Recently I happened to catch a commercial saying that the Mega Millions jackpot had reached $300 million. 300 million smackeroos for buying a $1 ticket and getting some numbers right. Usually you see the people who win these are either the elderly or the backwoods poor people who then have no idea what to do with it when they win. Hell, as we covered on our episode last week, people sometimes even throw away their winning tickets. Now the chances of winning this are slim to none, but seeing that made me wonder, what would I do if I ever did win Mega Millions?

First, let’s quickly look at a story of a person that went broke, and we’ve got a doozy for you: Billy Bob Harrell. Billy Bob won $31 million from the Texas Lottery. Life was good for a while…until he couldn’t say no to anyone, including his wife, who asked for a divorce. Billy Bob literally gave away all his money, falling into depression until he eventually committed suicide.

Now that I’ve thoroughly depressed you, I’ll tell you there’s no way that this would ever happen to me. I’ve worked in finance and banking too long to blow through everything that quickly. I can, however, tell you what I’d do. If this is too logical for you, I apologize. Maybe Shaun can do the “buy your own island and conduct mad scientist experiments” blog post on Friday. Let’s assume for these purposes (because it’s easy) that I took the lump sum and only got about 60% of the $300 million. Let’s also assume I have no kids in this scenario, because…well, I don’t. Continue reading “Making Millions”