.

Personally I would just put most of it with Charles Schwab. Reasonable fees, lots of options, lots of capital, a well-known name, and a decent history. You could put your money in a pretty conservative account and still make like 9.1%/year. So take take that 1% figure before and now it's 5%. If you hold off as long as possible you could still draw that $2m and the damage will be compartively less.

A fun idea to think about: 2m/year would mean that you could spend $5479/day. Of course you would probably make some big purchases, but still. There would be some days that you spend more, some less, it should even out.

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