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If you have 7 or 8 years and drop it in a vanguard s&p index fund your odds are pretty good. The $5 would be too small to even invest before getting eaten by f
by runamok 11y ago
If you have 7 or 8 years and drop it in a vanguard s&p index fund your odds are pretty good.
The $5 would be too small to even invest before getting eaten by fees.
- mikeash 11y agoYes, but lottery winners don't tend to drop their winnings in the S&P 500, they typically blow it on toys and entertainment and gifts and end up with nothing.
- smt88 11y agoI think you're on slightly different thread than we are. We were saying that $5M is easy to turn into $10M, but $5 is impossible to turn into $10. We were referring to the fact that good investment vehicles are only available to people with large sums of money. As a result, a poor person will be more inclined to blow the $5 on a lottery ticket because she has no investment options. It's still not a rational choice, but in her mind, she has nothing better to do with that $5 than take a chance at winning $10M. In her mind, that's how she gets to be a millionaire and no other way. We weren't suggesting that a lottery winner will be a smart investor.
- mikeash 11y agoI was replying to the statement that "Turning $5MM into $10MM is inevitable." As the behavior of typical big lottery winners demonstrates, it's not inevitable. Possible, yes, probably even easy, just not inevitable. That's all.
- NwmG 11y agoSemantics. I believe it was a slight hyperbole but it reads as such.
- mikeash 11y agoI was careful to state in my initial comment that it didn't affect the overall point, and that rich people who get there through other means don't tend to fail that way. So there's no need to beat me up over missing the point, because I got it.