$640 million lotto ticket

So America, have you bought your lotto ticket?

That's some staggering amount of money to be won.

We bought $25 worth, so I should have $640 million after tonight.

Well, wasn't my tickets, bought 4 and not a single number on any of them.

I assume because you are online right now that you did not win the $640 million? It's that or you're finding Ozzu as your piece of haven before the madness of the media comes when they find out who you are.

LOL, we won $10 bucks. Still a loss, but at least we got something back. We got 2 numbers and the powerball. Far from the 640 million though.

I heard that there were three winners.

Wow. Imagine winning $213 million.

I am sure this is a conversation everyone has had alot, but if you were one of the winners and had $213 million, what would you do with it?

First I would payoff personal debts, family debts, close friends debts. Second I would invest a large portion of it in something safe but with a high yield and live off the interest. If I got a reasonable 1.5% interest off of 200 million that would be 3 million a year I would make -- that is plenty to live off of! 3rd Ozzu would get some major upgrades and a paid staff, and 4th some would be donated to charity =)

What would you do?

I've thought about this alot for a very long time and every time i think about it my priorities change. At one point i had it down to the very moment i came into a significant sum of money.

I'm very much thinking along the lines of you, minus the Ozzu part of course. In terms of material purchases, i'd most likely buy a few houses in various parts of the world. One would be in my home country, the other would be in New Zealand, possibly one in Australia and i may buy elsewhere in Europe or Canada. I thought about whether i'd like to do alot more travelling, but at the moment in time whilst i love to travel i wouldn't take a year out doing it for the sake of doing it. I'm quite keen on settling down a bit, so the money would be great for that.

I was reading about the winners of the lotto last night and discovered that there are two ways in which you can take the money. One is you recieve a smaller sum immediately (and likely get hit with a big bit of tax at same time) and the other is you take 26 yearly payments. Before tax i worked that out as approx $8 million a year. If i was faced with the option, as tempting as it might be to take the large sum immediately, the thought of having a guaranteed income of $8 million for the next 26 years would probably sway me towards that option instead.

100mill in 5yr CD (gaining ~5.2mill on turn-around)
100mill in savings account (gaining ~1mill in APY)

Use the other 13mill left over to spend the first year and have some fun. After that, live off the interest of the savings account, with a small bonus of 5.2million every 5 years.

You could do rolling CDs as well. So if you wanted to do five year CDs, then every year you could put 1/5 of the money in there and that way every year after five years you will get a portion paid to you. That way you don't have to wait every five years. You could even break that down further if you wanted money coming back monthly, etc.

With that much money though it probably really doesn't matter as every five years with the 5.2 million bonus you probably would be able to easily make that last another five years.

I know the powerball pays about %60 if you take the cash option, so using that standard against the 3 winners of $640 million, that means $212 million per-winner which puts %60 at $128 million cash.

If I were to put $128 million in savings accounts at 1% interest that would work out to $1.28 million in interest per year. After 26 years I would have spent $33.28 million and still have $128 million in the bank.

If I were to take $212 million in 26 payments, that would work out to $8.15 million per year. If I took $1.28 million out of that to live on every year and put the remaining $6.87 million in the bank every year, I'd have spent the same $33.28 million over 26 years but I would have $178 million in the bank after 26 years. Assuming the accounts weren't collecting any interest at all.

I need to know whether the cash option already has taxes taken out, and how much the taxes on the 26 yearly payments would be first of all.

I'd also need to know whether the remaining payments of lottery winnings can be willed to someone if I should die before the entire jackpot was paid.

I am fairly sure that when you take the cash option, that has not counted any federal taxes taken out yet.

If I had $640M, I'd buy you a fur coat (but not a real fur coat, that's cruel).

But seriously, I'd pay off my student loans, quit my job, and start a company. And open up a brewery.

You wouldn't buy some Dijon mustard? whatever Dijon mustard is.

Claim it anonymously. Finally move to Oregon or Washington. Buy a small house. Keep my SUV. Keep running my company(obviously put a lot more cash into it). Go fishing frequently.

Throw the other $639m in the bank.