Posted on 10/23/2018 11:49:00 AM PDT by lowbridge
The head of the Mega Millions on Monday revealed the very first thing the potential winner of the game’s historic $1.6 billion jackpot should do: Sign the ticket and keep a low profile.
The simple yet sage advice came from Gordon Medenica, the game’s lead director and director of the Maryland lottery.
“Sign the ticket! Because keep in mind that little slip of paper is a billion-dollar bill — imagine that,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” “So you want to secure it and also be calm. Don’t be running to the ‘Today’ show the next day.”
Medenica also advised, “Get some good advice, get a good financial adviser, good lawyer, tax accountant, all that. Get your affairs in order. You’ve got between six months and 12 months to come and claim the ticket.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
One piece of advice that will go unheeded is that you can choose to take the earnings over a period of 30 years, which would be a fabulous fixed income!
I gonna get me a bigger truck!
I won’t live that long, I’ll take it in a lump sum
and then go on a serious shopping spree; that is if Holland & Holland is still taking orders for rifles. LOL
If you sign the ticket, it will be in YOUR NAME when you redeem it. That information will be published. Then you will need to keep an even lower profile, which will be impossible.
This is terrible advice.
Either disappear to someplace where you are not known to anyone, or hire bonded security 24/7. You’ve just become a target for kidnapping, or extortion if you have skeletons in your closet.
Unless you lived in Illinois, where they will issue you an IOU for the next thirty years.
Take the money at once, because you will not be able to force the state to honour what it owes you if you take payouts over the next thirty years.
Invest money yourself through several investment firms instead and you will do almost as well over the same time period.
Everyone takes the lump sum.
Why? Taxes. Think the markets will do better?
Rather have it in my hand and invest it myself.
The first thing recommended, upon receiving the money, is depositing a reasonable amount in the bank, after you have it set up for investments and take off for 6 months to separate the news of the win for yourself and enjoy a nice vacation as you figure out what to do with the rest of your life.
Here’s an excerpt, with link, from back when Powerball was over $1 billion:
...The best thing a winner can do is stay anonymous, financial adviser and CPA Kurt Panouses, who helped a Florida couple that won a portion of the largest jackpot ever, said.
“The initial concern of the ticket is probably the most important part of the planning aspect,” Panouses said. “What the individual should do is protect the ticket, keep it safe, put it in a safe place, but do not sign the back of the ticket.”
“Whoever signs the back of the ticket is the individual that has to claim the ticket and the proceeds,” Panouses explained.
Panouses also suggested making a copy of the ticket and getting a tax professional and an attorney to help manage the funds and offer investment advice.
Link: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/317669
As for the comment about taking it over 30 instead of a lump sum, the time value of money must be considered.
Most of the time I would disagree with you.
Inflation would eat away your annuity at a rate of 3-5% a year. But with the pot THIS big, there is hardly any fear of that.
That said, taking the lump sum is the financially sound move almost every time. You can invest to keep up with inflation and changing times.
Thirty years from now is going to look very different.
That’s not the advice I’m hearing in PSA’s on college radio coming from the local historically black university. There’s an attorney saying to retain an attorney, set up an LLC then a blind trust, fill out the name of the blind trust with address being your attorney’s office, and have the attorney claim the winnings on behalf of your blind trust.
If you lose the ticket and somebody else signs the ticket, the ticket belongs to them.
can one make millionaires out of adult children, relative etc without them having huge tax problems/
Most trust better and are advised to take the lump sum. Letting the guv keep your money in their possession is seldom a good thing.
One could think it could control overspending for the profligate, but it is too easy to simply borrow against it anyway.
At 75 I may not be around to collect the last few payments. A little something for the kids and grandkids, I guess. And maybe a nice new wing for St. Judes. And reducing the need for FReepatons.
I’m donating it all to Trump, to build that wall.
At those numbers who cares about inflation.
Spend it like a drunken sailor
Too bad Fred Trump isn’t still around to advise on that!
;-)
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