An important concept here is to note here is where you can change the outcomes. IMHO If you are good at investing you should probably take the 1M; if you live f

An important concept here is to note here is where you can change the outcomes. IMHO If you are good at investing you should probably take the 1M; if you live frugally and want to really retire take the monthly pay. Let's assume that it's all post-taxes money (both the 1M and the 5k/month) and let's calculate how good of an investor you'd have to be to take the 1M. For this, every month you should get more money than you spend. Assuming a cost of life of $5000 this would yield: 1,000,000 * (1 + x) > 5,000 => x > 0.005 => x > 0.5% Which in turn is ~6% anually (we can approximate it since 5000 / 1.000.000 ~ 0). So if you spend $5000/month, you'd need to get a return of investment larger than 6% annually. Now let's say that you move to a cheap but nice country and you get expenses down to $1000/month. After 1 year you'll have saved $48.000, which in turn you can start to re-invest. Of course this is totally theoretical, and many people would just take the 1M, overspend it and then complain. Apparently many lottery winners are dead or bankrupt: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_...