13 ms·

I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family

155 points by prostoalex 5y ago

philwelch 5y ago
Classic Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_... > Congratulations! You just won millions of dollars in the lottery! That's great. > Now you're fucked. > No really. > You are. > You're fucked. This guy did exactly the right thing.
- alecst 5y ago
  It's such a low bar to pass. The guy in the article is 67, makes 1MM+ in interest a year, and won't even consider telling his friends or family? Or donating a penny of it? Is there not room for a middle ground here? What about: "Hey, I made a million bucks in the lottery/stocks/crypto. I heard you're having a tough time, take this -- you don't owe me anything. Wishing you well, -Dave."
  - philwelch 5y ago
    Word gets around and eventually you're going to get harassed, conned, and maybe even robbed.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I'll point out that, like it or not, the sort of money you're talking about is in the range of many CEOs or other senior execs of large US companies. Yes, some of these do have security services especially those at the high end of the range, but tens of millions of dollars pretty much puts you in the wealthy but not Uber-rich in the US.
      - philwelch 5y ago
        Yeah, I think it’s the shape of the transition that makes the difference, and even then it can be weird. If you’re an executive at a large company, you’ve spent so much time working on that that your social circle has changed. Even if you’re a startup founder, you’re not surrounded by the kids you went to high school with, you’re surrounded by enough other rich people that they aren’t gonna mooch off of you. Winning the lottery is more like a rookie in a professional sports league signing their first contract. Sometimes that works out fine—they buy their mom a house and a new car—and sometimes they go broke supporting an entire entourage.
        ghaff 5y ago
        Good comments. As an extremely wealthy person or the very visible CEO of a company/division that stirs a lot of passion, you may want security against the nut cases. (I have some knowledge of this from trade shows.) But for someone who has "just" become 8 figures wealthy over the course of their career, they may have some family branch that resents it but their relative success isn't an out of the blue thing. And CEOs are pretty good about saying no to people who want money for things.
  - kiba 5y ago
    And attracts stalkers and desperate? It may not be his friends or families, but strangers.
  - shocks 5y ago
    “Hi Dave, Thanks for reaching out. You’re right that we were struggling and this generous gift really helped ease our minds. Anyway, Auntie Venessa has come down with lung cancer and we’re finding it difficult to…” etc
    - throw123123123 5y ago
      "I never really liked Auntie Venessa"
      - N00bN00b 5y ago
        Most humans suck at sorting out the cognitive dissonance between "I am a good guy" and "I let auntie Vanessa die". Doesn't mean your approach isn't right. A lot of people just can't do that properly and it can cause stress and depression, so for them it's probably easier to just avoid having to think about it. Humans aren't really the most sophisticated when it comes to situations like this. Almost like we weren't supposed to have 10,000x times more resources at our disposal compared to the person standing next to us. But let's just ignore that and continue our game of monopoly. Maybe this time it'll end differently. I'm sitting next to the bank though, so the outcome is pretty much certain for me.
    - ksaj 5y ago
      This was already taken care of by saying that he won/made a million. So that would mean there is no money left for Auntie Venessa. So his reply could literally be "I gave you a mil. Pay some of it forward."
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    Psychologically, the middle ground turns out to be an unstable equilibrium. You can give them some money, but then they come back for more. If you say no, your family may find itself breaking apart unless you give up everything you got in the lottery
    - derekp7 5y ago
      In that Reddit thread (assuming it is the one I'm thinking of) it seems there is also a high likelihood you get sued for giving people money because you didn't give them enough (under the same line of thought that if you regularly feed wild birds they will become dependent on your bird feeder and starve if you quit [don't know how true that is, but that is a common "wisdom"]). You also get harassed by local police, in addition to friends of your family breaking into your house/car.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > it seems there is also a high likelihood you get sued for giving people money because you didn't give them enough Yup. Families can be like that. Some distant relatives of mine, whom I never met, have been suing each other over some inheritance for what must be a good ~20 years now. I know because we're still getting an occasional mail from court calling my dad (who died many years ago) to stand witness in that case.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    No no, see, once you actually have money you stop caring about other people and just want to protect what you have. "Got mine, fuck you" and all that. At least, that's how it seems from all the advice that gets thrown around about people who suddenly come in to wealth. Weirdly no one gives advice related to the documented ways that people tend to change when they suddenly have much more money than the people around them.
    - stagger87 5y ago
      > the documented ways that people tend to change when they suddenly have much more money than the people around them Please share said documents. (Genuinely)
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        The study that comes immediately to mind is Paul K Piff's Monopoly experiment. In it, one participant of each game was given twice as much starting money, twice as much Go money, and twice as many dice as the others. Consistently the "affluent" player would become more aggressive and less polite as the game went on. Other experiments conducted by Piff indicate a lack of empathy associated with increasing wealth. High wealth individuals being shown to be more likely to cut people off in traffic, lie during job interviews, cheat on tests, and in one experiment even more likely to steal candy from children. One could, however, claim that Piff is biased, and for sure Psych studies have come under fire in general for being irreproducible. So I guess take it all with a grain of salt.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - andi999 5y ago
    How much do you donate annually? 10 Million people donating 100$ per year is substantially more than he could ever donate.
    - alecst 5y ago
      Therefore he should not donate any? I don't see where to go from this position.
      - andi999 5y ago
        Everybody can choose to donate, nobody should donate (otherwise it is also not really a donation if you should). Singling out rich guys to donate who do not donate could actually be counterproductive (since people just feel the responsibility lies with the rich guys). Encouraging everybody to donate small amounts of money might lead to a better outcome.
        alecst 5y ago
        I don't really see how that adds up. In order to collect $50B, everyone in the US would need to donate about $150. Or, Jeff Bezos could liquidate a 1/3 of his net worth. A bit exaggerated, and a bit of a cartoon, but you get the point. Plus, the utility of an extra billion dollars to a billionaire is basically zero. Fight me if you disagree.
        andi999 5y ago
        Well Bezos donated 12 billion already, and who knows how much more he will donate. He probably couldn't donate every year that amount, so if you say in 20 years it is 150$/20=7.50per year which is less than a dollar per month (admittingly this is everybody in the US). This is a lot of money for a lot of people but I still believe the total possible donatable wealth of non rich people is orders of magnitude larger than rich people (couldn't find good stats, was looking a while ago)
  - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
    “Three people can keep a secret if two are dead”
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - barnesto 5y ago
    What Dave does with his money is none of your concern. But since he put it out in the public, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. You see, that's the point of not telling anyone. Everyone has an opinion and once they know a little something about anything they want to share it. Most of those opinions are how to separate Dave from his money. Nobody needs that in their lives. Not Dave. Not anyone. He was right to keep quite and it looks like he had good reason to keep it quite in the first place. How you feel about finding a middle ground is the problem Dave was looking to avoid. See my first sentence.
    - alecst 5y ago
      Our anonymous Dave has a tremendous excess of wealth that far exceeds his needs and his ability or desire to spend it. He asked "Was I wrong in not telling anyone about my winnings?" My response was to that. Maybe sharing it, rather than concealing it, might actually make his life a little better (there is a soft joy in giving), and bring him closer to the needs of people around him. I don't see why you think I crossed a line by giving my opinion. The man is asking for opinions!
      - hinkley 5y ago
        What if Dave gets aggressive ALS and there is stem cell research that looks promising, but basically he has to help fund research? Does Dave need that now? Can he ask for it back? I worked with people who tried to retire early but got embezzled. They knew someone whose wife got diagnosed with cancer months after retirement and that money just went poof. You can’t see the future, you don’t know. What you know is that people overplan for emergencies and miss out on positive experiences because if it. These are not the same thing.
      - philwelch 5y ago
        > My response was to that. Maybe sharing it, rather than concealing it, might actually make his life a little better (there is a soft joy in giving), and bring him closer to the needs of people around him. It would sure be nice to think that. But that's not how the world works. From the link I posted above, and very abridged: > Jack Whittaker, a Johnny Cash attired, West Virginia native, is the poster boy for the dangers of a lump sum award. In 2002 Mr. Whittaker (55 years old at the time) won what was, also at the time, the largest single award jackpot in U.S. history. $315 million. At the time, he planned to live as if nothing had changed, or so he said. He was remarkably modest and decent before the jackpot, and his ship sure came in, right? Wrong. > Mr. Whittaker became the subject of a number of personal challenges, escalating into personal tragedies, complicated by a number of legal troubles. ... > Whittaker quickly became the subject of a number of financial stalkers, who would lurk at his regular breakfast hideout and accost him with suggestions for how to spend his money. They were unemployed. No, an interview tomorrow morning wasn't good enough. They needed cash NOW. Perhaps they had a sure-fire business plan. Their daughter had cancer. A niece needed dialysis. Needless to say, Whittaker stopped going to his breakfast haunt. Eventually, they began ringing his doorbell. Sometimes in the early morning. Before long he was paying off-duty deputies to protect his family. He was accused of being heartless. Cold. Stingy. > Letters poured in. Children with cancer. Diabetes. MS. You name it. He hired three people to sort the mail. A detective to filter out the false claims and the con men (and women) was retained. ... > Whittaker's car was twice broken into, by trusted acquaintances who watched him leave large amounts of cash in it. $500,000 and $200,000 were stolen in two separate instances. The thieves spiked Whittaker's drink with prescription drugs in the first instance. The second incident was the handiwork of his granddaughter's friends, who had been probing the girl for details on Whittaker's cash for weeks. ... > Whittaker invested quite a bit in his own businesses, tripled the number of people his businesses employed (making him one of the larger employers in the area) and eventually had given away $14 million to charity through a foundation he set up for the purpose. This is, of course, what you are "supposed" to do. Set up a foundation. Be careful about your charity giving. It made no difference in the end. ... > Today Whittaker is badly in debt, and bankruptcy looms large in his future.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    > Or donating a penny of it? He's 67. If he's incredibly lucky, he'll have another 30 years to enjoy it. He has no kids. I don't see anything wrong with donating it at/near death rather than now. We are not morally obliged to live the life of an ascetic.
  - zepearl 5y ago
    > Is there not room for a middle ground here? Probably difficult. If I would do <something> it would trigger some sort of chain reaction => probably difficult to keep it contained => I would have to try to at least act slowly & do stuff step-by-step. Personally for me it would be really hard if not impossible not to tell my parents, hehe. But once a bigger audience would become aware of that, e.g. cousins, then it could start getting very complicated (e.g. if I would end up donating $ to cousin X because s/he has financial problems or I just want to be nice, then cousin Y or nephew W might want to know why s/he's not getting anything, etc...). People to whom I donate money to might end up quickly losing it (bad investment because of multiple potential reasons, most famous one just not being used to have to deal with such an amount of money), then once they lost it they might come back to me asking for a "replay" (e.g. "pls. save me, you gave me $$ but I screwed up and made debts - you've done it once so can you give me a 2nd chance! Pleasepleaseplease!") and saying "no" will make them angry and because of the whole situation (which would basically be something which I triggered) I might end up feeling like I own them something, with the final result that the relationship would suffer even if originally it was good (all all $ would be gone). All this is not irrealistic - e.g. I saw in the past some short documentaries about NFL and soccer players screwing up their lifes because of all the money they got all of a sudden. Personally I think that I would probably try to create some kind of "cover story" (e.g. something involving having "earned" it the hard way - because just saying e.g. "I won it" might make people start to think "s/he got the $ easily therefore chances might be high that s/he'll easily share some of it with me" but on the other hand that's probably less likely to happen if I would say "I had to 100 hours a week during the last 5 years") and I would probably say that I got a lot less (e.g. 3-5M $) which would just be fine to give me a chance to raise a bit my standard of living and stop working after having paid taxes but not to give out left&right money for free. Even the question "stop working?" might not be easy to answer (maybe just do something part-time, otherwise by not working at all I would feel disconnected from all my friends & colleagues) Even if I would manage to keep everything absolutely secret and not to do anything with that $, my bank WOULD call me asking what I plan to do with the $M that are parked on my account, probably asking for an appointment to tell me about many interesting investment opportunities => that's a difficult situation for any person who's not used to deal with this stuff, e.g. people might not want to admit (or just would not be aware) that they don't understand the risks linked to some investments/financial products/whatever. Saying "no" is often a lot harder than to say "yes" :)
- yupper32 5y ago
  That thread is really dumb. You can't just throw stuff out there like "You're 20x more likely to die of homicide!" and expect to be taken seriously. 1. The demographic that is likely to win lotteries might already be more likely to die of homicide (or become bankrupt, etc) than the general population. 2. Throwing large multiples out sounds flashy, but it doesn't mean much if the probability was already extremely low. You're not fucked if you win the lottery... The amount you can afford with 100 million is incredible. Buy a huge lot and hire security. Hire great attorneys and financial firms to handle details. Don't spend more than you expect to make in interest yearly. Boom, saved you from having to read a wall of Reddit lottery porn.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    That thread isn't particularly dumb. It's a completely normal level of dumbness for a reddit thread. You just happened to be able to smell the bullshit because you approached the topic in question with a critical eye.
    - allsmjio 5y ago
      They’re just nitpicking the unimportant bits while unwittingly(?) agreeing with the important bits (and adding some silliness of his own). But somehow that sort of smug contrarianism attracts this sort of self-congratulatory back rub about how “we” on hackernews are so much more enlightened than the blue forum’s masses…thus fulfilling the “normal level of dumbness” for an Orange Subreddit thread.
      - yupper32 5y ago
        I'm not nitpicking the unimportant bits. Half the thread is telling people why they're fucked (No really. You are. You're fucked.), and then using incorrect statistics and a long anecdote to back up their claim. I am not making any claims on the dumbness on either platform, though.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I never said it's any better here. All these "cram a bunch of disparate interest in one place" platforms are crap when it comes to discussion quality as far as I'm concerned. You want good discussion on a topic you gotta go where only the people who do that topic are and everyone else isn't.
- samstave 5y ago
  There wasa reddit thread previously where a guy had 1,500 BTC in a wallet he couldnt recall the password for... I wrote to him calculating the value of the wallet at the time at $13 million.. I encouraged him to pay someone to help him crack the wallet and he agreed to give me 1% to assist him, which I did... Then when he got the BTC, he ghosted. If he succeeded, that BTC is $72 million today...
jnwatson 5y ago
Other than not donating any of it, he made the right call. The fact that the winner still has the money after 10 years is evidence he took the correct course.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I would not consider not donating to be wrong, or donating to necessarily be right.
  - jnwatson 5y ago
    Bioethicist/philosopher Peter Singer disagrees. "if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior." [1] I'm inclined to agree with him. This is my current moral quandry, since my income is about to dramatically increase. I'm looking for a new car. I can pay in cash. I could pay $90K for a Porsche, or $20K for a used Honda and donate $70K to Doctors without Borders. (I don't drive much, so the difference in environmental impact is negligible.) This is not theoretical. People in Haiti are dying just 1400 miles away, and $70K could really help. 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml
    - cf100clunk 5y ago
      The donor's dilemma: to whom when so many are needy? I'd suggest donating to a reputable agreggator, such as the United Way or Red Cross.
      - vymague 5y ago
        And there's the usual claim that many charities are super corrupt. Yes, there are lists of "good" charities. But you know.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      Funny how Peter Singer condemns comfort while living comfortably enough to have the time to write and publish a dozen books [1]. That time could've really helped a lot of people. Wonder what his thoughts on hypocrisy are. For me, other people's problems aren't my problem. If I won a billion dollars I'd probably donate to things generously out of mild interest in trying to make the world more to my liking, but that's about it. Not my fault if others are suffering, nor is it my fault if I get lucky some day. In my experience I've found that the more of a martyr someone tries to be, having a boat and trying to save others from drowning, the more they end up just being another body in the water, leaving the world worse off than if they had helped less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Publications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Publications
deleted 5y ago
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42069 5y ago
I made ~50 million in crypto. By far the most satisfying part was buying a house each for my friends and family. Having a paid off house is really a massive stress reducer for most people which imho gives you the 90% of the financial freedom of being super wealthy.
- post_break 5y ago
  That's the dream right there. I've got 20 years to go on my note for my house and I just think wow, once this thing is paid off I've got it made in the shade. Good on you for helping them, much better investment than just buying them cars or gifts.
- ibaikov 5y ago
  Wonder if people like you think about funding startups that are not attractive to traditional investors. I'm talking about funding outsiders with something that doesn't sound very exciting, but might work out
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    If this person wanted to hear about that sort of opportunity, they probably wouldn't have been so careful about secrecy.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > funding startups that are not attractive to traditional investors It's a great way to lose a lot of money. It's why venture capitalists prefer to play with other people's money. You better absolutely love playing god with start-ups, because there is a hellish nightmare that can go with allocating capital to high-risk new businesses, tracking everything, being responsible for it, enforcing legal agreements, dealing with lawyers and accountants, dealing with conflicts, watching people do incredibly stupid things with your money, and on and on and on it goes. And you can't just hire people to entirely remove you from the annoying aspects, because that's an even faster way to lose a lot of money.
    - 5y ago
post_break 5y ago
This is the right thing to do if you want to keep it and stay sane. If I won I'd delete all social networking, change my phone number, set up an LLC and make purchases through that. The quote of "I know that my parents would not have asked for a thing, but my sister would have told me to donate half to her church" makes my stomach turn.
- Jxl180 5y ago
  Setting up an LLC to be used as your personal incognito identity is definitely illegal. LLCs are meant to be for operating a legitimate business, not a second personal identity.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    IANAL, but this seems more theoretically correct than practically correct. The truly wealthy have hierarchies of LLCs for the purpose of tax "minimization".
    - Jxl180 5y ago
      IANAL as well, but I’m sure that is very well the case. Edit: maybe it’s not illegal, just a bad idea: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/llc-basics-30163.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/llc-basics-30163.htm... If owners don't treat the LLC as a separate business, a court might decide that the LLC doesn't really exist and find that its owners are really doing business as individuals who are personally liable for their acts.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        I have no criticisms of Nolo, but "the truly wealthy" hire lawyers. Those professionals are skilled at determining whether to set up partnerships, C-corps, LLCs, whatever. Besides we're talking about anonymity for anonymity's sake (well, also tax minimization and probably lots of other rich people priorities we peons can't imagine), not for dodging creditors. If the principal is poor enough to need to dodge creditors, probably the whole house of paper collapses. (Probably also the lawyers are the first to know, so they'll get paid up front and be long gone at the time of collapse.)
alecst 5y ago
In contrast with the prototypical lottery winner who burns through all their money and ends up basically where they started, this guy didn't spend any significant amount of his money and ended up basically where he started.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Except this guy never has to work again if he doesn't want to.
- Animats 5y ago
  Most people who suddenly make a lot of money blow through it in only seven years. (From "The Challenges of Wealth", 1988). This guy is doing the right thing. Many of those people making at high salaries at FAANG companies need to be saving more of it, because they'll be over the hill in their 40s, with 40 years left to go.
- treesknees 5y ago
  There's a balancing act of saving vs spending. A lot of people pinch pennies and save for retirement, working 60-80 hr weeks, skipping vacations and family parties, buying the cheapest car, etc. When they get to be 65 their health prevents them from actually enjoying that money. Maybe they get to that age and they die and never get to spend any of it. I do hope this guy is at least going on some trips and utilizing his gift while he can. Seems pretty pointless to hoard $50M to do nothing with it (yes, he collects the interest, but my point still stands.)
thepasswordis 5y ago
Not that much, but I did make a ton of money in crypto. Similar thing: bought a house, also bought myself a nice car. I didn't tell any of my friends, but did mistakenly tell one of my parents, who then felt it necessary to share this information with the rest of my family. If you make a bunch of money: I would highly recommend not telling people. The will treat you differently (not in a good way).
- ghaff 5y ago
  It probably depends where you are in life, how much money, your relationship to family, how comfortable they are, etc. Certainly seemed like the right call in this case. On the other hand, if your family is comfortable, this happens to you when you're 35 and want to retire and travel the world at least for a while, it's probably hard to deny that you had some sort of real financial windfall.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Say you became a consultant.
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      "I'm an outside consultant to beach resorts and other interesting places."
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        I work on globally scalable and extremely complex systems. Specifically, the ecosystem. I test it for enjoyment purposes.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        A professional reviewer for a travel guide so prestigious it isn't even published and only has a single customer.
    - ghaff 5y ago
donmcronald 5y ago
> I also do not believe in loaning money to friends and relatives, no matter what. This guy sounds like a special kind of asshole. Who wins $55 million dollars and thinks about “loaning” money to their parents? Lol. I get why you wouldn’t want to tell anyone you won the lotto, but you can tell a little white lie and claim to be doing well career wise so you have an excuse to give your parents some money. This guy wants to justify being a greedy jerk IMO.
- thrill 5y ago
  Low-Key's sister, is this you?
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Unless his parents were about to be evicted due to payment delinquencies, why would he need to give or lend them money?
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    And until such a time, he can at least give his parents the gift of not asking them for money.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Man, if I won that kind of money I'd treat my parents to crazy stuff like a nice classic car or a trip around the world... and I'm not even that close to them.
- lazyeye 5y ago
  Multiply this comment by x10000 and thats precisely what youll be dealing with as described exactly in this previously mentioned Reddit thread https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_...
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
What is the point of writing a letter like this to a money advice column? His only question is, "Was I wrong in not telling anyone about my winnings?" Surely by 67 you should understand that wrong is the eye of the beholder. Only you can answer whether you did right or wrong, although I will say that sending a letter to an advice column is a signal that you are not completely satisfied with your decision. Honestly this comes off like a brag -- simply because he is not conveying any information other than his wealth and dislike for his family. There are a bunch of different ways to approach having a lot of money. I have been lucky enough to be extremely well compensated these last few years. To the point where we are getting on toward having so much money that it doesn't seem possible to use it all, although we are nowhere in the range of this lottery winner. My family knows I'm doing well, but perhaps not exactly how well, which is a fine state of affairs as long as everyone understands that there are boundaries. I think you can use money like that to make life better for your loved ones without going all the way toward making them dependents, and personally it has felt right to do that for me. But everyone has their own views on what is best.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  What is the point of writing a letter like this to a money advice column? You're right: there's no point in writing a letter like this. But also: did somebody actually write this letter? This is pure speculation but I'm about 99.99% certain that 99.99% of letters to advice columns are wholly fabricated by those who write the columns... right?
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > Surely by 67 you should understand that wrong is the eye of the beholder. Knowing that and feeling that are two different things. Sometimes you just need to hear it from another person (and, quite often, you should - it's easy to get stuck in a wrong view). There's nothing wrong with asking.
- bagacrap 5y ago
  is there some age at which it stops feeling good to be told you did the right thing?
- 5y ago
ajay-b 5y ago
I made enough in bitcoin to buy myself a condo all in cash. I told friends it was a small inheritance.
throwaway58483 5y ago
~$11 million from a whistleblower reward. Similar in some ways to winning the lottery, but there was no way to avoid some friends and family finding out. E.g. a friend and my dad helped edit my award claim submission. I moved to a new city, kept it private, eventually told a couple new friends. Some people treat you the same, some people treat you differently (in a bad way, like another commenter mentioned). So it's useful as a filtering mechanism.
- vymague 5y ago
  Obvious question, the people you blew the whistle on didn't hire people to track and harass you? Or worse.
  - throwaway58483 5y ago
    They did. I got a Belgian Malinois and a concealed carry permit.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Wow, can you say who you blew the whistle on? And where I can find a whistle like that? ;) Seems like being somebody who blew the whistle would act as a pretty good filtering mechanism too. You probably don't get many invitations to hang out and party with Matt Gaetz...
spoonjim 5y ago
The point of this letter is to brag when the OP clearly cannot brag to the people he actually wants to.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Why not just vacation to a place where shallow people congregate (say... Las Vegas?) and stay in a ridiculously opulent hotel while renting a ridiculously fancy automobile? Stay a couple of weeks, eat fancy meals, receive the various plaudits of those who admire wealth, and when it all gets sickening one can just fly home. One would have to spend the extra money it takes to keep one's true identity confidential, but that's one of the many perks of wealth.
hurricanesugar 5y ago
Disclosing these details to a popular blog seems to go against principles that keep him anonymous. My curiosity wonders which of the details ($55M, California, “sister”) are actually true or skewed to sustain his anonymity. Tip of the hat to him for going 10 years(!!!) without telling anyone he won the lottery.
liquidise 5y ago
The friend/family perception is real and one thing, but really i think this silence creates yet more separation creating ever more loneliness. Ultimately, my fear for lottery winners is akin to discovering cheat codes in early video games. Turning on "Infinite Money" in $GAME was great... until it quickly sucked all of the joy out of the game. The limited resource challenge disappeared. I don't know anyone who has won the lottery, but i'd be worried you risk creating that very same sentiment, except about life itself. Scary, should you not have another well-established and faithfully-held purpose.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  You could make the same argument about a steady food supply but I'm not going to start foraging exclusively.
- DanielleMolloy 5y ago
  The cheat code feeling might only occur if your focus in life is earning lots of money. If you are instead pursuing to contribute something valuable in arts or sciences, a ton of money might just give you ease of mind and time to create something really worthwhile. Thinking about René Descartes, Charles Darwin and (as a more recent example) Jimmy Wales. It could indeed be that many of the former lottery winners ending up badly fell into the former camp.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I wouldn't worry about life itself. Life is not like a single-player games, the challenges thrown at you usually are not meant to be fun. The more worrying part is the deteriorating social network. You go through life surrounded by friends and family, who are mostly in similar circumstances to you, face mostly similar problems. It's one of the biggest group-binding force. After a big windfall, you'll no longer have the same problems as other people in your life. That'll make it tricky to maintain relationships.
cf100clunk 5y ago
This would never fly in Canada, where lottery winners must present themselves in person for wins, with publicity and all. Full names are given to the press, complete with home town and smiling face. Some winners have tried to skirt or directly challenge those regulations, to no avail. A winner cannot disappear behind an LLC or other apparatus. Frankly I'd be greatly worried about collecting a huge win from a Canadian lottery unless I departed the ceremony directly to a private plane for any of the well known tax havens in the Caribbean.
- misiti3780 5y ago
  In Israel apparently too: https://youtu.be/9PK-netuhHA?t=351 https://youtu.be/9PK-netuhHA?t=351
- ghaff 5y ago
  I believe it's true to at least some degree of some US states as well. I assume this is a transparency thing so people know that the governor's brother didn't by "sheer chance" win the lottery.
- speg 5y ago
  Could you just change your name & address before you claim your prize?
- fivefifty 5y ago
  That would suck. In China when you win the lottery, while they don't reveal your name, you still need to collect the prize/cheque in person and pose for publicity shots. This has lead to the amusing situation of most winners turning up in various masks or even full sports event mascot style costumes to collect the winnings.
alberto-m 5y ago
Probably a fake. I visit MarketWatch a couple of times a week and they always feature on the front page a letter of someone in a unusual financial situation who has taken, or is planning, questionable decisions about their money. The ghost writer behind this is quite good, I have to admit.
- ramg 5y ago
  This reads/feels like an AITA thread on reddit. I used to enjoy the MarketWatch questions until I reached a tipping point where I believed they were all fake. Sigh.
bsanr2 5y ago
I feel kind of dirty gossiping, but I also feel like Low-Key's story is a bit fishy. He's "the good child" who didn't tell his parents about lottery winnings that certainly would have been enough to, at the very least, give back to the people who raised him; however, he DID go out of his way to convince them to write his sister out of their will (we have no idea if the "horrible things" she supposedly did reasonably justified being disowned). It's his money to do with what he wants, of course, but it feels as if we're hearing only one side, and that of a party who feels guilty and is looking for extrinsic support for their behavior. I'm trying to understand why someone who felt no qualms would post this publicly.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I have a thing where I made a "bunch" (not a lot for Westerners, but people in other countries can do it too) of money online and a couple blogs publicized it. It is not something I could hide as it is very public if you look correctly. I get an absurd number of scam attempts, some of them very customized. Someone tried to fake a family stamp collection (I collect stamps). Also, random people who looked me up would introduce me when I met them with other people as "the guy who [did $thing to get $amount). Even people in North America. And we are talking about 30K ish here.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> You no doubt realize that money doesn’t change who you are. It can, however, change others’ perceptions of you. People project their own needs, resentments, insecurities and ambitions onto others. Compare and despair is an often unavoidable human trait. This, so much. It doesn't even take that much money for some people to recategorize you in their head, once they figure out you have more than them.
asciimov 5y ago
Way to humble brag about your winnings there fella. I'd want to know did he at least help his parents be more comfortable in their final years. Has he enjoyed the money at all; taken some trips or had some experiences that only money can buy you? It's fine if he didn't, but what's the point if you aren't enjoying it to some extent.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  I think you can enjoy money without spending it. It's nice to think "Hey, that's pretty cool, and I could buy it if I wanted to."
paradigm_ 5y ago
I made a good deal from long-term crypto holdings and never told anyone, and it was much easier that way. I would still help family; they just didn't know how easy it was for me to help them, and so didn't ask for more. Startup exit happened and a wrench got thrown in it all, though. Many acquaintances from years ago would text me about having had a class with me and having seen the news. I told myself I'd reply after a few weeks but in the end never did. The paranoia since has made me a substantially worse person, and taken away how easily I trust. When it comes to dating, I alternate between "money is now the most stable part of my life, so who cares if people partially like me over it? I earned it after all!" and "it's not as meaningful, I want someone who likes me solely for my other traits, but I can't trust whether that's the case." Do everything you can to keep your success private.
throwaway1981xx 5y ago
This week I have had two of my few friendships hit the rocks who have approached me for money. One is pushing me to invest in his business, and one approached me for a reasonably large loan. I've explained to both that I don't feel able to, but I can tell that both feel I am being unreasonable because it's only $XXk which they know isn't that significant to me. I wish they hadn't have asked as it feels fatal for the friendships. I already feel a bit of an outsider for sometimes having money. Maybe all of these problems are in my own head..... Either way, the lottery winner had the right idea.
- zanmat0 5y ago
  Unfortunate situation for sure, try to make friends with people who have similar levels of wealth I guess.
vco3340 5y ago
Struggling to understand the motivation for writing a letter like this, at that age. I wouldn't be surprised if the story was simply fabricated to attract traffic and site engagement.
baron816 5y ago
One thing I learned from reading The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Heinrich is that saving (delayed gratification) can be detrimental to a lot of people in various societies around the world. Part of it is that if you have money, then it will make you a target for thieves or corruption. But also, family members will ask you to borrow money if they know you have some. And if no one has any saved money, whenever they have an emergency, they’ll go beg the lone person who might have some. So, you’re better off just spending any money you get right away so that you don’t have to give it over to a family member. Clearly, that equilibrium is hard to break out of, and pretty much requires kin based institutions to be broken down first (which is the thesis of the book for how the rich world got rich).
silicon2401 5y ago
> ‘I have not donated money to anyone or any organization. I also do not believe in loaning money to friends and relatives, no matter what’ Smart man. He did the right thing and I would gladly do the same in exchange for that kind of money any day of the week. Ironically, the idealists who don't understand the risks of letting people know how much money you have are also the ones who will suffer the most when they hear people's sob stories about why they need $X or why things are so hard from them; so they have even more reason not to publicize their wealth.
- tim333 5y ago
  Donating is ok but I'd kind of recommend being anonymous or they'll bug you for more for ever after.
WalterBright 5y ago
I've met Paul Allen, and I've always felt kind of sorry for him. I suspect he never had any real friends after he got rich. He did have a lot of "friends" who liked to party on his yacht.
samstave 5y ago
Wages are such a weird thing... In HS I was a grocery bagger and I made $5.34/hr 1992-93 I then worked as head cad drafter (autocad) for multiple architects... When I announced I was quitting my firm to move to seattle, I told them I was moving and needed a raise so I could save up to move in 3 months, they laughed at my gall and granted me the raise from $8.50/hr to $9.25 -- 1994 I moved to Seattle then made $9.50 as head draftsman designing Fred Huchinson Cancer Research Center and a bunch of fast food restaurants and gas stations and cell sites... (Rent was $400/month for a 1 bedroom) Moved back to the Bay in '97 and got a job as IT manager for a company making $42K/yr (Rent was $1,200 for 3-br then $65k then $70K then $104K (mortgage $2400) 120, 150, 170, 250K Now I am looking for work and make nothing... I am happier making nothing than anytime I was on the clock 24/7/365 worrying about production uptime that made nothing better in this world....
gfiorav 5y ago
Nowhere near this money, but I did notice during this pandemic a situation where: - Wife and I were in a tricky situation (stuck in a different country, living with parents since we couldn't go back home). - It was stressful to be away from our home and not knowing when/if you'll be back. - Nobody in the family offered any empathy to this situation since "what do you care? You have money." We're nowhere near even the bottom mid of the most affected people by the pandemic, so don't take this as whining. I think others (especially those who don't have enough money not to worry) tend to believe that money would solve all their problems. Hence, they think you don't deserve empathy.
cymon 5y ago
I would prefer a normal family and friends plus a comfortable $1m networth (am working towards it) over $55m plus not liking everyone in my circles. Money can only go so far, with $1m I can travel the world with my family or friend and share stories and experiences with them, and that is good enough for me..
m3kw9 5y ago
Usually this would happen with lottery winners because ppl know it was made from stoke of pure luck so they feel giving them a little is fair. He’s right in not telling anyone. Most people know rich people but they don’t go up to them easily asking for hand outs because they know they don’t deserve their hard work.
ollifi 5y ago
In Finland tax records are public and papers make articles and search engines so anyone can look up how rich any person is (as long as they make more than 150k or so) People complain and there has been talk and steps forward about changing the system but in the end I don’t think that much harm comes from it. Ironically lottery winnings are tax free so they are the only people with stealth wealth.
Rd6n6 5y ago
If I had 55M, I would like to be able to tell my friends and family that I can help them with education/medical/bootstrapping expenses if they ever needed it. I’m not completely sure what everybody else is saving their money for if not that
rdiddly 5y ago
I can't seem to find a solid statistical study on the lottery-winner murder rate. "That Reddit post" says it's 20X higher than within the general population, and elsewhere I've read that it's more than 30X. I know, [citation needed] and I mean that literally - anyone know of a study? Of course plenty of anecdata is out there. A glance at any of these stories ought to be scary enough to at least give you pause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Adams_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Adams_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winne... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dampier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dampier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavigueur_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavigueur_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shakespeare You can also search for "Tiffani Hill" for an example from just 3 weeks ago. It's not ALL bad news of course: Keeps a low profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther Donated most of it to charity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodtong_Senanan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodtong_Senanan Used it to run for Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Cisneros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Cisneros Also politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lohse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lohse World's largest hummus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdat_Ibrahim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdat_Ibrahim And yet... not all the good news is good either: Went into... err... business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Leyland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Leyland
hitekker 5y ago
> You no doubt realize that money doesn’t change who you are. It can, however, change others’ perceptions of you. People project their own needs, resentments, insecurities and ambitions onto others. Compare and despair is an often unavoidable human trait. Hey, here's one for us in the bay area.
IncRnd 5y ago
I had something similar happen, when my first successful company became successful. Many people who had been my friends or my wife's friends suddenly no longer saw me as me. They saw a wallet walking into the room. Not everyone acted that way, but so many did. I no longer associate with them. I have the utmost respect for those who were not changed by my privilege or fortune.
brokeAF 5y ago
I made 25m with crypto over the last 10 years. Never told anyone, not my friends, not my gf, not my family. Half a year ago I quit my job and now everyone thinks I am unemployed. How to stop my friends sending me job offers for full-time php developement?
- meowster 5y ago
  It's probably how you telegraph it to them. For example, you chose the username "brokeAF" ("broke as f***"), it could be a fun play with irony, but for someone who doesn't know about your wealth, it would just seem like you might be desperate for money. I would suggest making up a white lie, like you found a gig to edit travel articles, so it's a remote/digital gig, and a benefit is you get discounted travel. If you don't travel, find something that works with whatever it is you do with your time.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  You could say you work remotely as a consultant.
- swalsh 5y ago
  You could say you're working a modest remote job.
- tim333 5y ago
  Say you punt crypto but imply you've only made a few $10k.
at_a_remove 5y ago
Just the network effect of, say, two degrees of Kevin Bacon here is interesting. When it gets to three, rather than directly be approached "hey old buddy old pal" what you would have to do is wonder what percentage of those folks are grifters, con artists, and your basic criminals. I have a Cousin Tammy I've never met, who out of nowhere calls and tries to hit us up for money every so often. Two degrees. If Cousin Tammy knows some desperate people ... You have to really weigh how much you trust each person you tell not to tell, and you have to also evaluate all of the people they might tell -- which is not an easy task. For example, I am estranged from my father who, if I went into why, most people here would easily agree, if not suggest pressing charges. Despite repeatedly asking my mother not to tell my father anything about me -- where I work, what I do, and so forth -- she does it. Ergo, if I really want to keep something from my father, I cannot tell my mother. Now, imagine doing this for everyone you know, plus a lot of money, which at fifty-five million dollars, which, in the words of The Way of the Gun "is not money. It's a motive with a universal adapter on it."
sushisource 5y ago
Haha, from the article: > We live in a culture where millions of people want to get rich quick — exhibit A: cryptocurrency, something that has no intrinsic value except as use as a form of exchange outside the banking system I mean, a lot of people argue that is the value.
WalterBright 5y ago
My father related to me a TV news story long ago about an Italian man who won the lottery. As the news was about to interview him, a man pushed him aside and announced "He's a good Communist Party member, and is going to give it to the Party!" The recipient in turn shoved him aside and said "No I'm not, I'm not a Communist anymore!"

155 points by prostoalex 5y ago

Classic Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_... > Congratulations! You just won millions of dollars in the lottery! That's great. > Now you're fucked. > No really. > You are. > You're fucked. This guy did exactly the right thing.

alecst 5y ago
It's such a low bar to pass. The guy in the article is 67, makes 1MM+ in interest a year, and won't even consider telling his friends or family? Or donating a penny of it? Is there not room for a middle ground here? What about: "Hey, I made a million bucks in the lottery/stocks/crypto. I heard you're having a tough time, take this -- you don't owe me anything. Wishing you well, -Dave."
- philwelch 5y ago
  Word gets around and eventually you're going to get harassed, conned, and maybe even robbed.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I'll point out that, like it or not, the sort of money you're talking about is in the range of many CEOs or other senior execs of large US companies. Yes, some of these do have security services especially those at the high end of the range, but tens of millions of dollars pretty much puts you in the wealthy but not Uber-rich in the US.
    - philwelch 5y ago
      Yeah, I think it’s the shape of the transition that makes the difference, and even then it can be weird. If you’re an executive at a large company, you’ve spent so much time working on that that your social circle has changed. Even if you’re a startup founder, you’re not surrounded by the kids you went to high school with, you’re surrounded by enough other rich people that they aren’t gonna mooch off of you. Winning the lottery is more like a rookie in a professional sports league signing their first contract. Sometimes that works out fine—they buy their mom a house and a new car—and sometimes they go broke supporting an entire entourage.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Good comments. As an extremely wealthy person or the very visible CEO of a company/division that stirs a lot of passion, you may want security against the nut cases. (I have some knowledge of this from trade shows.) But for someone who has "just" become 8 figures wealthy over the course of their career, they may have some family branch that resents it but their relative success isn't an out of the blue thing. And CEOs are pretty good about saying no to people who want money for things.
- kiba 5y ago
  And attracts stalkers and desperate? It may not be his friends or families, but strangers.
- shocks 5y ago
  “Hi Dave, Thanks for reaching out. You’re right that we were struggling and this generous gift really helped ease our minds. Anyway, Auntie Venessa has come down with lung cancer and we’re finding it difficult to…” etc
  - throw123123123 5y ago
    "I never really liked Auntie Venessa"
    - N00bN00b 5y ago
      Most humans suck at sorting out the cognitive dissonance between "I am a good guy" and "I let auntie Vanessa die". Doesn't mean your approach isn't right. A lot of people just can't do that properly and it can cause stress and depression, so for them it's probably easier to just avoid having to think about it. Humans aren't really the most sophisticated when it comes to situations like this. Almost like we weren't supposed to have 10,000x times more resources at our disposal compared to the person standing next to us. But let's just ignore that and continue our game of monopoly. Maybe this time it'll end differently. I'm sitting next to the bank though, so the outcome is pretty much certain for me.
  - ksaj 5y ago
    This was already taken care of by saying that he won/made a million. So that would mean there is no money left for Auntie Venessa. So his reply could literally be "I gave you a mil. Pay some of it forward."
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  Psychologically, the middle ground turns out to be an unstable equilibrium. You can give them some money, but then they come back for more. If you say no, your family may find itself breaking apart unless you give up everything you got in the lottery
  - derekp7 5y ago
    In that Reddit thread (assuming it is the one I'm thinking of) it seems there is also a high likelihood you get sued for giving people money because you didn't give them enough (under the same line of thought that if you regularly feed wild birds they will become dependent on your bird feeder and starve if you quit [don't know how true that is, but that is a common "wisdom"]). You also get harassed by local police, in addition to friends of your family breaking into your house/car.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > it seems there is also a high likelihood you get sued for giving people money because you didn't give them enough Yup. Families can be like that. Some distant relatives of mine, whom I never met, have been suing each other over some inheritance for what must be a good ~20 years now. I know because we're still getting an occasional mail from court calling my dad (who died many years ago) to stand witness in that case.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  No no, see, once you actually have money you stop caring about other people and just want to protect what you have. "Got mine, fuck you" and all that. At least, that's how it seems from all the advice that gets thrown around about people who suddenly come in to wealth. Weirdly no one gives advice related to the documented ways that people tend to change when they suddenly have much more money than the people around them.
  - stagger87 5y ago
    > the documented ways that people tend to change when they suddenly have much more money than the people around them Please share said documents. (Genuinely)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      The study that comes immediately to mind is Paul K Piff's Monopoly experiment. In it, one participant of each game was given twice as much starting money, twice as much Go money, and twice as many dice as the others. Consistently the "affluent" player would become more aggressive and less polite as the game went on. Other experiments conducted by Piff indicate a lack of empathy associated with increasing wealth. High wealth individuals being shown to be more likely to cut people off in traffic, lie during job interviews, cheat on tests, and in one experiment even more likely to steal candy from children. One could, however, claim that Piff is biased, and for sure Psych studies have come under fire in general for being irreproducible. So I guess take it all with a grain of salt.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- andi999 5y ago
  How much do you donate annually? 10 Million people donating 100$ per year is substantially more than he could ever donate.
  - alecst 5y ago
    Therefore he should not donate any? I don't see where to go from this position.
    - andi999 5y ago
      Everybody can choose to donate, nobody should donate (otherwise it is also not really a donation if you should). Singling out rich guys to donate who do not donate could actually be counterproductive (since people just feel the responsibility lies with the rich guys). Encouraging everybody to donate small amounts of money might lead to a better outcome.
      - alecst 5y ago
        I don't really see how that adds up. In order to collect $50B, everyone in the US would need to donate about $150. Or, Jeff Bezos could liquidate a 1/3 of his net worth. A bit exaggerated, and a bit of a cartoon, but you get the point. Plus, the utility of an extra billion dollars to a billionaire is basically zero. Fight me if you disagree.
        andi999 5y ago
        Well Bezos donated 12 billion already, and who knows how much more he will donate. He probably couldn't donate every year that amount, so if you say in 20 years it is 150$/20=7.50per year which is less than a dollar per month (admittingly this is everybody in the US). This is a lot of money for a lot of people but I still believe the total possible donatable wealth of non rich people is orders of magnitude larger than rich people (couldn't find good stats, was looking a while ago)
- sonotathrowaway 5y ago
  “Three people can keep a secret if two are dead”
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- barnesto 5y ago
  What Dave does with his money is none of your concern. But since he put it out in the public, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. You see, that's the point of not telling anyone. Everyone has an opinion and once they know a little something about anything they want to share it. Most of those opinions are how to separate Dave from his money. Nobody needs that in their lives. Not Dave. Not anyone. He was right to keep quite and it looks like he had good reason to keep it quite in the first place. How you feel about finding a middle ground is the problem Dave was looking to avoid. See my first sentence.
  - alecst 5y ago
    Our anonymous Dave has a tremendous excess of wealth that far exceeds his needs and his ability or desire to spend it. He asked "Was I wrong in not telling anyone about my winnings?" My response was to that. Maybe sharing it, rather than concealing it, might actually make his life a little better (there is a soft joy in giving), and bring him closer to the needs of people around him. I don't see why you think I crossed a line by giving my opinion. The man is asking for opinions!
    - hinkley 5y ago
      What if Dave gets aggressive ALS and there is stem cell research that looks promising, but basically he has to help fund research? Does Dave need that now? Can he ask for it back? I worked with people who tried to retire early but got embezzled. They knew someone whose wife got diagnosed with cancer months after retirement and that money just went poof. You can’t see the future, you don’t know. What you know is that people overplan for emergencies and miss out on positive experiences because if it. These are not the same thing.
    - philwelch 5y ago
      > My response was to that. Maybe sharing it, rather than concealing it, might actually make his life a little better (there is a soft joy in giving), and bring him closer to the needs of people around him. It would sure be nice to think that. But that's not how the world works. From the link I posted above, and very abridged: > Jack Whittaker, a Johnny Cash attired, West Virginia native, is the poster boy for the dangers of a lump sum award. In 2002 Mr. Whittaker (55 years old at the time) won what was, also at the time, the largest single award jackpot in U.S. history. $315 million. At the time, he planned to live as if nothing had changed, or so he said. He was remarkably modest and decent before the jackpot, and his ship sure came in, right? Wrong. > Mr. Whittaker became the subject of a number of personal challenges, escalating into personal tragedies, complicated by a number of legal troubles. ... > Whittaker quickly became the subject of a number of financial stalkers, who would lurk at his regular breakfast hideout and accost him with suggestions for how to spend his money. They were unemployed. No, an interview tomorrow morning wasn't good enough. They needed cash NOW. Perhaps they had a sure-fire business plan. Their daughter had cancer. A niece needed dialysis. Needless to say, Whittaker stopped going to his breakfast haunt. Eventually, they began ringing his doorbell. Sometimes in the early morning. Before long he was paying off-duty deputies to protect his family. He was accused of being heartless. Cold. Stingy. > Letters poured in. Children with cancer. Diabetes. MS. You name it. He hired three people to sort the mail. A detective to filter out the false claims and the con men (and women) was retained. ... > Whittaker's car was twice broken into, by trusted acquaintances who watched him leave large amounts of cash in it. $500,000 and $200,000 were stolen in two separate instances. The thieves spiked Whittaker's drink with prescription drugs in the first instance. The second incident was the handiwork of his granddaughter's friends, who had been probing the girl for details on Whittaker's cash for weeks. ... > Whittaker invested quite a bit in his own businesses, tripled the number of people his businesses employed (making him one of the larger employers in the area) and eventually had given away $14 million to charity through a foundation he set up for the purpose. This is, of course, what you are "supposed" to do. Set up a foundation. Be careful about your charity giving. It made no difference in the end. ... > Today Whittaker is badly in debt, and bankruptcy looms large in his future.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  > Or donating a penny of it? He's 67. If he's incredibly lucky, he'll have another 30 years to enjoy it. He has no kids. I don't see anything wrong with donating it at/near death rather than now. We are not morally obliged to live the life of an ascetic.
- zepearl 5y ago
  > Is there not room for a middle ground here? Probably difficult. If I would do <something> it would trigger some sort of chain reaction => probably difficult to keep it contained => I would have to try to at least act slowly & do stuff step-by-step. Personally for me it would be really hard if not impossible not to tell my parents, hehe. But once a bigger audience would become aware of that, e.g. cousins, then it could start getting very complicated (e.g. if I would end up donating $ to cousin X because s/he has financial problems or I just want to be nice, then cousin Y or nephew W might want to know why s/he's not getting anything, etc...). People to whom I donate money to might end up quickly losing it (bad investment because of multiple potential reasons, most famous one just not being used to have to deal with such an amount of money), then once they lost it they might come back to me asking for a "replay" (e.g. "pls. save me, you gave me $$ but I screwed up and made debts - you've done it once so can you give me a 2nd chance! Pleasepleaseplease!") and saying "no" will make them angry and because of the whole situation (which would basically be something which I triggered) I might end up feeling like I own them something, with the final result that the relationship would suffer even if originally it was good (all all $ would be gone). All this is not irrealistic - e.g. I saw in the past some short documentaries about NFL and soccer players screwing up their lifes because of all the money they got all of a sudden. Personally I think that I would probably try to create some kind of "cover story" (e.g. something involving having "earned" it the hard way - because just saying e.g. "I won it" might make people start to think "s/he got the $ easily therefore chances might be high that s/he'll easily share some of it with me" but on the other hand that's probably less likely to happen if I would say "I had to 100 hours a week during the last 5 years") and I would probably say that I got a lot less (e.g. 3-5M $) which would just be fine to give me a chance to raise a bit my standard of living and stop working after having paid taxes but not to give out left&right money for free. Even the question "stop working?" might not be easy to answer (maybe just do something part-time, otherwise by not working at all I would feel disconnected from all my friends & colleagues) Even if I would manage to keep everything absolutely secret and not to do anything with that $, my bank WOULD call me asking what I plan to do with the $M that are parked on my account, probably asking for an appointment to tell me about many interesting investment opportunities => that's a difficult situation for any person who's not used to deal with this stuff, e.g. people might not want to admit (or just would not be aware) that they don't understand the risks linked to some investments/financial products/whatever. Saying "no" is often a lot harder than to say "yes" :)
yupper32 5y ago
That thread is really dumb. You can't just throw stuff out there like "You're 20x more likely to die of homicide!" and expect to be taken seriously. 1. The demographic that is likely to win lotteries might already be more likely to die of homicide (or become bankrupt, etc) than the general population. 2. Throwing large multiples out sounds flashy, but it doesn't mean much if the probability was already extremely low. You're not fucked if you win the lottery... The amount you can afford with 100 million is incredible. Buy a huge lot and hire security. Hire great attorneys and financial firms to handle details. Don't spend more than you expect to make in interest yearly. Boom, saved you from having to read a wall of Reddit lottery porn.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  That thread isn't particularly dumb. It's a completely normal level of dumbness for a reddit thread. You just happened to be able to smell the bullshit because you approached the topic in question with a critical eye.
  - allsmjio 5y ago
    They’re just nitpicking the unimportant bits while unwittingly(?) agreeing with the important bits (and adding some silliness of his own). But somehow that sort of smug contrarianism attracts this sort of self-congratulatory back rub about how “we” on hackernews are so much more enlightened than the blue forum’s masses…thus fulfilling the “normal level of dumbness” for an Orange Subreddit thread.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      I'm not nitpicking the unimportant bits. Half the thread is telling people why they're fucked (No really. You are. You're fucked.), and then using incorrect statistics and a long anecdote to back up their claim. I am not making any claims on the dumbness on either platform, though.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      I never said it's any better here. All these "cram a bunch of disparate interest in one place" platforms are crap when it comes to discussion quality as far as I'm concerned. You want good discussion on a topic you gotta go where only the people who do that topic are and everyone else isn't.
samstave 5y ago
There wasa reddit thread previously where a guy had 1,500 BTC in a wallet he couldnt recall the password for... I wrote to him calculating the value of the wallet at the time at $13 million.. I encouraged him to pay someone to help him crack the wallet and he agreed to give me 1% to assist him, which I did... Then when he got the BTC, he ghosted. If he succeeded, that BTC is $72 million today...

jnwatson 5y ago

Other than not donating any of it, he made the right call. The fact that the winner still has the money after 10 years is evidence he took the correct course.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I would not consider not donating to be wrong, or donating to necessarily be right.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  Bioethicist/philosopher Peter Singer disagrees. "if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior." [1] I'm inclined to agree with him. This is my current moral quandry, since my income is about to dramatically increase. I'm looking for a new car. I can pay in cash. I could pay $90K for a Porsche, or $20K for a used Honda and donate $70K to Doctors without Borders. (I don't drive much, so the difference in environmental impact is negligible.) This is not theoretical. People in Haiti are dying just 1400 miles away, and $70K could really help. 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    The donor's dilemma: to whom when so many are needy? I'd suggest donating to a reputable agreggator, such as the United Way or Red Cross.
    - vymague 5y ago
      And there's the usual claim that many charities are super corrupt. Yes, there are lists of "good" charities. But you know.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Funny how Peter Singer condemns comfort while living comfortably enough to have the time to write and publish a dozen books [1]. That time could've really helped a lot of people. Wonder what his thoughts on hypocrisy are. For me, other people's problems aren't my problem. If I won a billion dollars I'd probably donate to things generously out of mild interest in trying to make the world more to my liking, but that's about it. Not my fault if others are suffering, nor is it my fault if I get lucky some day. In my experience I've found that the more of a martyr someone tries to be, having a boat and trying to save others from drowning, the more they end up just being another body in the water, leaving the world worse off than if they had helped less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Publications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Publications

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

42069 5y ago

I made ~50 million in crypto. By far the most satisfying part was buying a house each for my friends and family. Having a paid off house is really a massive stress reducer for most people which imho gives you the 90% of the financial freedom of being super wealthy.

post_break 5y ago
That's the dream right there. I've got 20 years to go on my note for my house and I just think wow, once this thing is paid off I've got it made in the shade. Good on you for helping them, much better investment than just buying them cars or gifts.
ibaikov 5y ago
Wonder if people like you think about funding startups that are not attractive to traditional investors. I'm talking about funding outsiders with something that doesn't sound very exciting, but might work out
- jessaustin 5y ago
  If this person wanted to hear about that sort of opportunity, they probably wouldn't have been so careful about secrecy.
- adventured 5y ago
  > funding startups that are not attractive to traditional investors It's a great way to lose a lot of money. It's why venture capitalists prefer to play with other people's money. You better absolutely love playing god with start-ups, because there is a hellish nightmare that can go with allocating capital to high-risk new businesses, tracking everything, being responsible for it, enforcing legal agreements, dealing with lawyers and accountants, dealing with conflicts, watching people do incredibly stupid things with your money, and on and on and on it goes. And you can't just hire people to entirely remove you from the annoying aspects, because that's an even faster way to lose a lot of money.
  - 5y ago

post_break 5y ago

This is the right thing to do if you want to keep it and stay sane. If I won I'd delete all social networking, change my phone number, set up an LLC and make purchases through that. The quote of "I know that my parents would not have asked for a thing, but my sister would have told me to donate half to her church" makes my stomach turn.

Jxl180 5y ago
Setting up an LLC to be used as your personal incognito identity is definitely illegal. LLCs are meant to be for operating a legitimate business, not a second personal identity.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  IANAL, but this seems more theoretically correct than practically correct. The truly wealthy have hierarchies of LLCs for the purpose of tax "minimization".
  - Jxl180 5y ago
    IANAL as well, but I’m sure that is very well the case. Edit: maybe it’s not illegal, just a bad idea: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/llc-basics-30163.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/llc-basics-30163.htm... If owners don't treat the LLC as a separate business, a court might decide that the LLC doesn't really exist and find that its owners are really doing business as individuals who are personally liable for their acts.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      I have no criticisms of Nolo, but "the truly wealthy" hire lawyers. Those professionals are skilled at determining whether to set up partnerships, C-corps, LLCs, whatever. Besides we're talking about anonymity for anonymity's sake (well, also tax minimization and probably lots of other rich people priorities we peons can't imagine), not for dodging creditors. If the principal is poor enough to need to dodge creditors, probably the whole house of paper collapses. (Probably also the lawyers are the first to know, so they'll get paid up front and be long gone at the time of collapse.)

alecst 5y ago

In contrast with the prototypical lottery winner who burns through all their money and ends up basically where they started, this guy didn't spend any significant amount of his money and ended up basically where he started.

adrianN 5y ago
Except this guy never has to work again if he doesn't want to.
Animats 5y ago
Most people who suddenly make a lot of money blow through it in only seven years. (From "The Challenges of Wealth", 1988). This guy is doing the right thing. Many of those people making at high salaries at FAANG companies need to be saving more of it, because they'll be over the hill in their 40s, with 40 years left to go.
treesknees 5y ago
There's a balancing act of saving vs spending. A lot of people pinch pennies and save for retirement, working 60-80 hr weeks, skipping vacations and family parties, buying the cheapest car, etc. When they get to be 65 their health prevents them from actually enjoying that money. Maybe they get to that age and they die and never get to spend any of it. I do hope this guy is at least going on some trips and utilizing his gift while he can. Seems pretty pointless to hoard $50M to do nothing with it (yes, he collects the interest, but my point still stands.)

thepasswordis 5y ago

Not that much, but I did make a ton of money in crypto. Similar thing: bought a house, also bought myself a nice car. I didn't tell any of my friends, but did mistakenly tell one of my parents, who then felt it necessary to share this information with the rest of my family. If you make a bunch of money: I would highly recommend not telling people. The will treat you differently (not in a good way).

ghaff 5y ago
It probably depends where you are in life, how much money, your relationship to family, how comfortable they are, etc. Certainly seemed like the right call in this case. On the other hand, if your family is comfortable, this happens to you when you're 35 and want to retire and travel the world at least for a while, it's probably hard to deny that you had some sort of real financial windfall.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Say you became a consultant.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    "I'm an outside consultant to beach resorts and other interesting places."
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I work on globally scalable and extremely complex systems. Specifically, the ecosystem. I test it for enjoyment purposes.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      A professional reviewer for a travel guide so prestigious it isn't even published and only has a single customer.
  - ghaff 5y ago

donmcronald 5y ago

> I also do not believe in loaning money to friends and relatives, no matter what. This guy sounds like a special kind of asshole. Who wins $55 million dollars and thinks about “loaning” money to their parents? Lol. I get why you wouldn’t want to tell anyone you won the lotto, but you can tell a little white lie and claim to be doing well career wise so you have an excuse to give your parents some money. This guy wants to justify being a greedy jerk IMO.

thrill 5y ago
Low-Key's sister, is this you?
Hamuko 5y ago
Unless his parents were about to be evicted due to payment delinquencies, why would he need to give or lend them money?
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  And until such a time, he can at least give his parents the gift of not asking them for money.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Man, if I won that kind of money I'd treat my parents to crazy stuff like a nice classic car or a trip around the world... and I'm not even that close to them.
lazyeye 5y ago
Multiply this comment by x10000 and thats precisely what youll be dealing with as described exactly in this previously mentioned Reddit thread https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_...

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

What is the point of writing a letter like this to a money advice column? His only question is, "Was I wrong in not telling anyone about my winnings?" Surely by 67 you should understand that wrong is the eye of the beholder. Only you can answer whether you did right or wrong, although I will say that sending a letter to an advice column is a signal that you are not completely satisfied with your decision. Honestly this comes off like a brag -- simply because he is not conveying any information other than his wealth and dislike for his family. There are a bunch of different ways to approach having a lot of money. I have been lucky enough to be extremely well compensated these last few years. To the point where we are getting on toward having so much money that it doesn't seem possible to use it all, although we are nowhere in the range of this lottery winner. My family knows I'm doing well, but perhaps not exactly how well, which is a fine state of affairs as long as everyone understands that there are boundaries. I think you can use money like that to make life better for your loved ones without going all the way toward making them dependents, and personally it has felt right to do that for me. But everyone has their own views on what is best.

JohnBooty 5y ago
What is the point of writing a letter like this to a money advice column? You're right: there's no point in writing a letter like this. But also: did somebody actually write this letter? This is pure speculation but I'm about 99.99% certain that 99.99% of letters to advice columns are wholly fabricated by those who write the columns... right?
Sebb767 5y ago
> Surely by 67 you should understand that wrong is the eye of the beholder. Knowing that and feeling that are two different things. Sometimes you just need to hear it from another person (and, quite often, you should - it's easy to get stuck in a wrong view). There's nothing wrong with asking.
bagacrap 5y ago
is there some age at which it stops feeling good to be told you did the right thing?
5y ago

ajay-b 5y ago

I made enough in bitcoin to buy myself a condo all in cash. I told friends it was a small inheritance.

throwaway58483 5y ago

~$11 million from a whistleblower reward. Similar in some ways to winning the lottery, but there was no way to avoid some friends and family finding out. E.g. a friend and my dad helped edit my award claim submission. I moved to a new city, kept it private, eventually told a couple new friends. Some people treat you the same, some people treat you differently (in a bad way, like another commenter mentioned). So it's useful as a filtering mechanism.

vymague 5y ago
Obvious question, the people you blew the whistle on didn't hire people to track and harass you? Or worse.
- throwaway58483 5y ago
  They did. I got a Belgian Malinois and a concealed carry permit.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Wow, can you say who you blew the whistle on? And where I can find a whistle like that? ;) Seems like being somebody who blew the whistle would act as a pretty good filtering mechanism too. You probably don't get many invitations to hang out and party with Matt Gaetz...

spoonjim 5y ago

The point of this letter is to brag when the OP clearly cannot brag to the people he actually wants to.

jessaustin 5y ago
Why not just vacation to a place where shallow people congregate (say... Las Vegas?) and stay in a ridiculously opulent hotel while renting a ridiculously fancy automobile? Stay a couple of weeks, eat fancy meals, receive the various plaudits of those who admire wealth, and when it all gets sickening one can just fly home. One would have to spend the extra money it takes to keep one's true identity confidential, but that's one of the many perks of wealth.

hurricanesugar 5y ago

Disclosing these details to a popular blog seems to go against principles that keep him anonymous. My curiosity wonders which of the details ($55M, California, “sister”) are actually true or skewed to sustain his anonymity. Tip of the hat to him for going 10 years(!!!) without telling anyone he won the lottery.

liquidise 5y ago

The friend/family perception is real and one thing, but really i think this silence creates yet more separation creating ever more loneliness. Ultimately, my fear for lottery winners is akin to discovering cheat codes in early video games. Turning on "Infinite Money" in $GAME was great... until it quickly sucked all of the joy out of the game. The limited resource challenge disappeared. I don't know anyone who has won the lottery, but i'd be worried you risk creating that very same sentiment, except about life itself. Scary, should you not have another well-established and faithfully-held purpose.

emodendroket 5y ago
You could make the same argument about a steady food supply but I'm not going to start foraging exclusively.
DanielleMolloy 5y ago
The cheat code feeling might only occur if your focus in life is earning lots of money. If you are instead pursuing to contribute something valuable in arts or sciences, a ton of money might just give you ease of mind and time to create something really worthwhile. Thinking about René Descartes, Charles Darwin and (as a more recent example) Jimmy Wales. It could indeed be that many of the former lottery winners ending up badly fell into the former camp.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
I wouldn't worry about life itself. Life is not like a single-player games, the challenges thrown at you usually are not meant to be fun. The more worrying part is the deteriorating social network. You go through life surrounded by friends and family, who are mostly in similar circumstances to you, face mostly similar problems. It's one of the biggest group-binding force. After a big windfall, you'll no longer have the same problems as other people in your life. That'll make it tricky to maintain relationships.

cf100clunk 5y ago

This would never fly in Canada, where lottery winners must present themselves in person for wins, with publicity and all. Full names are given to the press, complete with home town and smiling face. Some winners have tried to skirt or directly challenge those regulations, to no avail. A winner cannot disappear behind an LLC or other apparatus. Frankly I'd be greatly worried about collecting a huge win from a Canadian lottery unless I departed the ceremony directly to a private plane for any of the well known tax havens in the Caribbean.

misiti3780 5y ago
In Israel apparently too: https://youtu.be/9PK-netuhHA?t=351 https://youtu.be/9PK-netuhHA?t=351
ghaff 5y ago
I believe it's true to at least some degree of some US states as well. I assume this is a transparency thing so people know that the governor's brother didn't by "sheer chance" win the lottery.
speg 5y ago
Could you just change your name & address before you claim your prize?
fivefifty 5y ago
That would suck. In China when you win the lottery, while they don't reveal your name, you still need to collect the prize/cheque in person and pose for publicity shots. This has lead to the amusing situation of most winners turning up in various masks or even full sports event mascot style costumes to collect the winnings.

alberto-m 5y ago

Probably a fake. I visit MarketWatch a couple of times a week and they always feature on the front page a letter of someone in a unusual financial situation who has taken, or is planning, questionable decisions about their money. The ghost writer behind this is quite good, I have to admit.

ramg 5y ago
This reads/feels like an AITA thread on reddit. I used to enjoy the MarketWatch questions until I reached a tipping point where I believed they were all fake. Sigh.

bsanr2 5y ago

I feel kind of dirty gossiping, but I also feel like Low-Key's story is a bit fishy. He's "the good child" who didn't tell his parents about lottery winnings that certainly would have been enough to, at the very least, give back to the people who raised him; however, he DID go out of his way to convince them to write his sister out of their will (we have no idea if the "horrible things" she supposedly did reasonably justified being disowned). It's his money to do with what he wants, of course, but it feels as if we're hearing only one side, and that of a party who feels guilty and is looking for extrinsic support for their behavior. I'm trying to understand why someone who felt no qualms would post this publicly.

MattGaiser 5y ago

I have a thing where I made a "bunch" (not a lot for Westerners, but people in other countries can do it too) of money online and a couple blogs publicized it. It is not something I could hide as it is very public if you look correctly. I get an absurd number of scam attempts, some of them very customized. Someone tried to fake a family stamp collection (I collect stamps). Also, random people who looked me up would introduce me when I met them with other people as "the guy who [did $thing to get $amount). Even people in North America. And we are talking about 30K ish here.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> You no doubt realize that money doesn’t change who you are. It can, however, change others’ perceptions of you. People project their own needs, resentments, insecurities and ambitions onto others. Compare and despair is an often unavoidable human trait. This, so much. It doesn't even take that much money for some people to recategorize you in their head, once they figure out you have more than them.

asciimov 5y ago

Way to humble brag about your winnings there fella. I'd want to know did he at least help his parents be more comfortable in their final years. Has he enjoyed the money at all; taken some trips or had some experiences that only money can buy you? It's fine if he didn't, but what's the point if you aren't enjoying it to some extent.

bittercynic 5y ago
I think you can enjoy money without spending it. It's nice to think "Hey, that's pretty cool, and I could buy it if I wanted to."

paradigm_ 5y ago

I made a good deal from long-term crypto holdings and never told anyone, and it was much easier that way. I would still help family; they just didn't know how easy it was for me to help them, and so didn't ask for more. Startup exit happened and a wrench got thrown in it all, though. Many acquaintances from years ago would text me about having had a class with me and having seen the news. I told myself I'd reply after a few weeks but in the end never did. The paranoia since has made me a substantially worse person, and taken away how easily I trust. When it comes to dating, I alternate between "money is now the most stable part of my life, so who cares if people partially like me over it? I earned it after all!" and "it's not as meaningful, I want someone who likes me solely for my other traits, but I can't trust whether that's the case." Do everything you can to keep your success private.

throwaway1981xx 5y ago

This week I have had two of my few friendships hit the rocks who have approached me for money. One is pushing me to invest in his business, and one approached me for a reasonably large loan. I've explained to both that I don't feel able to, but I can tell that both feel I am being unreasonable because it's only $XXk which they know isn't that significant to me. I wish they hadn't have asked as it feels fatal for the friendships. I already feel a bit of an outsider for sometimes having money. Maybe all of these problems are in my own head..... Either way, the lottery winner had the right idea.

zanmat0 5y ago
Unfortunate situation for sure, try to make friends with people who have similar levels of wealth I guess.

vco3340 5y ago

Struggling to understand the motivation for writing a letter like this, at that age. I wouldn't be surprised if the story was simply fabricated to attract traffic and site engagement.

baron816 5y ago

One thing I learned from reading The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Heinrich is that saving (delayed gratification) can be detrimental to a lot of people in various societies around the world. Part of it is that if you have money, then it will make you a target for thieves or corruption. But also, family members will ask you to borrow money if they know you have some. And if no one has any saved money, whenever they have an emergency, they’ll go beg the lone person who might have some. So, you’re better off just spending any money you get right away so that you don’t have to give it over to a family member. Clearly, that equilibrium is hard to break out of, and pretty much requires kin based institutions to be broken down first (which is the thesis of the book for how the rich world got rich).

silicon2401 5y ago

> ‘I have not donated money to anyone or any organization. I also do not believe in loaning money to friends and relatives, no matter what’ Smart man. He did the right thing and I would gladly do the same in exchange for that kind of money any day of the week. Ironically, the idealists who don't understand the risks of letting people know how much money you have are also the ones who will suffer the most when they hear people's sob stories about why they need $X or why things are so hard from them; so they have even more reason not to publicize their wealth.

tim333 5y ago
Donating is ok but I'd kind of recommend being anonymous or they'll bug you for more for ever after.

WalterBright 5y ago

I've met Paul Allen, and I've always felt kind of sorry for him. I suspect he never had any real friends after he got rich. He did have a lot of "friends" who liked to party on his yacht.

samstave 5y ago

Wages are such a weird thing... In HS I was a grocery bagger and I made $5.34/hr 1992-93 I then worked as head cad drafter (autocad) for multiple architects... When I announced I was quitting my firm to move to seattle, I told them I was moving and needed a raise so I could save up to move in 3 months, they laughed at my gall and granted me the raise from $8.50/hr to $9.25 -- 1994 I moved to Seattle then made $9.50 as head draftsman designing Fred Huchinson Cancer Research Center and a bunch of fast food restaurants and gas stations and cell sites... (Rent was $400/month for a 1 bedroom) Moved back to the Bay in '97 and got a job as IT manager for a company making $42K/yr (Rent was $1,200 for 3-br then $65k then $70K then $104K (mortgage $2400) 120, 150, 170, 250K Now I am looking for work and make nothing... I am happier making nothing than anytime I was on the clock 24/7/365 worrying about production uptime that made nothing better in this world....

gfiorav 5y ago

Nowhere near this money, but I did notice during this pandemic a situation where: - Wife and I were in a tricky situation (stuck in a different country, living with parents since we couldn't go back home). - It was stressful to be away from our home and not knowing when/if you'll be back. - Nobody in the family offered any empathy to this situation since "what do you care? You have money." We're nowhere near even the bottom mid of the most affected people by the pandemic, so don't take this as whining. I think others (especially those who don't have enough money not to worry) tend to believe that money would solve all their problems. Hence, they think you don't deserve empathy.

cymon 5y ago

I would prefer a normal family and friends plus a comfortable $1m networth (am working towards it) over $55m plus not liking everyone in my circles. Money can only go so far, with $1m I can travel the world with my family or friend and share stories and experiences with them, and that is good enough for me..

m3kw9 5y ago

Usually this would happen with lottery winners because ppl know it was made from stoke of pure luck so they feel giving them a little is fair. He’s right in not telling anyone. Most people know rich people but they don’t go up to them easily asking for hand outs because they know they don’t deserve their hard work.

ollifi 5y ago

In Finland tax records are public and papers make articles and search engines so anyone can look up how rich any person is (as long as they make more than 150k or so) People complain and there has been talk and steps forward about changing the system but in the end I don’t think that much harm comes from it. Ironically lottery winnings are tax free so they are the only people with stealth wealth.

Rd6n6 5y ago

If I had 55M, I would like to be able to tell my friends and family that I can help them with education/medical/bootstrapping expenses if they ever needed it. I’m not completely sure what everybody else is saving their money for if not that

rdiddly 5y ago

I can't seem to find a solid statistical study on the lottery-winner murder rate. "That Reddit post" says it's 20X higher than within the general population, and elsewhere I've read that it's more than 30X. I know, [citation needed] and I mean that literally - anyone know of a study? Of course plenty of anecdata is out there. A glance at any of these stories ought to be scary enough to at least give you pause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Adams_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Adams_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Carroll_(lottery_winne... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dampier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dampier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavigueur_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavigueur_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shakespeare You can also search for "Tiffani Hill" for an example from just 3 weeks ago. It's not ALL bad news of course: Keeps a low profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther Donated most of it to charity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodtong_Senanan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodtong_Senanan Used it to run for Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Cisneros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Cisneros Also politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lohse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lohse World's largest hummus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdat_Ibrahim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdat_Ibrahim And yet... not all the good news is good either: Went into... err... business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Leyland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Leyland

hitekker 5y ago

IncRnd 5y ago

I had something similar happen, when my first successful company became successful. Many people who had been my friends or my wife's friends suddenly no longer saw me as me. They saw a wallet walking into the room. Not everyone acted that way, but so many did. I no longer associate with them. I have the utmost respect for those who were not changed by my privilege or fortune.

brokeAF 5y ago

I made 25m with crypto over the last 10 years. Never told anyone, not my friends, not my gf, not my family. Half a year ago I quit my job and now everyone thinks I am unemployed. How to stop my friends sending me job offers for full-time php developement?

meowster 5y ago
It's probably how you telegraph it to them. For example, you chose the username "brokeAF" ("broke as f***"), it could be a fun play with irony, but for someone who doesn't know about your wealth, it would just seem like you might be desperate for money. I would suggest making up a white lie, like you found a gig to edit travel articles, so it's a remote/digital gig, and a benefit is you get discounted travel. If you don't travel, find something that works with whatever it is you do with your time.
el-salvador 5y ago
You could say you work remotely as a consultant.
swalsh 5y ago
You could say you're working a modest remote job.
tim333 5y ago
Say you punt crypto but imply you've only made a few $10k.

at_a_remove 5y ago

Just the network effect of, say, two degrees of Kevin Bacon here is interesting. When it gets to three, rather than directly be approached "hey old buddy old pal" what you would have to do is wonder what percentage of those folks are grifters, con artists, and your basic criminals. I have a Cousin Tammy I've never met, who out of nowhere calls and tries to hit us up for money every so often. Two degrees. If Cousin Tammy knows some desperate people ... You have to really weigh how much you trust each person you tell not to tell, and you have to also evaluate all of the people they might tell -- which is not an easy task. For example, I am estranged from my father who, if I went into why, most people here would easily agree, if not suggest pressing charges. Despite repeatedly asking my mother not to tell my father anything about me -- where I work, what I do, and so forth -- she does it. Ergo, if I really want to keep something from my father, I cannot tell my mother. Now, imagine doing this for everyone you know, plus a lot of money, which at fifty-five million dollars, which, in the words of The Way of the Gun "is not money. It's a motive with a universal adapter on it."

sushisource 5y ago

Haha, from the article: > We live in a culture where millions of people want to get rich quick — exhibit A: cryptocurrency, something that has no intrinsic value except as use as a form of exchange outside the banking system I mean, a lot of people argue that is the value.

WalterBright 5y ago

My father related to me a TV news story long ago about an Italian man who won the lottery. As the news was about to interview him, a man pushed him aside and announced "He's a good Communist Party member, and is going to give it to the Party!" The recipient in turn shoved him aside and said "No I'm not, I'm not a Communist anymore!"