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The US $ 1.5 billion jackpot for a single US lottery was awarded to a single bettor. But the winner might not be as lucky as he seems, according to studies.
The Mega Millions had accumulated 25 competitions since the end of July, for lack of winners. In October, he finally paid the second lottery prize in the history of the United States.
The probability of winning is very low – about one in 303 million. In other words, you are about 400 times more likely to be struck by lightning.
If every adult in the United States only bought one ticket with different combinations of numbers, there would remain a reasonable probability – about 7% – that there would be Meme it no winner and the amount would increase even more.
But once the winner announced and the prize withdrawn, another more interesting question arises: what happens to all this money? Studies by Jay L. Zagorsky of Boston University and other researchers show that this is often not what you imagine.
A Lesser Price Than It Appears
Winning the lottery can be a curse instead of a blessing – Photo: Marcelo Brandt / G1 [19659010] The first thing to keep in mind is that, although the amount of the premium is very high, the actual payment will be much lower.
The winner will not receive a check for $ 1.5 billion the next day. As the only winner, he can choose between a single installment of about $ 878 million or receive annual installments of $ 1.5 billion that gradually increase over 30 years.
After that comes the tax grab. If the winner comes from a US state that does not levy a lottery tax, like Florida or Texas, and opts for a single amount, the federal government will receive $ 211 million, leaving $ 667 million .
In this case, the winning ticket would have been purchased in South Carolina, which would represent an additional 7%, leaving the winner with approximately $ 606 million.
The price starts to decline, even if there is still a generous part.
In the popular imagination, winning the lottery is synonymous with life changing. In an article published in 2001, economists Guido Imbens and Bruce Priest, in partnership with statistician Donald Rubin, showed that this could happen, but that people tend to spend unexpected gains.
A financial badysis of the winners of the lottery, conducted about ten years after winning the prize, revealed that these people had saved only 16 cents per dollar earned.
In my own research, I discovered that people who had received an inheritance or a major financial gift at the age of 20, 30 and 40 had quickly lost half of their money in because of insufficient expenditure or investment.
And other studies have shown that winning the lottery does not usually help anyone who has financial difficulties to solve his problems – he only postpones the inevitable bankruptcy. One of these studies revealed that one-third of the winners lose everything.
It's not easy to "grill everything up"
Many winners use money to buy luxury cars – Photo: Divulgaçà £ o / Porsche
as a lottery winner How to spend hundreds of millions of dollars so fast? This is not easy
A demographic survey of punters' characteristics suggests that the pinnacle of lotto betting occurs when people are 30 or 39 years old and decline with age. In the United States, life expectancy in the United States is 79 years old.
Assuming the winner is in his thirties, that means he would have about 45 years to spend, for example, $ 900 million (after tax). This means that he will have to pay a little less than $ 20 million a year, or about $ 55,000 a day, to stop this money, even considering the interest accrued to the bank.
In addition, spending everything means that the winner has no badets. If he used money to buy luxury homes, Banksy, Ferraris and Aston Martins, his net worth would not change and he would be able to retire with his fortune intact, baduming that the value investments be retained or increased.
"Spend" all the money, which leads to bankruptcy and small savings, means that the winner has nothing palpable to prove his expenses and have fun.
And that's basically what a man named Huntington Hartford was doing.
The American, who lived from 1911 to 2008, inherited the fortune from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. The company, opened shortly before the Civil War, is better known as the A & P supermarket chain.
This was the first food store from an ocean to the west. from the United States and from the First World War to the 1960s, what Walmart represents today for American consumers.
Hartford inherited about $ 90 million at the age of 12. If we correct the value of inflation, it means that she has earned more than $ 1.3 billion (after taxes) during her childhood. But he declared bankruptcy in 1992, about 70 years after receiving one of the biggest fortunes in the world.
He had the opposite effect of the Midas touch. He lost millions by buying real estate, creating an art museum, sponsoring plays and shows. He combined the lack of physical fitness for business with an exceptionally luxurious lifestyle.
After declaring bankruptcy, he lived solitary in the Bahamas with one of his daughters until his death.
Luck is at your side
Hartford's life story, coupled with academic research, shows that money falling from the sky does not always make happiness. Spitting is easier than it seems.
If you play the lottery without winning, I wish you good luck next time. If you bet and win, I wish you good luck.
However, one of the most important lessons, whether you play the lottery or not, is that by receiving unexpected money, you have to think about the future and resist the temptation so human to spend everything.
Jay L. Zagorsky is an badociate professor at Boston University in the United States. This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and has been reissued here under a Creative Commons license.
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