Ok, maybe the lottery is not completely evil since state governments use the proceeds from lottery sales for funding some good things.  Still, the lottery is a horrible game for your wallet.  I’m sure everyone knows how incredibly unlikely it would be to win the lottery. To me, it is just like throwing money away.  Jim Wang of Bargaineering, describes very well how much money you could save instead of playing the lottery in one of his posts.  He also points out that the majority of people who win the lottery end up in a lot of financial trouble because they become reckless with the money.  This girl is a typical example. Perhaps these things happen when they don’t think about what to do with the money or don’t stick to a game plan.

I was talking to a friend who decided to buy lottery tickets for the MegaMillions, which had a jackpot above $300M.  She was very excited and was thinking of all the ways she would use the money.  Thinking about what you would do with a large cash windfall is actually a healthy thing to do.  Depending on the amount of money, I think I would save enough of it in cash so that I could live off of the interest alone.  This would ensure that if I blew the rest of it, I could still live off the interest on the cash in my savings.  I think I would then pay off my debt and my family members’ debt and then put a good portion of it into investments such as real estate, the stock market, and my businesses that I started recently.  If there were anything left after that, it could go to some splurging.  I think it would be most important to make sure that I can continue to generate money with the windfall above all else.

What would you do with such a windfall?